Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 01 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great by Elbert Hubbard
page 27 of 261 (10%)
page 27 of 261 (10%)
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amid this sad, mad rush for wealth and place and power. The calm of the
country invites, and we would fain do with less things, and go back to simplicity, and rest our tired heads in the lap of Mother Nature. Life is expression. Life is a movement outward, an unfolding, a development. To be tied down, pinned to a task that is repugnant, and to have the shrill voice of Necessity whistling eternally in your ears, "Do this or starve," is to starve; for it starves the heart, the soul, and all the higher aspirations of your being pine away and die. At the Roycroft Shop the workers are getting an education by doing things. Work should be the spontaneous expression of a man's best impulses. We grow only through exercise, and every faculty that is exercised becomes strong, and those not used atrophy and die. Thus how necessary it is that we should exercise our highest and best! To develop the brain we have to exercise the body. Every muscle, every organ, has its corresponding convolution in the brain. To develop the mind, we must use the body. Manual training is essentially moral training; and physical work is, at its best, mental, moral and spiritual--and these are truths so great and yet so simple that until yesterday many wise men did not recognize them. At the Roycroft Shop we are reaching out for an all-round development through work and right living. And we have found it a good expedient--a wise business policy. Sweat-shop methods can never succeed in producing beautiful things. And so the management of the Roycroft Shop surrounds the workers with beauty, allows many liberties, encourages cheerfulness and tries to promote kind thoughts, simply because it has been found that these things are |
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