Work and play; or, Literary varieties

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I. ¥ork And Play.*

Mr. President, and Brethren of the Society, —

There are many subjects or truths, and sometimes those of the greatest moment, whicli can not well be formally announced. They require to be offered rather by suggestion. They will enter the mind and be in it only as they are of it, generated by the fertile activity of a meditative spirit. This is frequently true even in matters of scientific discovery, where also it is often remarked, that the best suggestives are the humblest instances ; such as the mind can play itself upon with the greatest facility, because it is not occupied by their magnitude or oppressed by their gTandeur. Some lamp is seen swinging on its chain, some apple Mling from the tree, and then, perchance, the thoughtful looker-on, taking the hint that nature gives, will be able also to look in ; thus to uncover truths not measured by their instances, — laws of the universe.

More true is this, if possible, of moral subjects ; for there are many of these which the soul will not suffer to be thrust upon her. She must ask for them, catch

* Delivered as an Oration before the Society of tlie Phi Beta Kappa, in the University of Cambridge. August 24, 1848.

the note of them in some humble suggestive, entertain them thoughtfully, take them into her feeling, and there, encouraging, as it were, their modesty, tempt them to speak. So especially it is with the subject in which I desire to engage you on the present occasion. No formal announcement will probably do more for it, than just to thrust it on your disrespect.

Let me call to my aid, then, some thoughtful spirit in my audience ; not a poet, of necessity, or a man of genius, but a man of large meditation, one who is accustomed to observe, and, by virtue of the warm affinities of a living heart, to draw out the meanings that are hid so often in the humblest things. Eeturning into the bosom of his family, in some interval of care and labor, he shall come upon the very unclassic and certainly unimposing scene, — his children and a kitten playing on the floor together; and just there, possibly, shall meet him suesrestions more fresh, and thousrhts of higher reach concerning himself and his race, than the announcement of a new-discovered planet, or the revolution of an empire would incite. He surveys, with a meditative feeling, this beautiful scene of muscular play, — the unconscious activity, the exuberant life, the spirit of glee, — and there rises in his heart the conception, that possibly he is here to see the prophecy or symbol of another and higher kind of play, which is the noblest exercise and last end of man himself. Worn by the toils of years, perceiving, with a sigh, that the unconscious joy of motion here displayed is spent

WORK AND FLAT. 11

ia himself, and that now he is effectually tamed to the doom of a working creature, he may yet discover, in the lively sympathy with play that bathes his inward feeling, that his soul is playing now, — enjoying, without the motions, all it could do in them ; manifold more than it could, if he were down upon the floor himself, in the unconscious activity and lively frolic of childhood. Saddened he may be to note how time and work have changed his spirit and dried away the playful springs of animal life in his being ; yet he will find, or ought, a joy playing internally over the face of his working nature, which is fuller and richer as it is more tranquil ; which is to the other as fulfillment to prophecy, and is, in fact, the prophecy of a better and far more glorious fulfillment still.

Having struck, in this manner, the great world-problem of WORK AND PLAY, his thoughts kindle under the theme and he pursues it. The living races are seen, at a glance, to be offering in their history, everywhere, a faithful type of his own. They show him what he himself is doing and preparing, — all that he finds in the manifold experience of his own higher life. They have, all, their gambols, all, their sober cares and labors. The lambs are sporting on the green knoll ; the anxious dams are bleating to recall them to their side. The citizen beaver is building his house by a laborious carpentry ; the squirrel is lifting his sail to the wind on the swinging top of the tree. In the music of the morn.- iug, lie hears the birds playing with their voicos, and.

12 WORK AND PLAT.

wlien the day is up, sees them sailing round in circles on the upper air, as skaters on a lake, folding their wings, dropping and rebounding, as if to see wha^ sport they can make of the solemn laws that hold the upper and lower worlds together. And yet these play-children of the air he sees again descending to be carriers and drudges ; fluttering and screaming anxiously about their nest, and confessing by that sign that not even wings can bear them clear of the stern doom of work. Or passing to some quiet shade, meditating still on this careworn life, playing still internally with ideal fancies and desires unrealized, there returns upon him there, in the manifold and spontaneous mimicry of nature, a living show of all that is transpiring in his own bosom; in every flower, some bee humming over his laborious chemistry and loading his body with the fruits of his toil ; in the slant sunbeam, populous nations of motes quivering with animated joy, and catching, as in play, at the golden particles of the light with their tiny fingers. Work and play, in short, are the universal ordinance of God for the living races ; in which they symbolize the fortune and interpret the errand of man. iS"o creature lives that must not work and may not play.

