'Religion,' I said; for properly speaking, all true Work is
Religion: and whatsoever Religion is not Work may go and dwell
among the Brahmins, Antinomians, Spinning Dervishes, or where it
will; with me it shall have no harbour. Admirable was that of
the old Monks, 'Laborare est Orare, Work is Worship.'
Older than all preached Gospels was this unpreached,
inarticulate, but ineradicable, forever-enduring Gospel: Work,
and therein have well-being. Man, Son of Earth and of Heaven,
lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a Spirit of
active Method, a Force for Work;--and burns like a painfully
smouldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till
thou write it down in beneficent Facts around thee! What is
immethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable;
obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest
Disorder, there is thy eternal enemy; attack him swiftly, subdue
him; make Order of him, the subject not of Chaos, but of
Intelligence, Divinity and Thee! The thistle that grows in thy
path, dig it out, that a blade of useful grass, a drop of
nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cotton-shrub,
gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it; that, in place
of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of
man be covered.
But above all, where thou findest Ignorance, Stupidity, Brute-
mindedness,--yes, there, with or without Church-tithes and
Shovel-hat, with or without Talfourd-Mahon Copyrights, or were it
with mere dungeons and gibbets and crosses, attack it, I say;
smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while thou livest and
it lives; but smite, smite, in the name of God! The Highest
God, as I understand it, does audibly so command thee; still
audibly, if thou have ears to hear. He, even He, with his
unspoken voice, awfuler than any Sinai thunders or syllabled
speech of Whirlwinds; for the SILENCE of deep Eternities, of
Worlds from beyond the morning-stars, does it not speak to thee?
The unborn Ages; the old Graves, with their long-mouldering
dust, the very tears that wetted it now all dry,--do not these
speak to thee, what ear hath not heard? The deep Death-kingdoms,
the Stars in their never-resting courses, all Space and all Time,
proclaim it to thee in continual silent admonition. Thou too, if
ever man should, shalt work while it is called Today. For the
Night cometh, wherein no man can work.
All true Work is sacred; in all true Work, were it but true
hand-labour, there is something of divineness. Labour, wide as
the Earth, has its summit in Heaven. Sweat of the brow; and up
from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which
includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all
Sciences, all spoken Epics, all acted Heroisms, Martyrdoms,--up
to that 'Agony of bloody sweat,' which all men have called
divine! O brother, if this is not 'worship,' then I say, the
more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet
discovered under God's sky. Who art thou that complainest of thy
life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see
thy fellow Workmen there, in God's Eternity; surviving there,
they alone surviving: sacred Band of the Immortals, celestial
Bodyguard of the Empire of Mankind. Even in the weak Human
Memory they survive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods; they
alone surviving; peopling, they alone, the unmeasured solitudes
of Time! To thee Heaven, though severe, is not unkind; Heaven
is kind,--as a noble Mother; as that Spartan Mother, saying
while she gave her son his shield, "With it, my son, or upon it!"
Thou too shalt return home in honour; to thy far-distant Home,
in honour; doubt it not,--if in the battle thou keep thy shield!
Thou, in the Eternities and deepest Death-kingdoms, art not an
alien; thou everywhere art a denizen! Complain not; the very
Spartans did not complain.
And who art thou that braggest of thy life of Idleness;
complacently shewest thy bright gilt equipages; sumptuous
cushions; appliances for folding of the hands to mere sleep?
Looking up, looking down, around, behind or before, discernest
thou, if it be not in Mayfair alone, any idle hero, saint, god,
or even devil? Not a vestige of one. In the Heavens, in the
Earth, in the Waters, under the Earth, is none like unto thee.
Thou art an original figure in this Creation; a denizen in
Mayfair alone, in this extraordinary Century or Half-Century
alone! One monster there is in the world: the idle man. What is
his 'Religion?' That Nature is a Phantasm, where cunning,
beggary or thievery may sometimes find good victual. That God is
a lie; and that Man and his Life are a lie.--Alas, alas, who of
us is there that can say, I have worked? The faithfulest of us
are unprofitable servants; the faithfulest of us know that best.
