Apart from these psychological considerations, there is a moral reason which ought not to escape attention in our estimate of Hyakujo’s wisdom in instituting work as a vital part of Zen life. For the soundness of ideas must be tested finally by their practical application. When they fail in this, that is, when they cannot be carried out in everyday life producing lasting harmony and satisfaction and giving real beneficence to all concerned,—to oneself as well as to others, no ideas can be said to be sound and practical. While physical force is no standard to judge the value of ideas, the latter, however logically consistent, have no reality when they are not joined to life. Especially in Zen abstract ideas that do not convince one in practical living are of no value whatever. Conviction must be gained through experience and not through abstraction, which means that conviction has no really solid basis except when it can be tested in our acting efficient life. Moral assertion or “bearing witness” ought to be over and above an intellectual judgment, that is to say, the truth must be the product of ones’ living experiences. An idle reverie is not their business, the Zen followers will insist. They, of course, sit quiet and practise “zazen”[f134][7.3]; for they want to reflect on whatever lessons they have gained while working. But as they are against chewing the cud all the time, they put in action whatever reflections they have made during hours of quiet-sitting and test their validity in the vital field of practicality. It is my strong conviction that if Zen did not put faith in acting its ideas, the institution would have long before this sunk into a mere somniferous and trance-inducing system, so that all the treasure thoughtfully hoarded by the masters in China and Japan would have been cast away as heaps of rotten stuff. Perhaps unwittingly supported by these reasons, the value of work or service has been regarded by all Zen followers as one of their religious ideals. No doubt the idea was greatly enforced by the characteristic industry and practicalness of the Chinese people by whom Zen was mainly elaborated. The fact is that if there is any one thing that is most emphatically insisted upon by the Zen masters as the practical expression of their faith, it is serving others, doing work for others, not ostentatiously indeed but secretly, without making others know of it. Says Eckhart, “What a man takes in by contemplation he must pour out in love.” Zen would say, “pour it out in work,” meaning by work the active and concrete realisation of love. Tauler made spinning and shoe-making and other homely duties gifts of the Holy Ghost; Brother Lawrence made cooking sacramental; George Herbert wrote: “Who sweeps a room as to thy laws Makes that and the action fine.”