VII
But it is useless to suppose that we have done all that is needed when we have thus relieved the irksomeness of the day’s work. Indeed, we have (if we leave it at that) only created a great peril—the peril of deterioration which always attends unused or ill-used leisure. “Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do;” and the antidote to idleness lies in providing things to do that unoccupied hands will turn to do with readiness. Yet it were fatal to regard this as a problem of utilising spare time. We have indeed a greater and worthier task on hand; and the drastic shortening of the statutory working day provides us with our opportunity.
Genuine social progress and content is, as we have seen, to be achieved only under conditions where men have the opportunity, and are trained in the exercise of the instinct of creativeness. For the great majority of men, the means of this self-expression must be found in some sort of manual activity. It must take the form of work. Perhaps the solution lies in the principle of “one man, two trades”; of which one shall be some part of the mechanical toil involved in social upkeep, and the other a craft in which a man may exercise and express something of his own independent mind. Possibly we may distinguish the two types of occupation as utility-trades and vocations, the one necessary quality of the latter being that men should be able to put their whole souls into their tasks; and in so far as these tasks are of a direct productive kind, since they are not tasks of mere utility, they may fitly be tasks of beauty as well. We require something of the nature of a revival of the older type of craftsmanship in which the æsthetic faculties found room for expression; and in the matter of clothing and house-furniture and decoration there is ample room for the development of a revived craftsmanship where use will go hand in hand with beauty. It should plainly be an organic part of educational policy to provide for the early laying of the foundations of original and creative craftsmanship. In any wise system of education, the period of adolescence should be marked by a very definite differentiation of vocational training (without neglecting the other elements of a generous education). Aptitudes should be watched for; and the growth of the youth should be stimulated along the lines of his natural inclinations. Especially should any signs of independent and original creative power be encouraged. Change of this sort can, of course be brought about only gradually; but it should be faced seriously if society is ever to be emancipated from its baleful subjection to the economic motive.
That we find it difficult to believe that any change along these lines is possible is due chiefly to a lack of acquaintance with any other conditions than those which exist to-day. But William Morris and John Ruskin found no difficulty in believing that men would work “for the joy of the working,” provided that they had work to do which had in it the elements of joy. It was so that they worked themselves; and the substance of their teaching was a plea that work should be made once more a delight by being raised to the plane of art—that is to say, that it might become the avenue of independent creative self-expression. It would doubtless take several generations before this doctrine could be established as a habit of mind and society organised conformably to it, but it is no cheap speculation which foresees, arising out of a progressive liberation and discipline of the creative instincts of a community, a new birth of art. The creative urge would, like the sun, shoot out coronas of flaming achievement; art itself might climb to a plane it has never hitherto known and break out in directions which we in our present state of spiritual purblindness cannot anticipate. At least, it is something to be remembered that those days in England in which industry was alive with a fine craftsmanship and a generous comradeship, were also the days which produced the finest monuments of English art.