ACTIVITY

The most striking characteristic of great men is their zeal for work. None of them observed the eight-hour day, no matter what the field of their activities. We may cite as examples great statesmen, such as Napoleon or Louis XIV; great writers, such as Victor Hugo or Lamartine; great artists, such as Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci; great scientists, such as Lavoisier or Pasteur; great manufacturers, such as Bessemer or Siemens. In truth, they often employed the most varied ruses to protect their working periods from interruption. Napoleon assembled his ministerial council during the soirees at the Tuileries, leaving the reception of guests to the Empress Josephine. Buffon took refuge in his country house and there peacefully wrote his natural history. Descartes secreted himself in a little Dutch village when he desired to cultivate his philosophical meditations. The labor expended by celebrated men is sometimes greatly underestimated. Powers of extemporaneous speaking far beyond reality are often ascribed to great orators. As a matter of fact, the most successful of them write out their addresses in full before delivering them. Mistaken notions as to this have originated from false claims. Emile Zola pretended that his voluminous literary output required only three hours’ daily toil. Perhaps he did not actually keep the pen in his hand longer than that, but the final wording comprises only a small part of literary production.

Francisque Sarcey, while discussing the art of lecturing, very judicially analyzed the importance of preliminary work. He said:

“The title of a lecture should be chosen a month in advance of the delivery; then the subject matter should be considered for two weeks during every free moment, especially while strolling about. By degrees, new and interesting points of view will appear spontaneously; these should be classified either in the memory or jotted down systematically. During the third week, the material thus accumulated should be gone over mentally, the less important points rejected or suppressed, the others rearranged in their logical order and the connecting thoughts brought to light. At last, during the fourth week, the final wording is committed to paper and this requires no great effort.”

Great men have not only labored much, but their efforts have been confined to a few specialties, thus increasing the intensity of their work. In hydrostatics a force is concentrated on a piston of small area in order to produce great pressures. Saint Claire Deville devoted half of his career to the study of dissociation. Berthelot worked fifteen years on organic synthesis, fifteen years on thermo-chemistry and fifteen years on agricultural chemistry. Many scientists owe their fame to studies made in a single field as instanced by Pasteur in microbiology, Fresnel with the theory of light, Ampere and the laws of electrodynamics. The same holds true in industrial applications and as examples we have Vicat and hydraulic cements or Fourneyron and the turbine.

This concentration of effort cannot be recommended too highly to young investigators, for they frequently exhibit an opposite tendency and allow themselves to be enticed from one thing to another by topics which appeal to them. Only men of exceptional endowments, like Leonardo da Vinci or Lavoisier, can successfully distribute their efforts without paralyzing their creative powers. Some scholars carry this specialization of their endeavors to excess and pride themselves on the extent to which they disregard the obligations of daily life. Many stories in this vein are related of Ampere and of Henri Poincare. The following actual occurrence illustrates the same point. I was invited to dine with an illustrious foreigner and on arriving at the hotel I was told by my host that his wife was ill and consequently she could not dine with us. He said: “Under these conditions will you be kind enough to order the dinner, for since I have never studied this subject, I know nothing about such matters.”

It is not sufficient to work hard, but is also essential to work efficiently, i. e., time must not be wasted on useless projects. A plan of attack should be formulated in advance of starting the actual work of writing, so that there need be no hesitation. Attempts to do two things at the same time are usually fruitless, and it should be matter of principle not to stop working until something definite has been achieved. Learn to persevere and do not hesitate to adhere to a decision made after proper reflection. It is this spirit of organization, this convergence of efforts that is so highly manifested by great political leaders such as Louvois, Napoleon, Cavour, Mussolini.

Much gain may accrue by organizing the vague, spontaneous thoughts which the mind cannot suppress, even though they appear to have little value. We are always thinking about something, and this involuntary thought is much less fatiguing than mental effort consciously directed toward definite production. This preparatory reflection is sometimes erroneously regarded as being quite distinct from the real work, but this opinion is quite wrong, for preliminary thought is an essential forerunner of all creative achievement. In fact, it is just as indispensable as the final effort and the latter will certainly be of little avail if the way has not been properly prepared. If the mind could be trained not to think useless thoughts, the productive capacity would be enormously enhanced. When Newton was asked how he had discovered the laws of universal attraction, he replied: “By always thinking about them.” This may be the dominant reason for the superiority of great men, but we really know very little about this fugitive thinking, whose manifestations are not external. In fact, the originators of such mental processes are sometimes not conscious of their operation, or, as we say, we are here dealing with the subconscious. Henri Poincare claimed that he thought during sleep, and on waking would find at hand the solution of problems which had baffled him the day before. However, this is not a commendable practice, for it is opposed to the rest which each night’s sleep should bring.

How may a zeal for work be developed? Is it a natural gift or is it a result of education? The greatest stimulant of activity is habit, which proverbially becomes second nature. After leading an active life, it is not possible to stop work without suffering. Idleness due to retirement rapidly kills many men who previously had enjoyed excellent health. After the habit of working is once formed, a man will work for the mere joy of working just as we walk for the pleasure of the exercise. It has become a necessity.

However, this habit is not easily acquired. Temperament plays some part. Certain children, from birth on, exhibit more will power, have more acute faculties of attention, are more persevering, all of which are essential to the accomplishment of a protracted task. Yet these predispositions are, in general, developed only to a slight degree and play only a minor part in the differentiation of individuals. Other factors seem to be of greater importance.

The example of the home and of companions exercises a preponderant influence. A child who all his life has seen an industrious father will merely through imitation be led to accept the law of the obligation to work. Pascal, Lavoisier, Pasteur were raised in families in which honor was paid to industry. Whether the latter is intellectual or manual matters little. Very few, or perhaps no great men, have come from the families of the idle rich.

