The steps of life: further essays on happinessHilty, Karl
Philosophy
The steps of life: further essays on happiness
Hilty, Karl
Conduct of life; Happiness
4. Work also belongs to culture. It is not only a quite indispensable
means of attaining thereto, but idleness, even if one can “afford”
it, is always the mark of a disposition with low ideals; and that is
directly opposed to culture. Such a man will seek his pleasure in
something else, something less fine, or will possess a foolish pride
in not being obliged to work, or finally he is a fellow of coarse
sensibilities to whom it is a matter of indifference whether others
perish by his side whom he could have helped by his exertions.
An idler by profession is therefore surely a man without ideals and
without real culture, however elegant may be the external forms of
culture he has gathered round him. They are empty forms without real
substance, and every man of better culture is bound not to allow
himself to be deceived thereby and not to respect such people.
5. But not much less harmful is the inordinate passion for work. When
it is voluntary, it nearly always springs from ambition or greed, two
of the worst enemies of true culture; they always show that one sets
the highest value upon something else than culture. Or this passion
for work is only a bad habit and the imitation of a bad example, or
finally it may spring from a want of inner peace and control, which are
themselves the fruit of culture.
Whoever works on Sundays just the same as on week-days, when he is not
compelled to, you may quietly consider as little cultured as the man
who does nothing any day.
6. A very necessary element in culture is an absolute trustworthiness
and an upright conduct in all money-matters. To the cultured man it is
not permitted to display prodigality, or an aristocratic contempt for
money; a disposition like that always indicates lack of culture, and is
unjust toward one’s needy fellow-men, besides being mostly pretence.
Nor is it permitted him, on the other hand, to show undue parsimony,
nor dishonesty even in the smallest particulars. On this point, the
Scriptures say quite truly: “He that is faithful in a very little is
faithful also in much.”
An absolutely rightful employment of money, with the strictest honesty,
with complete disregard for money as the goal of life, and yet with
a proper valuation of it as the means of attaining higher ends, is
perhaps the surest of all signs of a man of genuine culture; as the
chase after gains and the worship of money most surely betrays the
uncultured man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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