The Pleasures of Life

CHAPTER 10. LABOR AND REST.

“Through labor to rest, through combat to victory.”

——THOMAS A KEMPIS.

Among the troubles of life I do not, of course, reckon the necessity of labor.

Work indeed, and hard work, if only it is in moderation, is in itself a rich source of happiness. We all know how quickly time passes when we are well employed, while the moments hang heavily on the hands of the idle. Occupation drives away care and all the small troubles of life. The busy man has no time to brood or to fret.

“From toil he wins his spirits light,

From busy day the peaceful night;

Rich, from the very want of wealth,

In Heaven’s best treasures, peace and health.” [1]

This applies especially to the labor of the field and the workshop. Humble it may be, but if it does not dazzle with the promise of fame, it gives the satisfaction of duty fulfilled, and the inestimable blessing of health. As Emerson reminds those entering life, “The angels that live with them, and are weaving laurels of life for their youthful brows, are toil and truth and mutual faith.”

Labor was truly said by the ancients to be the price which the gods set upon everything worth having. We all admit, though we often forget, the marvellous power of perseverance, and yet all Nature, down to Bruce’s spider, is continually impressing this lesson on us.

Hard writing, it has been said, makes easy reading; Plato is said to have rewritten the first page of the Republic thirteen times; and Carlo Maratti, we are told, sketched the head of Antinoues three hundred times before he wrought it to his satisfaction.

It is better to wear out than to rust out, and there is “a dust which settles on the heart, as well as that which rests upon the ledge.” [2]

But though labor is good for man, it may be, and unfortunately often is, carried to excess. Many are wearily asking themselves

“Ah why should life all labor be?” [3]

There is a time for all things, says Solomon, a time to work and a time to play: we shall work all the better for reasonable change, and one reward of work is to secure leisure.

It is a good saying that where there’s a will there’s a way; but while it is all very well to wish, wishes must not take the place of work.

In whatever sphere his duty lies every man must rely mainly on himself. Others can help us, but we must make ourselves. No one else can see for us. To profit by our advantages we must learn to use for ourselves

“The dark lantern of the spirit which none can see by, but he who bears it.”

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that honest work is never thrown away. If we do not find the imaginary treasure, at any rate we enrich the vineyard.

“Work,” says Nature to man, “in every hour, paid or unpaid; see only that thou work, and thou canst not escape the reward: whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought: no matter how often defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.” [4]

Nor can any work, however persevering, or any success, however great, exhaust the prizes of life.

The most studious, the most successful, must recognize that there yet remain

“So much to do that is not e’en begun,

So much to hope for that we cannot see,

So much to win, so many things to be.” [5]

At the present time, though there may be some special drawbacks, still we come to our work with many advantages which were not enjoyed in olden times. We live in much greater security ourselves, and are less liable to have the fruits of our labor torn violently from us.

In olden times the difficulties of study were far greater than they are now. Books were expensive and cumbersome, in many cases moreover chained to the desks on which they were kept. The greatest scholars have often been very poor. Erasmus used to read by moonlight because he could not afford a candle, and “begged a penny, not for the love of charity, but for the love of learning.” [6]

Want of time is no excuse for idleness. “Our life,” says Jeremy Taylor, “is too short to serve the ambition of a haughty prince or a usurping rebel; too little time to purchase great wealth, to satisfy the pride of a vainglorious fool, to trample upon all the enemies of our just or unjust interest: but for the obtaining virtue, for the purchase of sobriety and modesty, for the actions of religion, God gives us time sufficient, if we make the outgoings of the morning and evening, that is our infancy and old age, to be taken into the computations of a man.”

Work is so much a necessity of existence, that it is less a question whether, than how, we shall work. An old proverb tells us that the Devil finds work for those who do not make it for themselves.

If we Englishmen have succeeded as a race, it has been due in no small measure to the fact that we have worked hard. Not only so, but we have induced the forces of Nature to work for us. “Steam,” says Emerson, “is almost an Englishman.”