Returning now to himself and to man, and meditating yet more deeply, as he is thus prepared to do, on work and play, and play and work, as blended in the compound of our human life ; asking again what is work and what is play, what are the relations of one to the other, and which is the final end of all, he discovers, in what he was observing round him, a sublimity of im-

WOBK AND PLAY. 13

port, a solemnity even, that is deep as the shadow of eternity.

To proceed intelligently with our subject, we need, first of all, to resolve or set forth the precise philosophic distinction between work and play ; for upon this distinction all our illustrations will depend. That, in practical life, we have any hesitancy in making the distinction, I by no means intimate. At least, there are many youths in the universities, not specially advanced in philosophy, who. are able to make their election with the greatest facility, be the distinction itself clear or not. But as I propose, on the present occasion, to speak of the state of play in a manner that involves a philosophic extension of the idea, I am required to distinguish the idea by a careful analysis.

You will discover, at once, that work and play, taken as modes of mere outward, muscular activity, can not be distinguished. There is motion in both, there is an exercise of force in both, both are under the will as acting on the muscular system ; so that, taken outwardly, they both fall into the same category. Indeed, they can not be discriminated till we pass within, to view them metaphysically, considering their springs of action, their impulse, aim, and object.

Here the distinction becomes evident at once ; namely, that work is activity for an end ; play, activity as an end. One prepares the fund or resources of enjoyment, the other is enjoyment itself Thus, when a man goes into agriculture, trade, or the shop, he consents to

14 WORK AND PLlY.

undergo a certain expenditure of care and labor, wliicli is only a form of painstaking riglitly named, in order to obtain some ulterior good wliicli is to be liis reward. But when the child goes to his play, it is no painstaking, no means to an end ; it is itself rather both end and joy. Accordingly, it is a part of the distinction I state, that work suffers a feeling of aversion, and play excludes aversion. For the moment any play becomes wearisome or distasteful, then it is work ; an activity that is kept up, not as being its own joy^ but for some ulterior end, or under some kind of constraint.

Another form of the distinction is made out, and one that is more accurately adapted to philosophic uses, by saying that work is done by a conscious effort of will, and that play is impulsive, having its spring in some inspiration, or some exuberant fund of life back of the will. So that one is something which we require of ourselves, the other something that we must control ourselves not to do. We work because we must, because prudence impels. We play because we have in us a fund of life that wants to expend itself

But man is not a muscular creature only; he does not consist of mere bones and integuments. He is a creature also of thought, feeling, intelligence, and character. And what we see of him in the muscular life he is, or should be, in the higher domain of spirit. Kegarding the child as a creature full of life and spontaneous motion, thus and therefore a playing creature, we are to see in him, not the measure, but the sign, of that which shall be. For as the race began with an outward paradise, which, being lost, may yet offer the type of a higher paradise to be gained, so each life begins with muscular play, that, passing through the hard struggles of work, it may carry its ideal with it, and emerge, at last, into a state of inspired liberty and spontaneous beauty. In short, we are to conceive that the highest and complete state of man, that which his nature endeavors after and in which only it fulfills its sublime instinct, is the state of play.

In this view, study is to be regarded as work, until the disciple gets beyond voluntary attention, application constrained by prudence, rivalry, ambitious preparations for life, and begins to dwell in beauty and truth as inspirations. For then he passes into another and more perfect kind of activity, an activity that is spontaneous or impulsive, and is to itself both reward and end.

And this kind of activity, call it enthusiastic or inspired, or by whatever name, we shall discover is commonly regarded as a higher and nobler — ^in fact the only perfect acti\T.ty conceivable. In the article of memory, for example, we regard a spontaneous memory, that which mirrors all the past before us without any effort of recollection, as the only perfect memory. But a reflective memory, supported by mnemonic contrivances, and assisted by recollective efforts, is so far in the nature of work ; and the necessity of work argues the imperfection of the instrument. Our idea of a perfect or complete memory is, that it reports the past spontaneously, or in play.

16 ttork: and play.

When we ascend to the higher modes of action^ such as involve the inventive exercises of reason, fancy, imagination, or the sentimental exercises of feeling, passion, humor, we find that we are even offended by the signs of work ; or, if not offended, we are unsatisfied, jnst in proportion to the evidence of work or effort obtruded on our attention. For work, we allow, argues defect or insufficiency, and to say that the man lahors is the same as to say that he fails. Xothing is sufficient or great, nothing fires or exalts us, but to feel the divine energy and the inspiring liberty of play.

