How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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cutter, and shoeblack is conscious of any high mission in doing his daily task. Only a few contribute consciously; but it is not necessary to have a conscious insight into the metaphysics of work to be a productive worker. Those who toil know the value and the “ goodness ” of their work. The Importance of Useful JVork In general it may be said that everyone who is paid for his labour does useful work. This is not necessarily a quantitative index of his social value. The peculiarities of our civilization are such that the greatest and most valuable workers are often badly paid, whereas others, whose value lies chiefly in their usefulness to certain powerful, ambitious, and chiefly egoistic interests, are paid out of all proportion to their labours. Of the first type of workers we may say that the intrinsic rewards of their labours often more than compensate for the lack of material rewards, although in individual cases gross injustices occur. Suffice it to say, neither life nor society could continue unless every human being made some useful contribution to the commonweal. Certainly the verdict of history favours those who contribute most handsomely to the welfare of their fellows. The inexorable record of time erases the names of all those who have not contributed imposingly to human welfare. Men are not remembered for their looks or for their family connections; not for their money and not for their local prestige : history writes in her golden book only the names of those who have worked well and wisely. This fact should give pause to those who refuse to work, and to those who work only for their personal, egoistic ends. No one knows the names of the richest citizens of Athens during the golden age-—but her poets, her thinkers, her artists are as much alive to-day as in their own age. No one remembers the name of the princeling who employed John Sebastian Bach as his organist—but Bach’s enormous labours remain as a monument to the entire world.