ultimate and satisfying form of success.




Chapter VII

Liberation


Work is the most continuous and comprehensive form of action; that form
which calls into play and presses into steady service the greatest number
of gifts, skills, and powers. Into true work, therefore, a man pours his
nature without measure or stint; and in that process he comes swiftly or
slowly to a clear realisation of himself. Work sets him face to face with
himself. So long as he is getting ready to work he cannot measure his
power, nor take full account of his resources of skill, intelligence, and
moral endurance; but when he has closed with his task and put his entire
force into the doing of it, he comes to an understanding not only of but
with himself. Under the testing process of actual contact with materials
and obstacles, his strength and his weakness are revealed to him; he
learns what lies within his power and what lies beyond it; he takes
accurate account of his moral force, and measures himself with some degree
of accuracy against a given task or undertaking; he discovers his capacity
for growth, and begins to see, through the mist of the future, how far he
is likely to go along the road he has chosen. He discerns his lack of
skill in various directions, and knows how to secure what he needs; in
countless ways he measures himself and comes to know himself.

For work speedily turns inward power into outward achievement, and so