It is evident, however, that all men and women cannot equally enjoy
the pursuit of scientific work. The variety of inclinations is such
that some will find more pleasure in science, some others in art, and
others again in some of the numberless branches of the production of
wealth. But, whatever the occupations preferred by everyone, everyone
will be the more useful in his own branch if he is in possession of a
serious scientific knowledge. And, whosoever he might be--scientist
or artist, physicist or surgeon, chemist or sociologist, historian
or poet--he would be the gainer if he spent a part of his life in
the workshop or the farm (the workshop _and_ the farm), if he were
in contact with humanity in its daily work, and had the satisfaction
of knowing that he himself discharges his duties as an unprivileged
producer of wealth.
How much better the historian and the sociologist would understand
humanity if they knew it, not in books only, not in a few of its
representatives, but as a whole, in its daily life, daily work, and
daily affairs! How much more medicine would trust to hygiene, and
how much less to prescriptions, if the young doctors were the nurses
of the sick and the nurses received the education of the doctors of
our time! And how much the poet would gain in his feeling of the
beauties of nature, how much better would he know the human heart,
if he met the rising sun amidst the tillers of the soil, himself a
tiller; if he fought against the storm with the sailors on board
ship; if he knew the poetry of labour and rest, sorrow and joy,
struggle and conquest! _Greift nur hinein in’s volle Menschenleben!_
Goethe said; _Ein jeder lebt’s--nicht vielen ist’s bekannt._ But how
few poets follow his advice!
The so-called “division of labour” has grown under a system which
condemned the masses to toil all the day long, and all the life long,
at the same wearisome kind of labour. But if we take into account
how few are the real producers of wealth in our present society, and
how squandered is their labour, we must recognise that Franklin was
right in saying that to work five hours a day would generally do for
supplying each member of a civilised nation with the comfort now
accessible for the few only.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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