Happiness: Essays on the meaning of life

by Karl Hilty

I. THE ART OF WORK

THE most important of all arts is the art of work; for if one could thoroughly understand this art, all other knowledge and conduct would be infinitely simplified. Few people, however, really know how to work, and even in an age when oftener perhaps than ever before we hear of “work” and “workers” one cannot observe that the art of work makes much positive progress. On the contrary, the general inclination seems to be to work as little as possible, or to work for a short time in order to pass the remainder of one’s life in rest.

Work and rest—are they then aims in life which are positively contradictory? This must be our first inquiry; for while every one is ready with praise of work, pleasure in work does not always come with the praising. So long as the disinclination to work is so common an evil, indeed almost a disease of modern civilization, so long as every one as soon as possible endeavors to escape from the work which he thus theoretically praises, there is absolutely no hope for any bettering of our social condition. Indeed, if work and rest were contradictories, our social conditions would be wholly beyond redemption.

For every human heart longs for rest. The humblest and least intellectual know the need of it, and in its highest moods, the soul seeks relief from constant strain. Indeed, the imagination has found no better name for a future and happier existence than a state of eternal rest. If work, then, is necessary, and rest is the cessation of work, then the saying—“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”—is indeed a bitter curse and this earth is a “vale of tears.” In every generation there are but few who can on such terms be said to lead a worthy or a human life; and even these can do so only by dooming other human beings to the curse of work and by holding these others fast bound in its slavery. It was from this point of view that the ancient authors pictured the hopeless slavery of the many as the condition under which the few might become free citizens of a civilized State; and even in the nineteenth century, a considerable part of the population of one great nation, with Christian preachers, Bible in hand, directing them, maintained on the field of battle the proposition that one race should be from generation to generation condemned to be the slave of another. Culture, it is said, grows only under conditions of wealth, and wealth only through accumulation of capital, and capital only through accumulation of the work of those who are not justly paid; that is to say, through injustice.

Such are the conceptions of society which at once confront us as we approach our subject. The following pages are not, however, to be devoted to any profound consideration either of the relative or of the absolute truth of these conceptions. I suggest, at this point, only the obvious truth, that if, not some people, but all, would work and work faithfully, the “Social Question,” as it is called, would be forthwith solved; and I may add, that by no other means whatever is it likely to be solved. Faithful work, however, is not to be brought about by compulsion. Even if the physical means of universal compulsion were present, no fruitful work would come of it. It is the desire for work which must be kindled in man; and this brings us back again to consider the principles which may be applied to this desire.

The desire for work, we must, first of all, admit, cannot be attained by instruction; or even—as our daily experience sadly testifies—by mere example. It must be reached by reflection and experience; and experience thus reflected on will reveal to any serious inquirer the following facts. Rest, such as is desired, is not to be found in complete inactivity of mind or body, or in as little activity as possible. On the contrary, it is to be found only in well-adapted and well-ordered activity of both body and mind. The whole nature of man is created for activity, and Nature revenges herself bitterly on him who would rashly defy this law. Man is indeed driven out of the paradise of absolute rest, and God gives him the command to work, but with the work comes the consolation that work is essential to happiness.

True rest, therefore, issues from work. Intellectual rest occurs through the perception of fruitful progress in one’s work, and through the solving of one’s problems. Physical rest is found in those natural intermissions which are given by daily sleep and daily food, and the essential and restful pause of Sunday. Such a condition of continuous and wholesome activity, interrupted only by these natural pauses, is the happiest condition on earth, and no man should wish for himself any other outward happiness. Indeed, we may go a step farther and add that it does not very much matter what the nature of this activity may be. Genuine activity, which is not mere sport, has the property of becoming interesting as soon as a man becomes seriously absorbed in it. It is not the kind of activity which ensures happiness to us; it is the joy of action and attainment. The greatest unhappiness which one can experience is to have a life to live without a work to do, and to come to the end of life without its fruit of accomplished work.

It is, therefore, wholly justifiable to speak of the “right to work.” Indeed, it is the most primitive of all human rights. The unemployed are, we must admit, the most unfortunate of people. There are, however, quite as many of these, and perhaps more of them, in what we call the better classes than among what we call the working classes. The latter are driven to work by necessity, while the former, through their mistaken ways of education, their prejudices, and the imperious custom which in certain classes forbids genuine work, find themselves almost absolutely and by heredity condemned to this great unhappiness. Each year we see them turning their steps with spiritual weariness and ennui to the Swiss mountains and health-resorts, from which in vain they anticipate refreshment. Once, the summer was enough to give them at least a temporary restoration from their disease of idleness. Now, they have to add the winter also, and soon the fair valleys which they have converted into hospitals will be open all the year to a restless throng, ever seeking rest and never finding it, because it does not seek rest in work. “Six days shalt thou labor,” not less and not more,—with this prescription most of the nervous diseases of our time would be healed, except so far as they are an inherited curse from idle ancestors. With this prescription most of the physicians in sanitariums and insane asylums would lose their practice. Life is not given to man to enjoy, but, so far as may be, to use effectively. One who does not recognize this has already lost his spiritual health. Indeed, it is not possible for him to retain even his physical health as he might under conditions of natural activity and reasonable ways of living. The days of our age are threescore years and ten, and some are so strong that they come to fourscore years; yet though there be labor and sorrow in these years of work, still they have been precious: thus we read the ancient saying. Perhaps, indeed, this was its original meaning.

We do well, however, to add at once one limitation. Not all work is of equal value, and there is spurious work which is directed to fictitious ends, and work which is itself fictitious in its form. Much, for instance, of the sewing and embroidering done by cultivated women, much of the parading of soldiers, much of what is called art, like the useless drumming on the piano by persons with no musical sense, a considerable part of the sportsman’s life, and, not least, the time devoted to keeping one’s accounts,—all these are occupations of this fictitious nature. A sagacious and wide-awake person must look for something more satisfying than these. Here also is the reason why factory labor, and, in short, all mechanical occupation in which one does but a part of the work, gives meagre satisfaction, and why an artisan who completes his work, or an agricultural laborer, is, as a rule, much more contented than factory operatives, among whom the social discontent of the modern world first uttered itself. The factory workman sees little of the outcome of his work. It is the machine that works, and he is a part of it. He contributes to the making of one little wheel, but he never makes a whole clock, which might be to him his work of art and an achievement worthy of a man. Mechanical work like this fails to satisfy because it offends that natural consciousness of human worth which the humblest human being feels. On the other hand, the happiest workmen are those who can absolutely lose themselves in their work: the artist whose soul must be wholly occupied with his subject, if he hopes to grasp and reproduce it; the scholar who has no eye for anything beyond his special task. Indeed, the same thing is to be said of those people whom we call “one-idea-ed” and who have created their own little world within one narrow sphere. All these have at least the feeling—sometimes, no doubt, without adequate reason—that they are accomplishing real work for the world; a true, useful, necessary work, which is not mere play; and many such persons, by this continuous, strenuous, and sometimes even physically unhealthy activity, attain great old age, while idle and luxurious men and women of society, who are, perhaps, the least useful and least productive class of the modern world, must devote much of their time to the restoration of their health.