The Gains of Drudgeryfrom The Making of Manhood by William James Dawson

By drudgery, I mean work that in itself is not pleasant, that has noimmediate effect in stimulating our best powers, and that only remotelyserves the purpose of our general advancement. Such a definition maynot be perfect, but it expresses with reasonable accuracy what we usuallyunderstand by the term.

Now, if this is what we mean by drudgery, it is clear that we are alldrudges. We all have to do many things, day by day, which we wouldrather not do. Even in the callings that seem to present the most perfectcorrespondence between gifts and work, such as those of the writer orthe artist, drudgery dogs the heels of all progress. . . We show some per-ception of these facts in our common sayings, that easy writing makeshard reading, and what costs a man little is usually worth little. Butfew of us have any adequate sense of the immense toil which lies behindthe brilliant successes of the great artist or famous writer. And the samething might be said of the lives of great statesmen, politicians, reform-ers, merchants, and memorable men in all walks of life. Examine suchlives, and the amount of prolonged toil which lies behind all the glitterof public fame is enormous, and to the indolent even appalling. If anyman of the Elizabethan period gives the impression of having achievedgreat things with a certain airy ease and instinctive facility of touch, it isWalter Raleigh. Yet it was of Raleigh that Elizabeth said, “he could toilterribly.” The same thing may be said of every great man, so that it issmall wonder that we have learned to believe that genius itself is simplyan infinite capacity for taking pains.

When a man grumbles about the drudgery of his lot, then I am enti-tled to conclude that he has not learned the discipline of work, and thatit is native indolence rather than suppressed genius which chafes againstthe limitations of his environment. Browning, in his poem of The Statueand the Bust, has laid down the doctrine that it is a man’s wisdom tocontend to the uttermost even for the meanest prize that may be withinhis reach, because by such strenuous contention manhood grows, and bythe lack of it manhood decays.

The clerk who does not strive to be the best clerk in the office, thecarpenter who is not emulous of being the best carpenter in the work-shop, is not likely to achieve excellence in any other pursuit for which heimagines his superior talents better fitted. . . I have little faith in the youthwho is always crying out against his condition, and telling an incredulousworld what great things he could do if his lot were different. The boast ofgeneral talents for everything usually resolves itself into particular talentsfor nothing. The incompetent clerk, in nine cases out of ten, would beequally incompetent as writer, artist, or speaker. If I were adjured tohelp a youth to some sphere supposed to be better suited to his gifts, Ishould first of all need to be convinced that he had performed faithfullythe duties of the inferior sphere in which he found himself. The superiortalent always shows itself in the superior performance of inferior duties.It is the man who is faithful in little things to whom there is given au-thority over larger things. He who has never learned the art of drudgeryis never likely to acquire the faculty of great and memorable work, since

the greater a man is, the greater is his power of drudgery.But the gains of drudgery are not seen only in the solid successes of

life, but in their effect upon the man himself. Let me take in illustrationa not infrequent case. Suppose a man gives up his youth to the strugglefor some coveted degree, some honour or award of the scholarly life. Itis very possible that when he obtains that for which he has struggled,he may find that the joy of possession is not so great as the joy of thestrife. It is part of the discipline of life that we should be educated bydisillusion; we press onward to some shining summit, only to find that itis but a bastion thrown out by a greater mountain, which we did not see,and that the real summit lies far beyond us still. But are we the worse forthe struggle? No; we are manifestly the better, for by whatever illusionwe have been led onward, it is at least clear that without the illusion weshould not have stood as high as we do. So a man may either fail orsucceed in gaining the prize which he covets; but he cannot help beingthe gainer in himself. He has not attained, but he has fitted himself forattaining. It is better to fail in achieving a great thing than to succeedin achieving a little one, and the struggle that fails is, in any case, to bepreferred to the stolidity which never aspires. And why ? Because thestruggle is sure to develop certain great and noble qualities in ourselves.Thus, though such a man may not gain the prize he sought, he has gaineda command over his chance desires, a discipline of thought, a power ofpatient application, a steadiness of will and purpose, which will stand himin good stead throughout whatever toils his life may know in the hiddenyears which lie before it. And even if he gain the prize he sought, thereal prize is found not in a degree, a certificate, a brief taste of applauseon a commemoration day, but in the deeper strength of soul, the widerrange of wisdom, which the long discipline of unflagging effort has taughthim. So true is this, that Lessing, who was among the wisest of thinkers,said, that if he had to choose between the attainment of truth and thesearch for truth, he would prefer the latter. The true gain is always inthe struggle, not the prize. What we become must always rank as a farhigher question than what we get.