音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:00.88]Passage 59. Work

[00:04.71]It is physically impossible for a well-educated,intellectual,

[00:14.66]or brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts;

[00:18.60]as physically impossible as it is for him to make his dinner the principal object of them.

[00:24.84]All healthy people like their dinner,

[00:27.68]but their dinner is not the main object of their lives.

[00:31.07]So all healthyminded people like making money

[00:34.46]—ought to like it and to enjoy the sensation of winning it;

[00:38.73]but the main object of their lives is not money; it is something better than money.

[00:44.42]A good soldier, for instance, mainly wishes to do his fighting well.

[00:49.23]He is glad of his pay—very properly so,

[00:52.51]and justly grumbles when you keep him ten months without it;

[00:56.46]still his main notion of life is to win battles, not to be paid for winning them.

[01:02.15]So of doctors.

[01:04.22]They like fees no doubt—ought to like them;

[01:07.62]yet if they are brave and well educated,the entire object of their lives is not fees.

[01:14.07]They, on the whole,desire to cure the sick,

[01:17.57]and—if they are good doctors, and the choice were fairly put to them

[01:22.38]—would rather cure their patient and lose their fee than kill him and get it.

[01:27.42]And so with all other brave and rightly trained men;

[01:31.36]their work is first, their fee second, very important always,but still second.

[01:37.82]But in every nation, there is a vast class of people who are cowardly,

[01:43.94]and more or less stupid. And with these people,

[01:47.99]just as certainly the fee is first and the work second,

[01:52.04]as with brave people the work is first and the fee second.

[01:56.63]And this is no small distinction. It is the whole distinction.

[02:01.89]It is the whole distinction in a man.

[02:05.06]You cannot serve two masters; you must serve one or the other.

[02:10.75]If your work is first with you, and your fee second, work is your master.

[02:16.98]Observe, then, all wise work is mainly threefold in character.

[02:22.67]It is honest,useful, and cheerful.

[02:25.40]I hardly know anything more strange than that you recognize honesty in play,

[02:31.32]and do not in work.

[02:33.94]In your lightest games you have always someone to see what you call “fair play”.

[02:39.19]In boxing you must hit fair; in racing, start fair.

[02:43.79]Your watchword is fair play; your hatred, foul play.

[02:47.29]Did it ever strike you that you wanted another watchword also,

[02:51.55]fair work, and another hatred also, foul work?