Then, again, as we ascend still higher, to modes of activity that are moral and religious, we become quite intolerant of anv thinsr in the nature of work. To be good or true, for the sake of some ulterior end, is the same as to value goodness and truth second to that end; which is the same as to have no sense of either. So, if some benefit or gift is bestowed upon us by constraint, and not from any compassion for our lot or interest in our welfare, we deem the gift itself an insult, and call the charity hvpocrisy. In like manner purity, forced by self-restraint or maintained by mere prudence, argues impurity. True purity, that which answers the perfect ideal, is spontaneous; unfolding its artless, unaftected spotlessness in the natural freedom of a flower. It could not defile itself without an effort. Nay, it is supposable that perfect purity could not even blush. In like manner, self-denial is never a complete virtue till it becomes a kind of self-indulgence. It must bathe itself in the fountains of a self-oblivious charity. Forgetting feme and reward, rising above the constraints of prudence, and losing tlie nature of work, it must become tlie spontaneous impulse of our being, a joyous overflow of the soul's liberty.

It follows, in this view, that work is in its very nature temporary, or should be, having for its end the realization of a state of play. Passing through activity for an end, we are to come into activity as an end ; beyond which, of course, there is nothing higher. As we rest in the one, we are to cease from the other. And might we not have said as much beforehand? Who that considers the ethereal nature of a soul can conceive that the doom of work is any thing more than a temporary expedient, introduced or suffered to perfect our discipline? To imagine a human creature dragged along, or dragging himslf along, under the perpetual friction of work, never to ascend above it ; a creature in Grod's image, aching for God's liberty, beating ever vainly and with crippled wings, that he may lift himself into some freer, more congenial element — ^this, I say, were no better than to quite despair of man. Nay, it were to confess that all which is most akin to God in his human instincts is only semblance without reality. Do we not all find within us some dim ideal, at least, of a state unrealized, where action is its own impulse; where the struggles of birth are over, and the friction of interest and care is no longer felt ; where all that is best and highest is freest, and joyous because it is free ; where to be is to be great, because the inspiration of the soul is full, and to do is easy as to conceive ; where ac-

2^ tion is itself sublime, because it is the play of ease and the equilibrium of rest ?

Let no one imagine that I derogate thus from the dignity of work. Kather do I dignify it the more, that I represent it as the preparative to a state so exalted. Possibly our modern writers, in their zeal to dignify work, have sometimes excluded or omitted the notice of this, which is its only dignity. Indeed, some of our poets seem to have worked harder to change the world's work into poetry, than the world need have done to finish it in prose. Work is transitional, having its good in its end. The design is, that, by a fixed law of nature, it shall pass into play. This is its proper honor and joy.

Let us notice, then, for a moment, in what manner work becomes the preparative or necessary condition of play. Observe the child as a playing creature in the muscular life. Full of animated glee, unable to contain the brimming life that is in him, he must needs expend himself in action. He leaps about the ground, climbs into the trees, screams among his fellows in notes that tingle on the air ; not because he will, or has any ulterior end, but because the play-fund is in him, and he must. But we do not always note that a period of trial answering to work was necessary to prepare this liberty of motion ; that the child had first to practice eye, voice, ear, hand, foot, putting forth carefully by little and little, and gradually getting possession of the bodily machinery that now plays so nimbly. Every muscle in his body had, in fact, to be graduated in the little university of motion, before he was ready for play. He had many falls to suffer, in order to get the balance of his members ; much crying to do, to get possession of his voice ; and this, I suppose, must be taken for work. By the same kind of necessity is mental and spiritual work necessary to the play-state of the soul. The man must go into experiment, through experiment or study get possession of his soul, so that he can turn every faculty whithersoever he will, and have the whole internal machinery in the exactest play. I speak not here of the discipline merely of schools and colleges, but, as much, of the struggles we encounter and the scenes through which we pass in this great school of life — its objects, relations, and duties; its sturdy trials, fears, falls, crosses ; its works, and wars, and woes ; all discovering to us, and thus helping us to possess, ourselves. We get the helm thus of our thoughts, tempers, passions, aspirations, and wants. And if a vigorous training in the school be added, our capacities of taste, fancy, observation, and reason are also discovered, and limbered for the free activity of spiritual play.

