use into us
only grateful sensations, that they should make vegetation so exuberant
as to anticipate every want, and the minerals so ductile as to offer no
resistance to our strength and skill. Such a world would make a
contemptible race. Man owes his growth, his energy, chiefly to that
striving of the will, that conflict with difficulty, which we call
effort. Easy, pleasant work does not make robust minds, does not give
men a consciousness of their powers, does not train them to endurance, to
perseverance, to steady force of will, that force without which all other
acquisitions avail nothing. Manual labor is a school in which men are
placed to get energy of purpose and character,--a vastly more important
endowment than all the learning of all other schools. They are placed,
indeed, under hard masters, physical sufferings and wants, the power of
fearful elements, and the vicissitudes of all human things; but these
stern teachers do a work which no compassionate, indulgent friend could
do for us; and true wisdom will bless Providence for their sharp
ministry. I have great faith in hard work. The material world does much
for the mind by its beauty and order; but it does more for our minds by
the pains it inflicts; by its obstinate resistance, which nothing but
patient toil can overcome; by its vast forces, which nothing but
unremitting skill and effort can turn to our use; by its perils, which
demand continual vigilance; and by its tendencies to decay. I believe
that difficulties are more important to the human mind than what we call
assistances. Work we all must, if we mean to bring out and perfect our
nature. Even if we do not work with the hands, we must undergo
equivalent toil in some other direction. No business or study which does
not present obstacles, tasking to the full the intellect and the will, is
worthy of a man. In science, he who does not grapple with hard
questions, who does not concentrate his whole intellect in vigorous
attention, who does not aim to penetrate what at first repels him, will
never attain to mental force. The uses of toil reach beyond the present
world. The capacity of steady, earnest labor is, I apprehend, one of our
great preparations for another state of being. When I see the vast
amount of toil required of men, I feel that it must have important
connection with their future existence; and that he who has met this
discipline manfully has laid one essential foundation of imp