THE ART OF IDLING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13453, 1 June 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE ART OF IDLING.

[by roiirxoA.]

The enthusiastically ambitious Melbourne gentleman who was dragged fainting from the piano the other day, when just on the verge of breaking the piano-playing record of 48 hours without a break, may not be an average example of the :trenuous age, but he certainly is a product of it. For though many of us are doing our little best to recover the almost lost art of idling, we cannot suddenly recover from the obsession of a century which asserted " doing'' to be the end and aim or human existence.

When it isn't, of ;ourse. There are all sorts of differences of opinion as to the chief end of man, but if wo strike the happy mean through the sum of all the ;philosophies and creeds, it is plain enough |that "resting" is at least as much the aim of life as "doing," and that doing is enjoyable largely because it enables us to enjoy resting, and resting enjoyable largely because it enables us to enjoy doing. And if there is something wrong with the man who can't enjoy working, there is something equally wrong with the map who can't enjoy idling. The Melbourne gentleman who put in 46 hours at the piano was foolish, ot course, but was he anv more foolish than those who put in 46 years toiling with the muck-rake and die without having wasted a moment in looking up at the glory of the stars?

There isn't very much doubt that the thing which popularised "the strenuous life," was the factory in its early developments. Under ordinary circumstance* production is only half of the battle of trade. Anybody can produce, but it isn't everybody who can profitably exchange. There evidently isn't any use in toiling away just to give the other fellow a good bargain ; but by a most unfortunate conglomeration of circumstances after the Napoleonic wars the English mills were practically able to sell at a profit everything they could make. We know the result. Babies of six—little toddling children whose plight can never be told of in printable Englishwere put to work not only from dawn till dark, but from dark | till dawn and the cry of the children that I rang from those strenuous English mills is lavnnntr th° things which we have to reckon 'with yet. Men, women, and children be- ! came part of a great machine, with the millowners working as hard as any and as much parts of the. machine as the poorest. At the same time, the English in America were occupying a continent and caught the frenzy. The Nineteenth Century was the piano-play-ing age truly. Men sat fingering the keys until they died, because it had somehow become tbe'right thing to be " strenuous." We are recoverinT a little, but what, a nightmare it. has been ! ,

: iWe called it "strenuous;" we made it a! godly and noble thins to toil and, slave be-1 cause in the United Kingdom the' Celt and the Saxon have become so mixed up thai, neither of them ■ can now manage to jog peacefully along on bis own. Roughly speaking*, the Celt thinks ' more of >ther worlds and the things , that are involved in other worlds, not merely of heavens and hells-, and. purgatories, but of ancestors and traditions' aid reputation and what other people will say; whereas the Saxon thinks more of the 'world that is and the things that are, and has never managed to get over the conviction that the good are rewarded and the had punished, not sometime, but ■••'right now, and that as long as he himself feels comfortable nothing else matters. The Celt can hardly imagine «a morality which commands the satisfying of the instincts .of living ; the Saxon cannot imagine a. morality which denies the instincts of living ; for the one wants to live in Dreamland and talk with the angels, while the other wants to live on Faith and walk round . with the daughters* of ' men. I Tell the Celt that he is born to suffer,.and hie-accepts'ft-" vriih* his' Whole" heart 1 ; • ./buttell the Saxon that' he is bom to ? work, and ho is inclined to give it a trial. For all wealth comes from work, and as wealth] 1 seems a good thing to - have, the work ; whereby wealth comes seems etoocl too. ■ If you graft the Celtic idealisation of suffering upon the Saxon ideal of becoming wealthy by work, the "strenuous life" blossoms as a-matter, of course. -'.. ■:_

And so, or somehow like that, came the " strenuous life" in the century when work became tangled up with suffering, and we were sorrowfully told that '."-Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do"— mischief, 'by the' way. including going to the theatre",' and reading novels, and sitting in picture galleries, and gazing at the 'stars. Everything was "mischief- which was outside of money-grubbing in this life or worrying about the next life—both. excellent things in. their place, and necessary to mankind, but not'calculated to give joy in living if one ' has too much of them. And still we suffer for the confusion of ideas. We are beginning to look for some pleasure again, but we still incline to take our pleasures sadly, which means that we have not yet relearned how to appreciate idleness. Nobody ever yet got the whole truth of material things, anyway ; but we get nearer the truth whenever we readjust values. The gravitation theory isn't quite true, in spite of the Corntistr—who are to be found as much among the orthodox as the heterodox, only they don't know it—?nd the evolution theory isn't infallible either, in spite of the contempt • With which the pseudo-scientific look down upon the old faith. So it isn't correct to say that we live to enjoy Life, but there is something in that, all the same. The sun shines as much to make us glad as for any other purpose, and it is as pleasant to" idle in the sunshine as it is to work in it, as, long as wo feel that way. And the Saxon saysis it right? We are always worrying ourselves so about what is right and what is wrong—whereas 'in reality "Right" ind "Wrong" are sacred thin kept in the ark within the Holy of Holies of our souls. We English cannot help wanting to look at the sacred tilings, to handle them every morning before breakfast. It is* a question of paving Queen-street: asphalt or wood; and forthwith someone arises and tells us that asphalt is the "right" thing. Somebody else savs it isn't " right" to have , a new Town Hall, and somebody else that if we did what was " right" we should have a bridge to the North Shore. And if von do not get excited over some flimsy political question which was unknown" a year ago and will be forgotten by Christmas, you are very apt to be asked if you have no sense of "right." That is how we got on, of course. We have grabbed a lot of the earth because wanting it we found it "right" to grab. And when babies of six were driven into the mills we persuaded ourselves that it was "right" tc think of nothing but work. -But as a matter of fact, there is nothing in working for what we do not want, and the Master Workman does not appear to mind whether we have two suits of : clothes or twenty, whether we live on por- ' ridge or on the delicacies of the season. If He makes any difference, it is in favour of the Simple Life—as we all know —so that if there is any "right" in the question it is "right" to idle when you have earned that "right" by * reasonable amount of work, and quite # wrong " to go on working just from the habit of it.

For Health is the great possession, as has often been said—not Wealth, nor even Wisdom, nor Length of Days. And Health cannot be kept without some working and some .idling, any more than it can be got excepting by obeying the laws that are not made by men nor enforced by courts. And the strangest thing about us is that, with all our talk of "right" "wrong," and with all our eagerness to be righteous, we do not see that there is a Supreme Law. of which our most perfect human laws are but feeble interpretations, and against the work-

irig of which our so-called " rights" and I'' wrongs " are as though they did not exi.'t. And if we are physically the worse for working too hard —as we are: and if we are physically the better for idling on fair occasion '—as 'we are: then not onlv will those be (happier who have acquired the Art of Idling —which is to idle enough and not too much but their children and their children's children will bear rule over all others, even though they may.not inherit quite all the I earth.