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 withsuspicion, as if there must be something wrong about him. If a man iscontent to deal vigorously with affairs, and leave art, religion, andscience to the enjoyment or refreshment or enlightenment of others, he isaccepted as strong, sounds and wise; but let him add to practical sagacitya love of poetry and some skill in the practice of it; let him be not onlyhonest and trustworthy, but genuinely religious; let him be not onlykeenly observant and exact in his estimate of trade influences andmovements, but devoted to the study of some science, and there goes abroadthe impression that he is superficial. It is written, apparently, in themodern, and especially in the American, consciousness, that a man can dobut one thing well; if he attempts more than one thing, he betrays theweakness of versatility. If this view of life is sound, man is born toimperfect development and must not struggle with fate. He may have naturalaptitudes of many kinds; he may have a passionate desire to try three orfour different instruments; he may have a force of vitality which is equalto the demands of several vocations or avocations; but he must disregardthe most powerful impulses of his nature; he must select one tool, andwith that tool he must do all the work appointed to him.
If he is a man of business, he must turn a deaf ear to the voices of art;if he writes prose, he must not permit himself the delight of writingverse; if he uses the pen, he must not use the voice. If he ventures toemploy two languages for his thought, to pour his energy into twochannels, the awful judgment of superficiality falls on him like a decreeof fate.
So fixed has become the habit of confusing the use of manifold gifts withmere dexterity that men of quality and power often question the promptingswhich impel them to use different or diverse forms of expression; as if aman were born to use only one limb and enjoy only one resource in thismany-sided universe!
Specialisation has been carried so far that it has become an organisedtyranny through the curiously perverted view of life which it hasdeveloped in some minds. A man is permitt