Practicable Socialism, New SeriesBarnett, S. A. (Samuel Augustus)
Religion
Practicable Socialism, New Series
Barnett, S. A. (Samuel Augustus)
Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems; Working class
(2) Recreation must involve the strengthening of the less used fibres of
the mind and the body; the embers which are stirred by excitement need
to be fed with new fuel, or the flames will soon sink into ashes.
Gambling and drink, sensational dramas, and exciting shows stir but do
not strengthen the mind. Mere change--the fresh excursion every day, the
spectacle of a contest--wears out the powers of being. “The crime of
sense is avenged by sense which wears with time.” On the other hand,
games well played fulfil the condition, and there is no more cheering
sight than that of playing-fields where young and old are using their
limbs intent on doing their best. Music, foreign travel, congenial
society, reading, chess, all games of skill, also fulfil the condition,
as they make a claim on the activity of heart or mind, and so strengthen
their fibres. A good drama is recreation if the spectator is called to
give himself to thought and to feeling. He then becomes in a sense a
fellow creator with the author, he has what Professor Groos says
satisfies every one, “the joy of being a cause,” or, as he explains in
another passage, “it is only when emotion is in a measure our own work
do we enjoy the result”. Recreation must call out activity, it fails if
it gives and requires nothing. We only have what we give. He that would
save his life loses it.
(3) The last and most notable mark of recreation is the use of the
imagination. Recreation comes from within and not from without the man.
It depends on that a man _is_ and not upon what a man _has_. A child
grows tired of his toys, a man wearies of his possessions, but there is
no being tired of the imagination which leaps ahead and every day
reveals something new. Sleary was wrong when he said, “People must be
amused”. He should have said, “People must amuse themselves”. Their
recreation must, that is, come from the use of their own faculties of
heart and mind. “The cultivation of the inner life,” it was truly said
in a discussion on the hard lot of the middle classes, “is the only cure
for the commercial tyrannies and class prejudices of that class.” The
Japanese are the best holiday takers I have ever met; they have in
themselves a taste for beauty, and they go to the country to enjoy the
use of that taste. A man who because he is interested in mankind sets
himself on his holiday to observe and study the habits of man; or,
because he cares for Nature, looks deeper into her secrets by the way of
plants or rocks or stars; or, because he is familiar with history, seeks
in buildings and places illustrations of the past; a holiday maker who
in such ways uses his inner powers will come home refreshed. His
pleasure has come from within; he, on the other hand, who has lounged
about a pier, moved from place to place, travelled from sight to sight,
looking always for pleasure from outside himself, will come home bored.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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