The power of work has especially characterized our greatest men. Cecil said of Sir W. Raleigh that he “could toil terribly.”

We are most of us proud of belonging to the greatest Empire the world has ever seen. It may be said of us with especial truth in Wordsworth’s words that

“The world is too much with us; late and soon

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”

Yes, but what world? The world will be with us sure enough, and whether we please or not. But what sort of world it will be for us will depend greatly on ourselves.

We are told to pray not to be taken out of the world, but to be kept from the evil.

There are various ways of working. Quickness may be good, but haste is bad.

“Wie das Gestirn

Ohne Hast

Ohne Rast

Drehe sich Jeder

Um die eigne Last.” [7]

“Like a star, without haste, without rest, let every one fulfil his own hest.”

Newton is reported to have described as his mode of working that “I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait till the first dawnings open slowly by little and little into a full and clear light.”

“The secret of genius,” says Emerson, “is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life, in Arts, in Sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use.”

Lastly, work secures the rich reward of rest, we must rest to be able to work well, and work to be able to enjoy rest.

“We must no doubt beware that our rest become not the rest of stones, which so long as they are torrent-tossed and thunder-stricken maintain their majesty; but when the stream is silent, and the storm past, suffer the grass to cover them, and the lichen to feed on them, and are ploughed down into the dust.... The rest which is glorious is of the chamois couched breathless in its granite bed, not of the stalled ox over his fodder.” [8]

When we have done our best we may wait the result without anxiety.

“What hinders a man, who has clearly comprehended these things, from living with a light heart and bearing easily the reins; quietly expecting everything which can happen, and enduring that which has already happened? Would you have me to bear poverty? Come and you will know what poverty is when it has found one who can act well the part of a poor man. Would you have me to possess power? Let me have the power, and also the trouble of it. Well, banishment? Wherever I shall go, there it will be well with me.” [9]

The Buddhists believe in many forms of future punishment; but the highest reward of virtue is Nirvana–the final and eternal rest.

Very touching is the appeal of Ashmanezer to be left in peace, which was engraved on his Sarcophagus at Sidon,–now in Paris.

“In the month of Bul, the fourteenth year of my reign, I, King Ashmanezer, King of the Sidonians, son of King Tabuith, King of the Sidonians, spake, saying: ’I have been stolen away before my time–a son of the flood of days. The whilom great is dumb; the son of gods is dead. And I rest in this grave, even in this tomb, in the place which I have built. My adjuration to all the Ruling Powers and all men: Let no one open this resting-place, nor search for treasure, for there is no treasure with us; and let him not bear away the couch of my rest, and not trouble us in this resting-place by disturbing the couch of my slumbers.... For all men who should open the tomb of my rest, or any man who should carry away the couch of my rest, or any one who trouble me on this couch: unto them there shall be no rest with the departed: they shall not be buried in a grave, and there shall be to them neither son nor seed.... There shall be to them neither root below nor fruit above, nor honor among the living under the sun.’” [10]

The idle man does not know what it is to rest. Hard work, moreover, tends not only to give us rest for the body, but, what is even more important, peace to the mind. If we have done our best to do, and to be, we can rest in peace.

“En la sua voluntade e nostra pace.” [11] In His will is our peace; and in such peace the mind will find its truest delight, for

“When care sleeps, the soul wakes.”

In youth, as is right enough, the idea of exertion, and of struggles, is inspiriting and delightful; but as years advance the hope and prospect of peace and of rest gain ground gradually, and

“When the last dawns are fallen on gray,

And all life’s toils and ease complete,

They know who work, not they who play,

If rest is sweet.” [12]

[1] Gray.

[2] Jefferies.

[3] Tennyson.

[4] Emerson.

[5] Morris.

[6] Coleridge.

[7] Goethe.

[8] Ruskin.

[9] Epictetus.

[10] From Sir M. S. Grant Duff’s A Winter in Syria.

[11] Dante.

[12] Symonds.