The faithfulest of us may say, with sad and true old Samuel,
"Much of my life has been trifled away!" But he that has, and
except 'on public occasions' professes to have, no function but
that of going idle in a graceful or graceless manner; and of
begetting sons to go idle; and to address Chief Spinners and
Diggers, who at least are spinning and digging, "Ye scandalous
persons who produce too much"--My Corn-Law friends, on what
imaginary still richer Eldorados, and true iron-spikes with law
of gravitation, are ye rushing!
As to the Wages of Work there might innumerable things be said;
there will and must yet innumerable things be said and spoken, in
St. Stephen's and out of St. Stephen's; and gradually not a few
things be ascertained and written, on Law-parchment, concerning
this very matter:--'Fair day's-wages for a fair day's-work' is
the most unrefusable demand! Money-wages 'to the extent of
keeping your worker alive that he may work more;' these, unless
you mean to dismiss him straightway out of this world, are
indispensable alike to the noblest Worker and to the least noble!
One thing only I will say here, in special reference to the
former class, the noble and noblest; but throwing light on all
the other classes and their arrangements of this difficult
matter: The 'wages' of every noble Work do yet lie in Heaven or
else Nowhere. Not in Bank-of-England bills, in Owen's Labour-
bank, or any the most improved establishment of banking and
money-changing, needest thou, heroic soul, present thy account of
earnings. Human banks and labour-banks know thee not; or know
thee after generations and centuries have passed away, and thou
art clean gone from 'rewarding,'--all manner of bank-drafts,
shoptills, and Downing-street Exchequers lying very invisible, so
far from thee! Nay, at bottom, dost thou need any reward? Was
it thy aim and life-purpose to be filled with good things for thy
heroism; to have a life of pomp and ease, and be what men call
'happy,' in this world, or in any other world? I answer for thee
deliberately, No. The whole spiritual secret of the new epoch
lies in this, that thou canst answer for thyself, with thy whole
clearness of head and heart, deliberately, No.
My brother, the brave man has to give his Life away. Give it, I
advise thee;--thou dost not expect to sell thy Life in an
adequate manner? What price, for example, would content thee?
The just price of thy LIFE to thee,--why, God's entire Creation
to thyself, the whole Universe of Space, the whole Eternity of
Time, and what they hold: that is the price which would content
thee; that, and if thou wilt be candid, nothing short of that!
It is thy all; and for it thou wouldst have all. Thou art an
unreasonable mortal;--or rather thou art a poor infinite
mortal, who, in thy narrow clay-prison here, seemest so
unreasonable! Thou wilt never sell thy Life, or any part of thy
Life, in a satisfactory manner. Give it, like a royal heart;
let the price be Nothing: thou hast then, in a certain sense,
got All for it! The heroic man,--and is not every man, God be
thanked, a potential hero?--has to do so, in all times and
circumstances. In the most heroic age, as in the most unheroic,
he will have to say, as Burns said proudly and humbly of his
little Scottish Songs, little dewdrops of Celestial Melody in an
age when so much was unmelodious: "By Heaven, they shall either
be invaluable or of no value; I do not need your guineas for
them!" It is an element which should, and must, enter deeply
into all settlements of wages here below. They never will be
'satisfactoy' otherwise; they cannot, O Mammon Gospel, they
never can! Money for my little piece of work 'to the extent that
will allow me to keep working;' yes, this,--unless you mean that
I shall go my ways before the work is all taken out of me: but
as to 'wages'--!--
On the whole, we do entirely agree with those old Monks,
Laborare est Orare. In a thousand senses, from one end of it
to the other, true Work is Worship. He that works, whatsoever be
his work, he bodies forth the form of Things Unseen; a small
Poet every Worker is. The idea, were it but of his poor Delf
Platter, how much more of his Epic Poem, is as yet 'seen,'
halfseen, only by himself; to all others it is a thing unseen,
impossible; to Nature herself it is a thing unseen, a thing
which never hitherto was;--very 'impossible,' for it is as yet a
No-thing! The Unseen Powers had need to watch over such a man;
he works in and for the Unseen. Alas, if he look to the Seen
Powers only, he may as well quit the business; his No-thing will
never rightly issue as a Thing, but as a Deceptivity, a Sham-
thing,--which it had better not do!