A second very potent factor is ambition, that is the desire to acquire riches or honors. Men not favored by the fortunes of birth sometimes struggle with extreme energy to make a place for themselves. A striking instance of the power of ambition is found in the career of Senator Leopold Goirand, who died recently. He published some essays on education which reveal curious points in his psychological makeup. At the age of fifteen, he conceived the dual ambition to become very rich and to attain a powerful political position. He succeeded in both endeavors. For twenty years he forced himself to be content with six hours of sleep each night in order to lengthen his working day. Each morning on arising he spent two hours acquiring general culture, the rest of the day was devoted to his business, and finally the evenings were passed in attendance on social affairs, for the latter are extremely useful in the prosecution of a career. Not until his physician warned him that he was no longer fit to continue this program did he consent to sleep eight hours nightly. Many similar examples may be cited.

In Bessemer’s autobiography, which is a veritable romance, he tells of his superhuman efforts, as a young man, to earn enough money to marry. While Cavour was striving to create the Italian kingdom, he allowed himself only five hours’ sleep each night so that he might have time for the stupendous task whose realization had been the dream of his whole life. He took over the direction of four ministries at one time.

A third stimulus, more noble than those already discussed, is the attraction inherent in the fruits of labor, i. e., the joy of knowledge and the pleasure of performance. The passion for knowledge or success in a chosen field often arouses men who by temperament or habit might have been inclined to loaf. A pertinent example is Mallard, one of the scientific glories of France. Like many others who graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique at the top of the class he seemed to be destined for a standardized, peaceful career in the governmental service. As engineer at Gueret and then as professor at Saint Etienne he divided his activity between long journeys and everyday affairs, attending to his ministrative duties and his teaching. At the age of forty he was appointed professor of mineralogy in the School of Mines in Paris and consequently because of his teaching duties he found himself obliged to study this science. He became deeply interested in one of its branches, crystallography, and for twenty years, until his death, all his efforts were concentrated in this field. He succeeded in working out original demonstrations of the laws of crystallography and he created a new chapter in this field, the theory of crystalline groupings.

Many similar cases are found among scholars, for many of them are motivated chiefly by the joy of knowledge. On the other hand, examples of this disinterested activity are less frequent among industrialists. However, the pleasure of achievement, rather than the mere love of gain, has actuated the greatest of these. The optician Zeiss worked for the glory of his country, Germany, and his native city, Jena. The Danish brewer Jacobsen engaged in business only to gain the means of endowing the museums and laboratories of Copenhagen, which have become world famous. The American millionaire Carnegie while a young man spent his free time in libraries solely because of his desire to learn. He later devoted the major portion of his immense wealth to the development of public libraries and to the founding of an institute of scientific research. Henry Ford left the farm and worked in a locksmith’s establishment because of a desire to learn the use of tools, and even now he derives great pleasure from heading a well-organized industry. I knew two contractors who had taken part in the construction of the Suez Canal. They retired from business and took up agriculture. One engaged in stock-raising, the other developed a model farm. They devoted all their energies to the enterprises and ran them so that the receipts and expenses balanced, neither profit nor loss resulting. Their sole ambition was to do a good piece of work and to turn out products of superior quality.

This joy in work may be developed by education and without difficulty. Success is assured if less attention is given to preparing for examinations and more stress laid on the intellectual molding of the children. From their earliest years they have a wide-awake curiosity, they continually ask why and how. Instead of eradicating this disposition, it should be cultivated. Science courses lend themselves wonderfully to this end. Emphasis should be placed on the linking together of facts, which is the essence of the scientific method, discarding the fastidious enumeration of isolated facts which so overburden the memories of pupils today. Any child can be interested in the consequences of Pascal’s laws of hydrostatics and made anxious to work diligently to understand them. A study of Archimedes’ principle, applied to floating bodies, of hydrometers, of water levels in connecting vessels, of atmospheric pressure—all these may be grouped around Pascal’s laws and thus made into an attractive ensemble. It is wrong to treat each of these topics as a separate chapter as many physics texts do, for then the intimate relationships disappear from view and likewise all attractiveness is lost.

Manual exercises should be included in the secondary curriculum because the formation of ideas in young people is rendered more easy and pleasant by combining sight and touch. They love motion. For instance, when teaching hydrostatics, the pupils may be directed to cut cubes from various kinds of wood, to measure them, to weigh them and finally to determine the loss in weight when the cubes are immersed in water. An exercise of this kind makes the appreciation of Archimedes’ principle pleasurable. In the same way, preliminary exercises in graphic plan-making lead to a much easier understanding of geometrical reasoning. Much less intellectual effort is required to comprehend the demonstration of a truth if actual experimentation has previously made the reality familiar.

A final incentive to the ardor for work is good health. The thought of working or still more of getting to work, i. e., the wish to do something, involves, if not a true fatigue, at least a feeling of fatigue which leads many to shrink back. A good digestion and restful sleep make the thought of work much more agreeable. This does not imply that a strong will cannot overcome the weakness arising from poor health, for there are remarkable instances of such victories, but they are rather exceptional. Pascal subdued his infirmities, but the strain finally killed him. Health always is a great driving power, and the truth of the axiom, “mens sana in corpore sano,” cannot be debated. Physical culture should occupy an important place in the education of the young; it is indispensable in the formation of the intellectual elite of a nation. However, it must not be forgotten that muscular fatigue renders all mental labor impossible for the time being. The physical exercise should follow intellectual exertion, but should never precede. While in Holland, Descartes devoted his mornings to philosophy and cultivated his garden in the afternoons.