6
UNIVERSITY COURIER.
be gained. This is our working material. Character must be formed, mind trained, muscles made obedient. This is our working skill. As every well performed deed gives added skill, and as that is an increased preparation for the next task, it follows that from birth to death there is continuous preparation. All work, being the result of vital energy must be carried forward in the same way. Hence, in method, all work is one and the same. The law of your work is the law of mine.
Myriads of duties will suggest themselves to you. You cannot fulfill all. Our strength concentrated on one thing may accomplish that; if diffused over many it will accomplish nothing. Since we do but one thing at a time, choose but one duty. Trust mankind for the others. Else your anxious care causes worry, and worry kills more men than work. In to-day's work, as in our lifework, conscience is the best judge. Choose the nearest, for duty like charity, begins at home. To have true success, we must do the simple, commonplace, conscience-ordered work which we are so apt to overlook in our striving for fame. The approbation of men is worth endeavor. But the greatest men are those who have been most trustworthy in the day of small things.
If there should be a snow storm to-night, each man would sweep the snow from the walk in front of his door,—this would be for himself; and then from the side walk,—that would be for the world. He is not to neglect these nearer tasks, that he may strive with the crowd to be the one who shall sweep before the temple of fame. The snow-falls and dust-drifts before his door are his nearest duty, and if he works well at these, his humble residence will become at length a temple of enduring fame.
Our task must be done to-day if ever, for to-morrow there will be new duties, and this must then remain undone. We are not to spend our lives in preparation only. There must be fruits. After all, the start is the hardest. We are in a state of momentum; if momentum of idleness, it will be greater to-morrow and harder to overcome; if momentum of progress, we shall progress faster to-morrow for to-day's work.
The effects of some tasks seem trivial, ephemeral. Hence, it is reasoned, they may be slighted. Just here is the great human fallacy. No action dies, nor can die. Our work is eternal. Its effects outlast the universe, shaping the souls of men. We cannot tell which act is least important, therefore we are to do each accurately, hastening slowly, carefully.
Slighted work is the cause of untold misery. The carelessly formed plan fails of completion. The carelessly trained workman fails of success. The half-stated fact is a hydra-headed lie. The unfinished work once out of our hands cannot be recalled. It is like a locomotive without an engineer,—a wild engine, rushing destructively onward. The effect on our character of weakly-resisted temptations to shirk our tasks is worse yet, for Engineer conscience is manacled by habit, and the result is wrecked human souls. Better not attempt a task than slight it.
Do you dislike the drudgery? There need be no
Are we to be human wrecks? Shall we not do the smallest unseen deed and the most famous one, as well and as carefully as our time will allow? Do you doubt the utility of your work? Doubt can only be removed by action. Careful action requires faith, and forms a habit of thorough work and a liking for it.
drudgery. In a London museum hangs a beautiful painting. The sea and sky and outlines are true to nature. The finish is of quality, not quantity. The picture is powerfully, wonderfully real. An awe-stricken admirer once asked the painter for his methods. Turner replied that it was nine-tenths drudgery. But what was the other tenth? It was Turner's heart in his work, and this changed the nine-tenths of drudgery to the keenest pleasure. Work, with your heart in it, is ennobling. All other is servile drudgery, ignoble, degrading.
Are you weak? Action, will power, is your weapon. A man's strength is in his will, not in his muscles. You remember the story of Hercules' first task, his struggle with the Nemean lion. Hercules fought the lion, conquered it, and thereafter used its hide for a shield. Your nearest ugly duty is your Nemean lion. Meet it, conquer it, and thereafter you can use that victory for armor.
It is easy to be superficial, to offer professions for deeds, words for ideas, to shirk tasks and cover the defects of our work with the whitewash of deceit, which, sooner or later, scales off, exposing our trickery and worthlessness. You will perfect your work at your next leisure. Twice-done work is botched work. There are few second chances. Success consists in fulfilling the first opportunity.
If the truth could not be seen, and the belief that mankind is growing better could not be entertained, it would even then be the duty of every one to retard a terrible movement toward misery, and if careful work will cause progression, it will also retard retrogression. It seems to me that to lose the hope that mankind is growing better, to lose faith in humanity, is the greatest evil that can befall a man. If the world is growing worse, he is growing worse. To lose faith in humanity is to lose faith in one's self. In our small share of the great human struggle for pure hearts and honest deeds, you and I have need of this hope. Already, through some thousands of years, humanity, thus cheered, has been gaining victory after victory over wrong, and wretchedness has given way to happiness; until to-day this world is a joyous world, worth living in to one who has faith in the final victory. It is for us to help win that victory.
With our earnest toil there must be earnest pleasure and earnest rest. We are to enjoy all the animal happiness that the beaver enjoys, and the utmost of human pleasure besides. The choicest food, the richest clothing, the best shelter, the truest beauty, the noblest deeds are ours if we work for them, carefully.
But in these things alone man has no lasting pleasure. He may never reach the perfection which would satisfy him, and even that would be ephemeral, dying with the universe. Man is eternal. Hence his greatest pleasure is in striving to perfect himself. He can do this only by being true to himself, doing honest work at the command of his conscience, and thus forming character, the immortal will, the soul. A noble character is perfect faith in the eternal wisdom of things. This faith, through its works, will remove the mountain of human misery, not in an instant nor at one resolve, but little by little, blow upon blow, shovelful by shovelful, nearest duty and next duty, until there is a broad level road to the noblest manhood.
I wish that we might stamp indelibly on our memories the fact that careful work is the only honest work,that truth is the only safe ground, that all which our hands