The Lee County journal. (Leesburg, Ga.) 1904-19??, 1907-11-29


we are sure to work for fun, perhaps
only with parties and gold sticks,
but, if our forces are expended on
higher planes, with painting and poe
try and all the beautiful arts. This
is the story of the fine arts. They
came through the favored folk whose
bread not only but tarts and turtle
soup were provided as effortlessly as
the mama of old and whose energies
were vented not for gainful gold but
for pure delight in new ways for
new things that not yet had become
necessities for the wider world.
But in reality all of us do work for
a living Did we not we should per-
ish of strophy. Keep moving" the
Christmas signs say in the shops,
and so saith Mother World to all OF
her children. Brains need work to
render and keep us nimble Of wit,
muscles must exercise if they would
be strong All the ills that flesh is
heir to, shall we say, proceed from
lack of exercise. Not only is it pleas
ant to exercise our facilities nor
mally, but it is in this normal exercise
that all pleasure, all enjoyment and
all good consist All want and all
pain and the whole of the so-called
Welt Schmerz are due to restraints
of one sort or another upon this eX-
ercise 2"
When there is no other form of
this pain there remain the pains of
ennui, the most insufferable of all.
These are the miseries Of the leisure
ones. They must work or suffer the
pangs uncomfortable of nothing to do.
Normally they do follow VebleD S
splendid instinct of workmanship and
do something useful and are scienti-
fic, artistic, philosophic, religious.
And abnormally they give balls to the
monkeys.
They work abnormally, in part be-
cause certain sorts of movements
have been labeled play and patrician
and certain other sorts have been
labeled work and outcaste. That is
one reason why we like and dislike
them And part of the dislike is
lack of ability. Some play is higher
caste than work, and some play is
easier than work.
Time was when none of us could
work The human race was a child
at play in desultory, dallying, spas
modic activities. 1t could sleep, eat,
laugh, but it could not work. In the
beginning no one liked to work and
no one could work, and only through
centuries on centuries of enforced
toll have the fittest to work learned
to work and survived to work. The
original problem, says Lester Ward,
the captain of the sociologists, was
how to make men work.
The human race has been radically
transformed in this respect. The
modern industrious artisan or la
borer is unlike his primitive ancestor.
Compare him with the North Ameri-
can Indian for some little idea of this
gross Indifference. Compare him es-
pecially with those tribes that have
adhered to the tribal customs and
have adopted none of the habits of
the Europeans
Only those who have had consid
cradle to do with these races realize
how impossible it is for them to do
anything that we call work The
total lack Of power of application,
especially among the men, is an al
most universal characteristic 1t is
the daily drudgeries of the women
folk busy with the eternal feminine
round of feeding and clothing and
giving birth to the world, necessarily
performed, that bear semblance to
the steadiness of modern labors. Men
of the primitive type would be>per-
fectly worthless in the industrial
world. to-day. Their productive
power in the economic sense would
be nil.
Was it Wizards wonders that
taught man how to work? Did pri-
meval man sip potion that trans1g-
ured silly King Dodo into an ener-
getic laborer? 1t was the good gift
of slayery-our power to work. 1t
was the social mission of slavery, ac-
cording to Ward, to convert mere ac-
tiyity into true labor. The aim of the
Conquering race was to gain the max
imum advantage from the conquered.
And the only permanent valuable be-
longing to the victims. as the ancient
victors astutely saw, was their energy.
This energy must be used.
Men and women were enslaved and
now must needs so on with unto
ward tolls, not because they loved
them nor because they could well
cope with them, but because they
must do or die. The lash ever was
near and if the lash failed the slave
was tortured. and ii the fortunes did