I also want you to go from the college a good combination of a good worker and a good loafer. To be able to loaf well is not a bad purpose of an education. The loafing that carries along with itself the freedom from selfishness, appreciation of others' conditions, and gentlemanliness, is worth commending. Loafing that follows hard work and prepares for hard work is one of the best equipments of a man. Loafing that has no object, loafing as a vocation, is to be despised. The late Professor Jebb wrote to his father once from Cambridge, saying:—
"I will read but not very hard; because I know better than you or any one can tell me, how much reading is good for the development of my own powers at the present time, and will conduce to my success next year and afterwards; and I will not identify myself with what are called in Cambridge 'the reading set,' i. e., men who read twelve hours a day and never do anything else; (1) because I should lose ten per cent. of reputation (which at the university is no bubble but real living useful capital); (2) because the reading set, with a few exceptions, are utterly uncongenial to me. My set is a set that reads, but does not only read; that accomplishes one great end of university life by mixing in cheerful and intellectual society, and learning the ways of the world which its members are so soon to enter; and which, without the pedantry and cant of the 'reading man,' turns out as good Christians, better scholars, better men of the world, and better gentlemen, than those mere plodders with whom a man is inevitably associated if he identifies himself with the reading set."
I rather like the loafing which young Jebb indulged in, but I fear it is a type of the life which some college men do not follow. They are inclined to look upon the four college years as a respite between the labor of the preparatory school and the labor of business, or rather they may look upon the four college years as a life of professional leisure. I am glad you cannot, even if you wished to, and I know you do not wish to, think of college as either respite or leisure. Whether the college is wise in allowing such loafing, it is not for me now to say, but I can trust you to be the proper kind of loafer as well as of worker.
Indeed, I want you to have good habits of working. In such habits the valuation of time is of special significance. For time is not an agent. It does nothing. As a power, time is absolutely worthless. As a condition, time is of infinite worth. Mark Pattison, the rector of Lincoln College, said: "Time seems infinite to the freshman in his first term." But let me add that to a senior in his last term time is a swiftly moving opportunity. The need of time becomes more and more urgent as the college years go. When Jowett was fifty-nine years old, he wrote: "I cannot say vixi, for I feel as if I were only just beginning and had not half completed what I had intended. If I live twenty-five years more I will, Dei gratia, accomplish a great work for Oxford and for philosophy in England. Activity, temperance, no enmities, self-denial, saving eyes, never overwork." On his seventieth birthday Jowett made out what he called his Scheme of Life. It was this:—
EIGHT YEARS OF WORK.
1 Year—Politics, Republic, Dialogues of Plato.
2 Years—Moral Philosophy.
2 Years—Life of Christ.
1 Year—Sermons.
2 Years—Greek Philosophy; Thales to Socrates.
I turn over the last pages of Jowett's "Life and Letters," and I find a list of his works. Is there a moral philosophy in the list? No. A life of Christ? No. A treatise on Greek philosophy? No. But I do find a volume of college sermons, published since his death, and also a new edition of his "Plato." One of the most pathetic things in the volumes that cover his life is the constant reference to agenda —things he was to do. But the agenda rapidly become nugae —impossibilities—and the reason was simply, as it ever is, the lack of time.
To save time, take time in large pieces. Do not cut time up into bits. Adopt the principle of continuous work. The mind is like a locomotive. It requires time for getting under headway. Under headway it makes its own steam. Progress gives force as force makes progress. Do not slow down as long as you run well and without undue waste. Take advantage of momentum. Prolonged thinking leads to profound thinking. Steamers which have the longest routes seek deepest waters. Let me also counsel you to do what must be done sometime as soon as possible. Thus you avoid worry. You save yourself needless trouble and waste. You also have the satisfaction of having the thing done which is a very blessed satisfaction. I would have you spring to your work in the mood and the way in which J. C. Shairp, in his poem on the "Balliol Scholars," spoke of Temple:—
"With strength for labor, 'as the strength of ten'
To ceaseless toil he girt him night and day:
A native King and ruler among men,
Ploughman or Premier, born to bear true sway:
Small or great duty never known to shirk,
He bounded joyously to sternest work—
Lest buoyant others turn to sport and play."
Therefore, do not be a slave. Go at your job with enthusiasm. To get enthusiasm in work, work. Work creates enthusiasm for work in a healthy mind. The dyer's hand is not subdued to its materials; it is strengthened through materials for service.