Human Work

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A beast depending mainly on digging for his livelihood, as the mole, is relentlessly modified to claws. Paw, arm and shoulder, neck and head, the body, the fur, the eyes,—he is a digger, and the spirit within him is a contented digger, too—needs must.

Once in a permanent form the spirit accepts it and stops growing.

Man digs mightily, but spade and pick do not grow on him. He takes them up, he lays them down; he substitutes the axe, the scythe, the flail. And so he does not become hopelessly the spade-holder. Too much of one kind of tool, and we have the “Man with the Hoe.”

With this rich fluency of attach- and detachability we have sped up the ages of social evolution with an ease and swiftness inconceivable of any other animal whose machinery is so inalienably attached to his spirit that it takes slow centuries to change him. This is what gives the subtle beauty to the human body, its measureless potentiality. Every other animal’s body is a perfect representation of its blended activities, greater or less. The hound, the cat, the stag, the horse, the swan, each speaks to us of its activities, each form is an embodied motion. But each in its degree is final; being that motion or those motions, it cannot be others; its personal perfection is its limit. Man’s body is an almost limitless possibility. He is the handle of innumerable tools. The upright, balanced trunk leaves the legs free for all possible movement; the high-hung, wide-reaching arms with branching fingers are tenfold elephant trunks; he can perform more kinds of actions than any other creature.

But the distinctive power of these actions involves always the thing made. A collection of human bodies pure and simple would tell you little of their social stage. But a collection of the tools and weapons of the man would tell you what he was and where.

With the detachability comes the great characteristic of exchangeability, the “our-ness” of human things; the social body is necessarily usable by all. There is no vexed question of possession with the beast. His teeth and claws are his indeed; he cannot lend or give, and none can rob him. His “dogness” is a little bundle all his own, but our “man-ness” lies in these wide-flung tools of ours, made by one, used by another, profited in by all.

This is again our infinite advantage. If the protean change of characteristics made possible to us by tool-chest and armory were possible to any other creature we should not hold our easy supremacy. The dying leader of the wolf-pack cannot hand his superior teeth to the next one, or produce sudden wings and lend them to his followers. The distributability of our tools gives us the limitless flux of power which is human. One man makes swords for a thousand, and each sword spreads the sword-power far and wide. The needle, the pen, all individual tools, may be used by many in turn, to the advantage of all.

Even more do we see this advantage in anything which may be used by many at once. Here indeed is humanness made manifest. Men, separate men, may swim as well as some animals, or ride a log, perhaps a hollowed one. But man, the human creature, man socialised, make for themself the ship, a swimming body for the social soul, and in that one material product of humanity lies unmeasured share of our real growth and greatness.

Only men together can make it, with ages of gradual evolution and relentless elimination of the unfit, with elaborate specialisation and co-ordination of effort; only man together and in similar complex relation can use it. And because of this larger range of usability is its larger value. More persons can use it, and for a longer time; it is a large and lasting piece of the social structure. So of the road, the bridge, the hall,—whatever is open to the largest use by the most people for the longest time, this is of the largest value to society; as statue, picture, music, book. In direct practical result these common products for our common use minimise effort and maximise gain, and in the living miracle of their use they steadily react upon the user and make him something nearer to the power that made them. The shiny-bladed knife in the hand of the eager boy cries to him to cut, to carve, to do a thousand things; and as he uses it, skill, the human skill bred by long ages of knife-using, is born anew in him. Ward has shown this—achievement embodied in object.

The pillared temple, visible product of the human soul in purest, proudest aspiration, reacts always on those who come within, lifting their spirits to its plane, to each according to his power of receiving. In our made things lies that much of our humanness, and as we use them we grow by that much more human; in this reactive power lies the desirability of the Thing, and its importance. The power of “mind over matter” is commonly observed, but the effect of matter upon mind, the reaction of the body upon the spirit, is not so clear to us. We see the human spirit laying violent hands on clay and wood and iron, and building for itself a visible, tangible form. We do not see so well this visible form steadily and inexorably reacting upon the imprisoned spirit.