THREE ESSENTIALS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1986, 5 June 1919, Page 4

THREE ESSENTIALS.

WORK, RECREATION, AND A GOOD HOBBY. (Melbourne Argus.) Many men an' anxious to-day ahout having shorter hours. They would like to out down (ho working day to six hours, (o four hours, to nothing' at ail. They seem to think that the shorter the working time the nearer we get to perfection. Probably, however, if the laws of health in mind and body were fully known, we should tind that, just as (here is a maximum time .beyond which it m had to work, so there is a minimum time beyond which a man must work or he wijl become unhealthy. Also, it is ’being assum- 1 cd without thought and without examination that all men in all occupations should work about the same number of hours per day. Yet if a man be writing a book on a difficult subject the creative effort of (hatwork will exhaust him more in four hours than if he worked in his garden all day long. So this, demand for equality of workink time is merely another fallacy. But the most important fallacy of all is the assumption that the welfare of men depends chiefly on the length of the ‘leisure time they may have; whereas the truth is that their welfare depends not on the ledgth of leisure but on the way in which the leisure is employed. This is one of the most important problems! before the workers of the world to-day. if some miracle were to happen in Nature whereby as a consequence all men had endless leisure, thou, we are afraid, as human nature is constituted, mankind on the whole would become degenerate and would die out. For men have not yet learned how to use their leisure* and, consequently, it is their working habit during (heir working time Hint realty helps I hem most. Their leisure is often a time of mere waste and decay. How to employ their leisure time becomes an urgent question.

When men were required to work from ten to fourteen hours n day they always felt that during' their short period of leisure they must have some game or amusement. A wise instinct taught them that a game was as necessary as food and sleep. But when a man has what is called an eight hours day eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation and eight hours for sleep —then he feels it to ho a foolish and a wasteful thing to spend all his recreation time in mere amusement or in games. This judgment, applies to bridge as well as to “twoup,” for all hough he one is legal and the other illegal we are not now considering these distinctions. - The point is that to put in one’s whole leisure at bridge or at novels is not so very different to putting in one's time'" at “two-up” or “movies.” Golf, it may be said, stands on a higher plane, and so do theatres and entertainments generally. But the general law holds with regard to them all. The man who has a comfortable leisure daily and spends all that leisure at games and amusements is acting wastefully and foolishly. He will not maintain his health or live out his days. His way of using his leisure is against his own interests. It is ju>t at this point that the hobby comes in. His hobby is such a man’s salvation. It is the substitute for a medicine, and it is less expensive than a doctor, while it does that which no mere game or amusement can possibly do. Games or amusements beyond a certain point destroy or. dissipate .the mental strength, the powers of attention and effort and concentration of will: (hey become mere excitement which uses up cerebral energy and leaves the man weaker than before; they are not reerealion, but dissipation. But a hobby is the very opposite. .It lakes a man’s mind off his work, yet it both rests his hand and recreates his mental energy. It does not matter much what hobby a man* has, so long as it he really a hobby and not merely an amusement or excitement. It may be music or some form of art; it may be his garden otysome form of handicraft; it may bo reading or some form of study. But always it is not a mere amusement; always it involves some kind of effort; always it is unconsciously self-educational. Most healthily bred boys and girls have some kind of hobby, and that hobby is the antiseptic of their leisure hours. But in very class of life there such a large number who have no such safeguard, and for them their leisure means always their time of waste and decay. It is in their leisure that they become relaxed and self-indulgent mere drinkers-up of,excitement; and their life history becomes like that of the' frog in the well which climbed up a foot every day and fell back eighteen inches every night; the problem was how long it would take'to reach the top. It cannot be maintained that the pleasures of the mass of the people are becoming coarser or more vicious than they wore, say, a century ago. On the contrary a steady amelioration has been going on. But the danger of our time is that, while men are having so much more leisure, they are, so many of them using it in the pursuit of mere amusement and excitement. They are getting no recreation out of it. Their leisure is merely shortening their days and weakening their strength. When we compare the hobby 'with - the amusement, it is easy to see the value of the one and the risk of the other. But when we compare the hobby with the daily

work it is more difficult to see their relative values. The question is: Which enters most into a maids culture, into his self-development, into his personality? Arc the leisure hours more important than the working hours so far as the man’s whole nature is concerned?- At first one would say Yes ; but on second thoughts No. After all, in the hobby of a man’s leisure he is only playing with an occupation; while in his daily work he is at grips with reality itself. The effort to do his daily work with a perfect skill, that is the thing that enters most into the fibre of a man’s being, and most makes him what be really becomes. Stevenson used to say he did not write’Wor fame or art or applause,, but just for.money: that is, his writing was his daily life work, he lived by it, and he had “toiled terribly” to perfect himself at it. It is this “toiling terribly” as a man’s daily task, to do it perfectly, and to make himself perfect as (lie doer: it is this htat makes more, than any hobby, that makes a man what lie really becomes. This is (lie heart of his self-culture, bis self-expression, his self-develop-ment, and of his influence on others. It is tins htat makes him a master of his skill, and loads others to Into imitate him and catch bis secret. No bobby, however good, or useful, or self-educational, can come up to (his. The first tiling then in life is that everyone should become as good a workman as possible; the second is that lie should have a hobby for his leisure, which will be a source both of health and of delight to him; ami only in Hie third place comes in the amusement; but we are afraid that one of the groat dangers of democracy will be the misuse of leisure.