The Larger Education

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Title:     The Larger Education
Author: Hamilton Wright Mabie [More Titles by Mabie]

The old idea that the necessity of working was imposed upon men as a punishment is responsible, in large measure, for the radical misunderstanding of the function and uses of work which has so widely prevailed. In the childhood of the world a garden for innocence to play in secured the consummation of all deep human longings for happiness; but there is a higher state than innocence: there is the state to which men attain through knowledge and trial. Knowledge involves great perils, but it is better than innocuous ignorance; virtue involves grave dangers, but it is nobler than innocence. Character cannot be secured if choice between higher and lower aims is denied; and without character the world would be meaningless. There can be no unfolding of character without growth, and growth is inconceivable without the aid of work. The process of self- expression through action is wrought, therefore, into the very structure of man's life; it is not a penalty, but a spiritual opportunity of the highest order. It is the most comprehensive educational process to which men are subjected, and it has done more, probably, than all other processes to lift the moral and social level of the race.

Instead of being a prison, the workshop has been a place of training, discipline, and education. The working races have been the victorious races; the non-working races have been the subject races. Wandering peoples who trust to what may be called geographical luck for a living often develop strong individual qualities and traits, but they never develop a high degree of social or political organisation, nor do they produce literature and art. The native force of imagination which some semi-civilised races seem to possess never becomes creative until it is developed and directed by training. Education is as essential to greatness of achievement in any field as the possession of gifts of genius. An untrained race, like an untrained man, is always at an immense disadvantage, not only in the competition of the world, but in the working out of individual destiny. The necessity for work is so far from being a penalty that it must be counted the highest moral opportunity open to men, and, therefore, one of the divinest gifts offered to the race. The apparent freedom of nomadic peoples is seen, upon closer view, to be a very hard and repulsive bondage; the apparent servitude of working peoples is seen to be, upon closer view, an open road to freedom.

There is no real freedom save that which is based upon discipline. The chance to do as one pleases is not liberty, as so many people imagine; liberty involves knowledge, self-mastery, capacity for exertion, power of resistance. Emerson uncovered the fundamental conception when he declared that character is our only definition of freedom and power. Now, character is always the product of an educational process of some kind; its production involves tests, trials, temptations, toils. It does not represent innocence, but that which is higher and more difficult of attainment, virtue. Innocence is the starting-point in life; virtue is the goal. Between these two points lies that arduous education which is effected, for most men, chiefly by and through work. In comparison with the field, the shop, the factory, the mine, and the sea, the school has educated a very inconsiderable number; the vast majority of the race have been trained by toil. On the farm, in the innumerable factories, in offices and stores, on sea-going craft of all kinds, and in the vast field of land transportation, the race, as a rule, has had its education in those elemental qualities which make organised society possible. When the race goes to its work in the morning, it goes to its school; and the chief result of its toil is not that which it makes with its hands, but that which it slowly and unconsciously creates within itself. It is concerned with the product of its toil; with soil, seed, or grain; with wood, paper, metal, or stone; with processes and forces; but in the depths of the worker's nature there is a moral deposit of habit, quality, temper, which is the invisible moral result of his toil. The real profit of a day's work in the world can never be estimated in terms of money; it can be estimated only in terms of character.

The regularity, promptness, obedience, fidelity, and skill demanded in every kind of work, skilled or unskilled, compels the formation of a certain degree of character. No worker can keep his place who does not develop certain moral qualities in connection with his work. Honesty, truthfulness, sobriety, and skill are essential to the most elementary success,--the getting of the bare necessities of life; and these fundamental qualities, upon which organised society rests as on an immovable foundation, are the silent deposit of the work of the world. Through what seems to be the bondage of toil the race is emancipated from the ignorance, the licence, and the dull monotony of savagery; through what seems to be a purely material dealing with insensate things men put themselves in the way of the most thorough moral training.

The necessity of working gives society steadiness and stability; when large populations are freed from this necessity, irresponsible mobs take the place of orderly citizens, and the crowd of idlers must be fed and amused to be kept out of mischief. A man can never be idle with safety and advantage until he has been so trained by work that he makes his freedom from times and tasks more fruitful than his toil has been. When work has disciplined a man, he may safely be left to himself; for he will not only govern himself, but he will also employ himself. There are few worse elements in society than an idle leisure class,--a body of men and women who make mere recreation the business of living, and so reverse or subvert the natural order of life.

On the other hand, there is no more valuable element in society than a working leisure class,--a body of men and women who, emancipated from the harder and more mechanical work of the world, give themselves to the higher activities and enrich the common life by intelligence, beauty, charm of habit and manners, dignity of carriage, and distinction of character and taste. So long as men need other food than bread, and have higher necessities than those of the body, a leisure class will be essential to the richest and completest social development. What society does not need is an idle class.

[The end]
Hamilton Wright Mabie's essay: The Larger Education

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