It will also be seen that this free state of man involves a moral experience, and possibly somewhat of a bad or selfish experience, whereby his choices may be settled in the permanent love of goodness. For this, in fact, is the greatness of all greatness, that it is of the man himself — the measure of his own free aims and aspirations. And if so much depends on the soul's choices-, it needs to be made wise that it may choose wisely, and possibly to choose unwisely in order that it may be wise. Thus it descends into selfishness and evil, which are only forms of work, there to learn the wisdom of goodness in the contrasts of distaste, weariness, and hunger. And this, I suppose, is the solution of the various travail that is given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith. Some men work to get money ; others, quite as hard to spend it. Some men work to get reputation ; others, who have it by accident, work harder in seeing it go by a law. There is a laborious ease, and even a laborious idleness. What we call pleasure is commonly but another name for work; a strenuous joy, a laboriously prepared and therefore wearisome happiness. We all go to our self-serving and work, till at last we learn, it may be, to cease from ourselves, and then — we play.

But there is yet another office served by work, without which the state of play is never complete. The man must find inspiring forces, objects that exalt the feeling, ideals to embrace that will beget a spontaneous greatness in him. But he is ignorant, at first, even of facts ; and how shall he find his ideals, unless they are discovered in the practical throes of experience, labor, and study ? How shall he turn himself to things that shine with their own brightness, ideal objects born of the soul's own thought, and luminous by a divine quality hid in themselves, unless he has sweltered for a time in self-exercise and the dust of labor ? Then, at last, he conceives and embraces in his love sublimity, beauty, honor, truth, charity, God ; and the inspiration he feels imparts to him somewhat of a higher nature, spontaneously good, wise, great,— joyous of necessity.

Thus it is that work prepares the state of play. Passing over now to this latter, observe the intense longing of the race for some such higher and freer state of being. They call it by no name. Probably most of them have but dimly conceived what they are after. The more evident will it be that they are after this, when we find them covering over the whole ground of life, and filling up the contents of history, with their counterfeits or misconceived attempts. If the hidden fire is seen bursting up on every side, to vent itself in flame, we may certainly know that the ground is full.

Let it not surprise you, if I name, as a first illustration here, the general devotion of our race to money. This passion for money is allowed to be a sordid passion, one that is rankest in the least generous and most selfish of mankind ; and yet a conviction has always been felt, that it must have its heat in the most central fires and divinest affinities of our nature. Thus the poet calls it the auri sacra fames — sacra^ as being a curse, and that in the divine life of the race. Childhood being passed, and the play-fund of motion so far spent that running on foot no longer appears to be the joy it was, the older child, now called a man, fancies that it will make him happy to ride ! Or he imagines, which is much the same, some loftier state of being — call it rest, retirement, competence, independence — no matter by what name, only be it a condition of use, ease, liberty, and pure enjoyment. And so we find the whole race at work to get rid of work : drudging themselves to-day, in the hope of play to-morrow. This is that sacra fames J which, misconceiving its own unutterable longings after spiritual play, proposes to itself the dull felicity of cessation, and drives the world to madness in pursuit of a counterfeit, which it is work to obtain, work also to keep, and yet harder work oftentimes to enjoy. Here, too, is the secret of that profound passion for the drama, which has been so conspicuous in the cultivated nations. We love to see life in its feeling and activity, separated from its labors and historic results. Could we see all human changes transpire poetically or creatively, that is, in play, letting our soul play with them as they pass, then it were only poetry to live. Then to admire, love, laugh ; then to abhor, pity, weep, — all were alike grateful to us ; for the view of suffering separated from all reality, save what it has to feeling, only yields a painful joy, which is the deeper joy because of the pain. Hence the written drama, off'ering to view in its impersonations a life one side of life, a life in which all the actings appear without the ends and simply as in play, becomes to the cultivated reader a spring of the intensest and most captivating spiritual incitement. He beholds the creative genius of a man playing out impersonated groups and societies of men, clothing each with life, passion, individuality, and character, by the fertile activity of his own inspired feeling. Meantime the writer himself is hidden, and can not even suggest his existence. Hence egotism, wliicli also is a form of work, tlie dullest, most insipid, least inspiring of all kinds of endeavor, is nowhere allowed to obtrude itself. The reader himself, too, has no ends to think of or to fear, —nothing to do, but to play the characters into his feeling as creatures existing for his sake. In this view, the drama, as a product of genius, is, within a certain narrow limit, the realization of play.

