Essays on Work and Culture

Produced by Carel Lyn Miske, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
To Henry Van Dyke
Along the slender wires of speech Some message from the heart is sent; But who can tell the whole that's meant? Our dearest thoughts are out of reach.
I. Tool or Man? II. The Man in the Work III. Work as Self-Expression IV. The Pain of Youth V. The Year of Wandering VI. The Ultimate Test VII. Liberation VIII. The Larger Education IX. Fellowship X. Work and Pessimism XI. The Educational Attitude XII. Special Training XIII. General Training XIV. The Ultimate Aim XV. Securing Right Conditions XVI. Concentration XVII. Relaxation XVIII. Recreation XIX. Ease of Mood XX. Sharing the Race-Fortune XXI. The Imagination in Work XXII. The Play of the Imagination XXIII. Character XXIV. Freedom from Self-Consciousness XXV. Consummation
Work and Culture
Tool or Man?
A complete man is so uncommon that when he appears he is looked upon with suspicion, as if there must be something wrong about him. If a man is content to deal vigorously with affairs, and leave art, religion, and science to the enjoyment or refreshment or enlightenment of others, he is accepted as strong, sounds and wise; but let him add to practical sagacity a love of poetry and some skill in the practice of it; let him be not only honest and trustworthy, but genuinely religious; let him be not only keenly observant and exact in his estimate of trade influences and movements, but devoted to the study of some science, and there goes abroad the impression that he is superficial. It is written, apparently, in the modern, and especially in the American, consciousness, that a man can do but one thing well; if he attempts more than one thing, he betrays the weakness of versatility. If this view of life is sound, man is born to imperfect development and must not struggle with fate. He may have natural aptitudes of many kinds; he may have a passionate desire to try three or four different instruments; he may have a force of vitality which is equal to the demands of several vocations or avocations; but he must disregard the most powerful impulses of his nature; he must select one tool, and with that tool he must do all the work appointed to him.