Thy No-thing of an Intended Poem, O Poet who hast looked merely
to reviewers, copyrights, booksellers, popularities, behold it
has not yet become a Thing; for the truth is not in it! Though
printed, hot-pressed, reviewed, celebrated, sold to the twentieth
edition: what is all that? The Thing, in philosophical
uncommercial language, is still a No-thing, mostly semblance, and
deception of the sight;--benign Oblivion incessantly gnawing at
it, impatient till chaos to which it belongs do reabsorb it!--
He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from him will
never come real visibility and speech. Thou must descend to the
Mothers, to the Manes, and Hercules-like long suffer and
labour there, wouldst thou emerge with victory into the sunlight.
As in battle and the shock of war,--for is not this a battle?--
thou too shalt fear no pain or death, shalt love no ease or life;
the voice of festive Lubberlands, the noise of greedy Acheron
shall alike lie silent under thy victorious feet. Thy work, like
Dante's, shall 'make thee lean for many years.' The world and
its wages, its criticisms, counsels, helps, impediments, shall be
as a waste ocean-flood; the chaos through which thou art to swim
and sail. Not the waste waves and their weedy gulf-streams,
shalt thou take for guidance: thy star alone,--'Se to segui tua
stella!' Thy star alone, now clear-beaming over Chaos, nay now
by fits gone out, disastrously eclipsed: this only shalt thou
strive to follow. O, it is a business, as I fancy, that of
weltering your way through Chaos and the murk of Hell! Green-
eyed dragons watching you, three-headed Cerberuses,--not without
sympathy of their sort! "Eccovi l'uom ch'e stato all'Inferno."
For in fine, as Poet Dryden says, you do walk hand in hand with
sheer Madness, all the way,--who is by no means pleasant company!
You look fixedly into Madness, and her undiscovered, boundless,
bottomless Night-empire; that you may extort new Wisdom out of
it, as an Eurydice from Tartarus. The higher the Wisdom, the
closer was its neighbourhood and kindred with mere Insanity;
literally so;--and thou wilt, with a speechless feeling, observe
how highest Wisdom, struggling up into this world, has oftentimes
carried such tinctures and adhesions of Insanity still cleaving
to it hither!
All Works, each in their degree, are a making of Madness sane;--
truly enough a religious operation; which cannot be carried on
without religion. You have not work otherwise; you have eye-
service, greedy grasping of wages, swift and ever swifter
manufacture of semblances to get hold of wages. Instead of
better felt-hats to cover your head, you have bigger lath-and-
plaster hats set traveling the streets on wheels. Instead of
heavenly and earthly Guidance for the souls of men, you have
'Black or White Surplice' Controversies, stuffed hair-and-leather
Popes;--terrestrial Law-wards, Lords and Law-bringers,
'organising Labour' in these years, by passing Corn-Laws. With
all which, alas, this distracted Earth is now full, nigh to
bursting. Semblances most smooth to the touch and eye; most
accursed nevertheless to body and soul. Semblances, be they of
Sham-woven Cloth or of Dilettante Legislation, which are not
real wool or substance, but Devil's-dust, accursed of God and
man! No man has worked, or can work, except religiously; not
even the poor day-labourer, the weaver of your coat, the sewer of
your shoes. All men, if they work not as in a Great Taskmaster's
eye, will work wrong, work unhappily for themselves and you.
