On the Significance of Science and ArtTolstoy, Leo, graf
Philosophy
On the Significance of Science and Art
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Art and science; Literature; Philosophy; Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910 -- Philosophy
The point does not lie in inventing work,--you can never get through all
the work that is to be done for yourself and for others,--but the point
lies in weaning one's self from that criminal view of life in accordance
with which I eat and sleep for my own pleasure; and in appropriating to
myself that just and simple view with which the laboring man grows up and
lives,--that man is, first of all, a machine, which loads itself with
food in order to sustain itself, and that it is therefore disgraceful,
wrong, and impossible to eat and not to work; that to eat and not to work
is the most impious, unnatural, and, therefore, dangerous position, in
the nature of the sin of Sodom. Only let this acknowledgement be made,
and there will be work; and work will always be joyous and satisfying to
both spiritual and bodily requirements.
The matter presented itself to me thus: The day is divided for every man,
by food itself, into four parts, or four stints, as the peasants call it:
(1) before breakfast; (2) from breakfast until dinner; (3) from dinner
until four o'clock; (4) from four o'clock until evening.
A man's employment, whatever it may be that he feels a need for in his
own person, is also divided into four categories: (1) the muscular
employment of power, labor of the hands, feet, shoulders, back,--hard
labor, from which you sweat; (2) the employment of the fingers and
wrists, the employment of artisan skill; (3) the employment of the mind
and imagination; (4) the employment of intercourse with others.
The benefits which man enjoys are also divided into four categories.
Every man enjoys, in the first place, the product of hard labor,--grain,
cattle, buildings, wells, ponds, and so forth; in the second place, the
results of artisan toil,--clothes, boots, utensils, and so forth; in the
third place, the products of mental activity,--science, art; and, in the
forth place, established intercourse between people.
And it struck me, that the best thing of all would be to arrange the
occupations of the day in such a manner as to exercise all four of man's
capacities, and myself produce all these four sorts of benefits which men
make use of, so that one portion of the day, the first, should be
dedicated to hard labor; the second, to intellectual labor; the third, to
artisan labor; and the forth, to intercourse with people. It struck me,
that only then would that false division of labor, which exists in our
society, be abrogated, and that just division of labor established, which
does not destroy man's happiness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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