But far less effectively, or more faintly, when it is acted. Then the counterfeit, as it is more remote, is more feeble. In the reading, we invent our own sceneries, clothe into form and expression each one of the characters, and play out our own liberty in them as freely, and sometimes as divinely, as they. Whatever reader, therefore, has a soul of true life and fire within him, finds all expectation balked, when he becomes an auditor and spectator. The scenery is tawdry and flat ; the characters, definitely measured, have lost their infinity, so to speak, and thus their freedom; and what before was play descends to nothing better or more inspired than work. It is called going to the play^ but it should rather be called going to the work ; that is, to see a play worked, (yes, an opera ! that is it) — men and women inspired through their memory, and acting their inspirations by rote ; panting into love, pumping at the fountains of grief, whipping out the passions into fury, and dying to fulfill the contract of the evening, by a forced holding of the breath. And yet this feeble counterfeit of play, which some of us would call only ^'very tragical mirth," has a power to the multitude. The^?

are moved, thrilled it may be, with a strange delight. It is as if a something in their nature, higher than they themselves know, were quickened into power, — namely, that divine instinct of play, in which the summit of our nature is most clearly revealed.

In like manner, the passion of our race for war, and the eager admiration yielded to warlike exploits, are resolvable principally into the same fundamental cause. Mere ends and uses do not satisfy us. "We must get above prudence and economy, into something that partakes of inspiration, be the cost what it may. Hence war, another and yet more magnificent counterfeit of play. Thus there is a great and lofty virtue that we call cour-age^ taking our name from the heart. It is the greatness of a great heart ; the repose and confidence of a man whose soul is rested in truth and principle. Such a man has no ends ulterior to his duty, duty itself is his end. He is in it therefore as in play, lives it as an inspiration. Lifted thus out of mere prudence and contrivance, he is also lifted above fear. Life to him is the outgoing of his great heart, — heartage^ action from the heart. And because he now can die, without being shaken or perturbed by any of the dastardly feelings that belong to self-seeking and work, because he partakes of the impassibility of his principles, we call him a hero, regarding him as a kind of god — a man who has gone up into the sphere of the divine.

Then, since courage is a joy so high, a virtue of so great majest}^, what could happen but that many will covet both the internal exaltation and the outward repute of it? Thus comes bravery, which is the counterfeit, or mock virtue. Courage is of the heart, as we have said ; bravery is of the will. One is the spontaneous joy and re^DOse of a trul}' great soul; the other, bravery, is after an end ulterior to itself, and in that view, is but a forni of work, — about the hardest work, too, I flmcy, that some men imdertake. TThat can be harder, in fact, than to act a great heart, when one has nothino' but a will wherewith to do it ?

Thus vou will see that conrao'e is above dano-er; bravery in it, doing battle on a level with it. One is secure and tranquil, the other suppresses agitation or conceals it. A right mind fortifies one, shame stimulates the other. Faith is the nerve of one, risk the plague and tremor of the other. For if I may tell you just here a very important secret, there be many that are called heroes who are vet without courao'e. They brave danger by their will, when their heart trembles. They make up in violence what they want in tranquillitv, and drown the tumult of their fears in the rag-e of their passions. Enter the heart and you shall find, too often, a dastard spirit lurking in your hero. Call him still a brave man, if vou will, onlv remember that he lacks courage.

Xo, the true hero is the great, wise man of duty ; he whose soul is armed by truth and supported by the smile of God ; he who meets life's perils with a cautious but tranquil spirit, gathers strength by facing its storms, and dies, if he is called to die, as a Christian

26 WORK A XI) PLAY.

victor at the post of dl^t3^ And if we must have heroes, and wars wherein to make them, there is no so brilliant war as a war with wrong, no hero so fit to be sung as he who has gained the bloodless victory of truth and mercy.

But if bravery be not the same as courage, still it is a very imposing and plausible couiiterfeit. The man himself is told, after the occasion is passed, how heroically he bore himself, and when once his nerves have become tranquillized, he begins even to believe it. And since we can not stay content in the dull, uninspired world of economy and work, we are as ready to see a hero as he to be one. Nay, we must have our heroes, as I just said, and we are ready to harness ourselves, by the million, to any man who will let us fight him out the name. Thus we find out occasions for war — wrongs to be redressed, revenges to be taken, such as we may feign inspiration and play the great heart under. We collect armies, and dress up leaders in gold and high colors, meaning, by the brave look, to inspire some notion of a hero beforehand. Then we set the men in phalanxes and squadrons, where the personality itself is taken away, and a vast impersonal person called an army, a magnanimous aiid brave monster, is all that remains. The masses of fierce color, the glitter of steel, the dancing plumes, the waving flags, the deep throb of the music lifting every foot — under these the living acres of men, possessed by the one thought of playing brave to-day, are rolled on to battle. Thunder, fire, dust, blood, groans— what of these? nobody thinks of these, for nobody dares to think till the day is over, and then the world rejoices to behold a new batch of heroes !