Practice Book, Leland Powers School Part 7

WORK.

1. What is wise work, and what is foolish work? What the difference between sense and nonsense, in daily occupation? There are three tests of wise work:--that it must be honest, useful and cheerful.

It is _Honest_. I hardly know anything more strange than that you recognize honesty in play, and do not in work. In your lightest games, you have always some one to see what you call "fair-play." In boxing, you must hit fair; in racing, start fair. Your English watchword is "fair-_play_," your English hatred, "foul-_play_." Did it never strike you that you wanted another watchword also, "fair-_work_," and another and bitterer hatred,--"foul-_work_"?

2. Then wise work is _Useful_. No man minds, or ought to mind, its being hard, if only it comes to something; but when it is hard and comes to nothing, when all our bees' business turns to spiders', and for honey-comb we have only resultant cobweb, blown away by the next breeze,--that is the cruel thing for the worker. Yet do we ever ask ourselves, personally, or even nationally, whether our work is coming to anything or not?

3. Then wise work is _Cheerful_, as a child's work is. Everybody in this room has been taught to pray daily, "Thy Kingdom come." Now if we hear a man swearing in the streets we think it very wrong, and say he "takes G.o.d's name in vain." But there's a twenty times worse way of taking His name in vain than that. It is to _ask G.o.d for what we don't want_. If you don't want a thing don't ask for it: such asking is the worst mockery of your King you can insult Him with. If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you must work for it. And, to work for it, you must know what it is.

4. Observe, it is a Kingdom that is to come to us; we are not to go to it.

Also it is not to come all at once, but quietly; n.o.body knows how. "The Kingdom of G.o.d cometh not with observation." Also, it is not to come outside of us, but in our hearts: "The Kingdom of G.o.d is within you." Now if we want to work for this Kingdom, and to bring it, and to enter into it, there's one curious condition to be first accepted. We must enter into it as children, or not at all; "Whosoever will not receive it as a little child shall not enter therein." And again, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, _for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven_."

5. Of _such_, observe. Not of children themselves, but of such as children. It is the _character_ of children we want and must gain. It is modest, faithful, loving, and because of all these characters it is cheerful. Putting its trust in its father, it is careful for nothing--being full of love to every creature, it is happy always, whether in its play or in its duty. Well, that's the great worker's character also. Taking no thought for the morrow; taking thought only for the duty of the day; knowing indeed what labor is, but not what sorrow is; and always ready for play--beautiful play.

JOHN RUSKIN.

EXTRACT FROM "THE RING AND THE BOOK."

Our human speech is naught, Our human testimony false, our fame And human estimation words and wind.

Why take the artistic way to prove so much?

Because, it is the glory and good of Art, That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least.

How look a brother in the face and say "Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou, yet art blind, Thine ears are stuffed and stopped, despite their length, And, oh, the foolishness thou countest faith!"

Say this as silvery as tongue can troll-- The anger of the man may be endured, The shrug, the disappointed eyes of him Are not so bad to bear--but here's the plague, That all this trouble comes of telling truth, Which truth, by when it reaches him, looks false, Seems to be just the thing it would supplant, Nor recognizable by whom it left; While falsehood would have done the work of truth.

But Art,--wherein man nowise speaks to men, Only to mankind,--Art may tell a truth Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought, Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word.

So may you paint your picture, twice show truth, Beyond mere imagery on the wall,-- So, note by note, bring music from your mind, Deeper than ever the Adante dived,-- So write a book shall mean, beyond the facts, Suffice the eye, and save the soul besides.

SELF-RELIANCE.

1. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius.

Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they all set at naught books and tradition, and spoke not what men but what _they_ thought.

2. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the l.u.s.tre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

3. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side.

Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

4. There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nouris.h.i.+ng corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

5. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray.

6. We but half express ourselves, and we are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but G.o.d will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

7. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.

8. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

RHODORA.

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THIS FLOWER?

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook.

The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask, I never knew: But in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

EACH AND ALL.

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, Of thee from the hill-top looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The s.e.xton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.

All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough; I brought him home, in his nest, at even; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky;-- He sang to my ear,--they sang to my eye.

The delicate sh.e.l.l lay on the sh.o.r.e; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me.

I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the sh.o.r.e With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

The lover watched his graceful maid, As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, Nor knew her beauty's best attire Was woven still by the snow-white choir.

At last she came to his hermitage, Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;-- The gay enchantment was undone; A gentle wife, but fairy none.

Then I said, "I covet truth; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth:"-- As I spoke, beneath my feet The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, Running over the club-moss burrs; I inhaled the violet's breath; Around me stood the oaks and firs; Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity; Again I saw, again I heard, The rolling river, the morning bird;-- Beauty through my senses stole; I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON