Chapter 39

THE ETHICS OF LEISURE

NOBODY likes a book that is printed to the utmost extremity of every page. We love a margin. We somehow feel that the marginless volume is an outrage on human nature.

It is, indeed, an outrage on Nature herself, for Nature specializes in margins. She wants a bird, so a dozen are hatched. She knows perfectly well that eleven out of the twelve are merely margin. She will toss them to the cats and the foxes and the weasels and the snakes, reserving to herself the best of the batch. She wants a tree, so she plants a hundred. Ninety-nine are mere margin; but she wants to make sure of one.

It is the margin that makes all the difference. If the work that must be done occupies every waking moment of a man’s time, he is a slave; if it leaves him a reasonable margin, he is in clover. If his receipts will only just balance his expenditure, he is living a mere hand-to-mouth existence; if, on the contrary, they leave him a margin, he jingles the surplus coins in his Docket with the pride of a prince.

Mr. Micawber’s philosophy hits the situation off with precision. ‘Annual income—£20; annual expenditure—£20 0s. 6d.; result-misery! Annual income—£20; annual expenditure—£19 19s. 6d.; result—happiness!’ In point of fact, this matter of the margin touches the financial issue very closely. The way in which a people spends its money represents the crucial test of national character. But it is not always along the main line of expenditure that the revelation is made.

The principal items of expenditure, being inevitable, are beyond the control of the individual. A man must eat and drink-and wear clothes, whether he be a burglar or a bishop. But after a man has provided himself with the stern necessities of life, then comes the test. What of the margin? It is in the expenditure of that margin of money that the real man will reveal himself. It is the use or abuse of that margin that declares his true character and that determines the contribution that he, as an individual citizen, will make to the national weal or woe.

In the same way, there is a section of time that remains to a man after the main business of life has been dealt with. It is the use to which that margin is put that betrays the inherent propensities of the individual, and that, in the long run, determines the destiny of the nation. There, let us suppose, are two bricklayers. From the time that the hour strikes 4 or them to commence operations until the time comes to lay aside their trowels for the day, they very closely resemble each other. The one may be a philosopher and the other a scoundrel; but these traits will find small opportunity of expressing themselves as they chip away at the bricks and spread the mortar. The intellectual proclivities of the one and the vicious propensities of the other will be held in the severest restraint as they labour side by side.

But the moment that the tools are tossed aside, the character of each man stands revealed. He is his own master. Like a hound unleashed, he can now follow his particular bent without let or hindrance. It is during his margin of leisure that the one, by developing his best self, will increase the value of his citizenship; and it is during that immunity from industrial repression that the other will compass his own deterioration and exert his influence for the general impoverishment.

Obviously, therefore, the matter of the margin is, first and foremost, a matter of morals. Concerning the expenditure of the hours occupied with labour, and concerning the money spent on the actual requisites of life, the statesman may have something to say. Legislation may deal with the hours of toil and the rate of wages. It may even influence the precise amount of the butcher’s and the baker’s bills. But when it comes to the hours that follow labour, and to the cash that remains after the principal accounts have been paid, the legislator finds himself out of his depth. He has come to the end of his tether. He cannot direct the people how to spend their spare time and their spare cash. Yet, as we have seen, it is this margin of hours and of money that determines everything.

It is clear from all this that, important as are the functions of statesmanship, they have their limits and those limits are rigidly defined. The really fundamental elements of individual conduct and national life are not to be controlled by Act of Parliament. They elude the most searching enactments of the most vigilant legislators. As the hours of labour contract, and as the margin of spare cash increases, the authority of the legislator becomes smaller and smaller, and the imperative need for some force that shall shape the conscience and behaviour of the people becomes greater and greater. Here is a mystic realm that defies anything that savours of coercion from without, and that is only susceptible to persuasion from within.

Therein lies the challenge that must awaken anxious thought in the minds of those who are charged with the moral and spiritual guidance of the populace. The Church claims to be the custodian of a secret that can meet that challenge. She possesses an evangelistic and transfiguring gospel that can appeal to the inmost instincts and motives of humanity, making bad men good and good men better. In virtue of such sublime prerogatives, she fails to mould men’s inner lives and make herself the mistress of the margin, the outlook is by no means reassuring.

By Dr. F. W. Boreham