The exercises, accordingly, should be applied to the simplest movements of every-day life. They must not be taken as something separate from life, but as an essential part of it, as necessary to life as a smile is to the face.
VII
WORK AND PLAY
"Blessed," says Carlyle, "is the man who has found his work. Let him seek no other blessing."
A man out of work is one of the saddest of all sights. There possibly is a sadder one, the man who has lost the power to play. The child in whom the spirit of play has been crushed out is saddest of all.
Work is natural. One who does not love to work is greatly to be pitied. Fortunately, such people are rare. When a man finds his work and becomes actively occupied with it he is happy. He, however, often overdoes it and the difficulty is not to work but to play.
Usually it is thought that there is antagonism between work and play. On the contrary, they are more alike than most people think.
According to William Morris, "Art is the spirit of play put into our work." The union of work and play is absolutely necessary to human nature.
By work we generally mean something that comes as a duty, something which we are compelled to do or something which we must do from necessity in order to win a livelihood.