Intellectual labor

“ As an outpost of intelligence, of good will, of enlightenment, the intellectual can render an invisible but a difficult and highly useful service. It is here, perhaps, that the majority of intellectuals with an interest in the labor movement will find their true function. ”

“ In conclusion it may be remembered that from any point of view the task of the intellectual—in the sense here defined—is mainly to discover truth and spread its understanding and application to human affairs. There are few problems more important to the modern community than those associated with industry and labor. ”

“ The narrowing and ever-increasingly narrowing tendency of professional pursuits, in these modern times of division of intellectual labor and eager struggle for life, renders the formation of such associations very necessary. ”

“ On the other hand, we need a new statement of ethics in general. The philosopher, who is going to do it, will have to get much of his material from the labor movement and will in turn render a profound service to it. ”

“ It is clear that, with your counting-house to occupy you during the best hours of every day, you can never labor for your intellectual culture with that unremitting application which these men have given for theirs. But, on the other hand, you will perceive that these extraordinary workers have hardly ever been wholly dedicated to one pursuit, and the reason for this in most cases is clear. ”

“ We should esteem those moments best improved which are employed in developing our own thoughts, rather than in acquiring those of others, since in this kind of intellectual exercise our powers are best brought into action and disciplined for use. Knowledge acquired by labor becomes a possession—a property entirely our own. A greater vividness of impression is secured, and facts thus acquired become registered in the mind in a way that mere imparted information fails of securing. A habit of observation and reflection is well-nigh every thing. ”

“ So it is with those who employ themselves exclusively in the attainment of intellectual wealth. Faith that this is the one great good incites them to unwearied labor,—causes them to forget food, sleep, friends, everything, in order that they may acquire abundant stores of learning; and all because they have taken as their creed, "I believe that learning is better than all beside, and for this will I labor day and night." ”

“ The intellectual, then, may expect of the labor movement a real significance in spite of all disappointments, and he may also expect of it, as of all significant institutions rooted in history, a tough fabric of custom and behavior to which the only fruitful approach is one of inquiring respect. ”

“ This tendency of men’s minds requires our particular consideration. Its manifestations were very important, and highly characteristic of the stationary period; it gave, in a great degree, a peculiar bias and direction to the intellectual activity of many centuries; and the kind of labor with which speculative men were occupied in consequence of this bias, took the place of that examination of realities which must be their employment, in order that real knowledge may make any decided progress. ”

“ Our young people have thought and written much on labor and reform, and for all that they have written, neither the world nor themselves have got on a step. Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. ”

“ The use of science and philosophy by the ruling class as a pretence for the appropriation of the lion’s share of the wealth produced by labor does not prove that workingmen should abandon philosophy as useless to their cause. ”

“ His theory that manual labour should form part of the scholar’s life was checked by the personal discovery that hard labour in the fields meant poor work in the study. “The writer shall not dig,” was his practical conclusion. Intellectual independence was what he chiefly desired ”

“ If education were first of all experimental and practical, reserving speech only to explain, summarize, and coordinate work; if those who cannot learn with imagination and memory were permitted to learn with their eyes and hands,—soon we should witness a multiplication, not only of the forms of labor, but of capacities; everybody, knowing the theory of something, would thereby possess the language of philosophy; on occasion he could, were it only for once in his life, create, modify, perfect, give proof of intelligence and comprehension, produce his master-piece, in a word, show himself a man. ”

“ A nature constitutionally proud and pitiless, intuitively seeks, in all the culture it derives from intellectual labour, to find reasons to continue proud and pitiless—to extract from the lessons of knowledge arguments by which to justify its impulse, and rules by which the impulse can be drilled into method and refined into policy. ”

“ From the numerous instances already cited of men of humble station who have risen to distinction in science and literature, it will be obvious that labour is by no means incompatible with the highest intellectual culture. Work in moderation is healthy, as well as agreeable to the human constitution. Work educates the body, as study educates the mind; and that is the best state of society in which there is some work for every man’s leisure, and some leisure for every man’s work. ”

“ Let me apply that analogy to the effect of education, which is a sharpening and polishing of the mind. You may develop the intellectual side of people as far as you like, and you may confer upon them all the skill that training and instruction can give; but, if there is not, underneath all that outside form and superficial polish, the firm fibre of healthy manhood and earnest desire to do well, your labour is absolutely in vain. ”

“ The individual, ensnared by that division of intellectual labour that inevitably results from the widening compass of knowledge, may at times forget the connection of his narrow sphere of work with the great ends of human life ”

“ Moreover, the best system of education, even so far as philosophy and morality are concerned, would be that of professional education: once more, how reconcile such education with parcellaire division and the service of machinery? How shall the man who, by the effect of his labor, has become a slave,—that is, a chattel, a thing,— again become a person by the same labor, or in continuing the same exercise? ”

“ It must surely be clear to everybody that there has been some evil influence at work to arrest the fair promise and development of the human race. The splendid march of intellectual progress from the dark ages to the brilliant dawn of the nineteenth century, with its glittering array of master minds and its titanic roll of genius, has been suddenly brought to a dead halt. ”

“ The boundaries of knowledge were enlarged when the inductive method was applied to the study of nature, and it soon became impossible for one man to pretend to a mastery of all science. And so the principle of the division of labor was introduced into things of the intellect. Of old, the prophet or the philosopher was supposed to possess all wisdom; but now it had become plain that proficiency could be hoped for only by lifelong devotion to some special branch of knowledge. ”