Industrial work, still under bondage to Mammon, the rational soul
of it not yet awakened, is a tragic spectacle. Men in the
rapidest motion and self-motion; restless, with convulsive
energy, as if driven by Galvanism, as if possessed by a Devil;
tearing asunder mountains,--to no purpose, for Mammonism is
always Midas-eared! This is sad, on the face of it. Yet
courage: the beneficent Destinies, kind in their sternness, are
apprising us that this cannot continue. Labour is not a devil,
even while encased in Mammonism; Labour is ever an imprisoned
god, writhing unconsciously or consciously to escape out of
Mammonism! Plugson of Undershot, like Taillefer of Normandy,
wants victory; how much happier will even Plugson be to have a
Chivalrous victory than a Chactaw one. The unredeemed ugliness
is that of a slothful People. Shew me a People energetically
busy; heaving, struggling, all shoulders at the wheel; their
heart pulsing, every muscle swelling, with man's energy and
will;--I Shew you a People of whom great good is already
predicable; to whom all manner of good is yet certain, if their
energy endure. By very working, they will learn; they have,
Antaeus-like, their foot on Mother Fact: how can they but learn?
The vulgarest Plugson of a Master-Worker, who can command Workers
and get work out of them, is already a considerable man. Blessed
and thrice-blessed symptoms I discern of Master-Workers who are
not vulgar men; who are Nobles, and begin to feel that they must
act as such: all speed to these, they are England's hope at
present! But in this Plugson himself, conscious of almost no
nobleness whatever, how much is there! Not without man's
faculty, insight, courage, hard energy, is this rugged figure.
His words none of the wisest; but his actings cannot be
altogether foolish. Think, how were it, stoodst thou suddenly in
his shoes! He has to command a thousand men. And not imaginary
commanding; no, it is real, incessantly practical. The evil
passions of so many men (with the Devil in them, as in all of us)
he has to vanquish; by manifold force of speech and of silence,
to repress or evade. What a force of silence, to say nothing of
the others, is in Plugson! For these his thousand men he has to
provide raw-material, machinery, arrangement, house-room; and
ever at the week's end, wages by due sale. No Civil-List, or
Goulburn-Baring Budget has he to fall back upon, for paying of
his regiment; he has to pick his supplies from this confused
face of the whole Earth and Contemporaneous History, by his
dexterity alone. There will be dry eyes if he fail to do it!--He
exclaims, at present, 'black in the face,' near strangled with
Dilettante Legislation: "Let me have elbow-room, throat-room,
and I will not fail! No, I will spin yet, and conquer like a
giant: what 'sinews of war' lie in me, untold resources towards
the Conquest of this Planet, if instead of hanging me, you
husband them, and help me!"--My indomitable friend, it is true;
and thou shalt and must be helped.
This is not a man I would kill and strangle by Corn-Laws, even if
I could! No, I would fling my Corn-Laws and Shotbelts to the
Devil; and try to help this man. I would teach him, by noble
precept and law-precept, by noble example most of all, that
Mammonism was not the essence of his or of my station in God's
Universe; but the adscititious excrescence of it; the gross,
terrene, godless embodiment of it; which would have to become,
more or less, a godlike one. By noble real legislation, by
true noble's-work, by unwearied, valiant, and were it wageless
effort, in my Parliament and in my Parish, I would aid,
constrain, encourage him to effect more or less this blessed
change. I should know that it would have to be effected; that
unless it were in some measure effected, he and I and all of us,
I first and soonest of all, were doomed to perdition!--Effected
it will be; unless it were a Demon that made this Universe;
which I, for my own part, do at no moment, under no form, in the
least believe.
May it please your Serene Highnesses, your Majesties, Lordships
and Law-wardships, the proper Epic of this world is not now 'Arms
and the Man;' how much less, 'Shirt-frills and the Man:' no, it
is now 'Tools and the Man:' that, henceforth to all time is now
our Epic;--and you, first of all others, I think, were wise to
take note of that!