“ But I must beg you to understand that I shall proceed by a severe process, that of analysis, for nothing less than the results of analysis of work done can establish as proved what many feel as a sentiment. You will understand both the censure and the acclamation of what we will call the world; you will see the necessity for a reform in the philosophy of many of us; you will see how the life and labor of one man have produced vast applications and industries, improved or created a large commerce, and enhanced or engendered art ”

“ The student who is pleased to think a knowledge of German “more useful” than a knowledge of Greek; the parent who deliberately declares that his boys have “no time to waste” over Homer; the man who closes the doors of his mind to everything that does not bear directly on mathematics, or chemistry, or engineering, or whatever he calls “work;” all these plead in excuse the exigencies of life, the absolute and imperative necessity of labor. ”

“ The labour, therefore, requisite to produce the necessaries of life, would be equally divided among the 136members of such a community, and the remainder of their time would be spent in the pursuit of science, in the cultivation of the noblest arts, and in the most refined social and intellectual enjoyments. ”

“ The infinite complexity of the sciences, arts, modern industries, exige of absolute form that who wishes to reach a certain degree of perfection in whatever sphere, is specialized in a given category of study and learning; on the other hand, the invididual is obliged in the bigger social body, where she plays the role of an organ, to adapt self like this to a determined way of functioning. This necessity for the division of labor can be a condition of progress and happiness for the individual, thus like for society itself. ”

“ So that, if we set against the question as to the reality of the progress attained by the arts and sciences, not our own rapture, but that standard upon the basis of which the division of labor is defended,—the good of the laboring man,—we shall see that we have no firm foundations for that self-satisfaction in which we are so fond of indulging. ”

“ If it is continued beyond that point, it aims only towards a particular specialized and profitable purpose; one studies science as one takes up a business; and one takes up only those applications whose immediate practicality is recognized. [...] There is no class, then, in America, in which the taste for intellectual pleasures is transmitted with hereditary fortune and leisure and by which the labors of the intellect are held in honor. ”

“ Education, culture, morality, idealism—and not economic power—become the creative forces in society, and the social mind is bent upon producing a congenial social environment through which these can work. ”

“ In this busy world there is honest work for every man to perform. Civilization has multiplied human wants and also developed the ingenuity necessary to gratify them. But it requires labor. Not such, however, as was performed by the slave, but skilled labor—labor where the hand is guided by an intellect, quickened by the agency of class-room and laboratory for the task assigned; labor, such as will reflect credit upon and elevate a gentleman. ”

“ But these are only passing phenomena, and they are not enduring enough to give artists and philosophers the definite consciousness of playing a well-thought-out and useful part.
⁠If all intellectual activities of to-day tend to become either lucrative professions or government careers, it is because nowadays such careers aim either at money or social position, and no longer find their end in the careers themselves. ”

“ Is intellectual labour to take ever and increasingly the place of crude muscular exertion in the labour of life?—then we demand for ourselves that culture and the freedom of action which alone can yield us the knowledge of life and the intellectual vigour and strength which will enable us to undertake the same share of mental which we have borne in the past in physical labours of life. ”

“ Let us eliminate the intellectual and moral qualities characteristic of each group, which establish notable differences between them, and let us consider only their inventive capacity as applied to practical life. ”

“ The actual existence of two utterly distinct types of mind, with their distinct needs, both of them having legitimate business to transact with psychology, must then be recognized; and the only question there can be is the practical one of how to distribute the labor so as to waste it least and get the most efficient results. ”

“ He must study the nature of the effect that he is to produce, and of the materials upon which he is to work, and adopt, after mature deliberation, a plan to accomplish his purpose founded upon the principles which ought always to regulate the action of mind upon mind, and adapted to produce the intellectual effect which he wishes to accomplish. ”

“ IN the intellectual field there are two distinct classes of laborers: the discoverers, or those who pursue science for its own sake; and the appliers, or those who seek to make the knowledge it confers useful, and so turn it into a direct source of profit to themselves, and, in a general way, to the public. ”

“ If we are seen to put only a money value on the higher education, why should not the workingman, who regards it only as a distinction of class or privilege, estimate it by what he can see of its practical results in making men richer, or bringing him more pleasure of the senses?
The world is ruled by ideas, by abstract thought. Society, literature, art, politics, in any given age are what the prevailing system of philosophy makes them. ”

“ If these things are so, how foolish to ask what is the best education for one or seven or sixty million souls! shall we teach them trades, or train them in liberal arts? Neither and both: teach the workers to work and the thinkers to think; make carpenters of carpenters, and philosophers of philosophers, and fops of fools. ”

“ What benefits will accrue to the individual or to society when, with untold labour, we have learned a fraction more about the history of man or penetrated a few steps further into the illimitable arcana of nature? These are questions which those engaged in investigation and those whose delight is to hear some new thing alike hardly pause to ask. It is assumed that all knowledge of fact is valuable, and therefore is to be pursued for its own sake. ”

“ The right sort of intellectual had a function in the past; it was to help the workers to overcome their division and disorganisation, to help them to be sure of themselves, to help them to clear views of the ends they must attain. ”