"As long as man labors for a physical existence, though an act of necessity almost, he is yet natural; it is life, though that of this world, for which he instinctively works"
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Work, for Jones Very, isn’t just drudgery; it’s proof-of-life. In a single, winding sentence, he reframes labor for “a physical existence” as something that feels compulsory and still, paradoxically, “natural.” That tension is the engine of the line. The phrase “an act of necessity almost” nods to the grim truth that survival work can hollow you out, reduce you to appetite and routine. But Very refuses to treat that reduction as spiritual failure. He treats it as an honest baseline: to keep yourself fed, sheltered, breathing is not to fall beneath humanity; it’s to stay inside it.
The subtext is quietly polemical, and it makes sense coming from a 19th-century poet formed by New England’s religious seriousness and the Transcendentalist air around him. Transcendentalism often prized the soul’s higher striving, sometimes at the expense of ordinary needs; Very, who wrote intensely religious verse and wrestled with ecstatic states, is unusually clear-eyed here about the body’s claim. He grants necessity its dignity. “It is life, though that of this world” sounds like a concession, but it’s also a defense: worldly life may not be the whole story, yet it’s still life, still animated by instinct, still worthy of moral attention.
Why it works is in the moral rebalancing. Very smuggles compassion into a framework that could easily turn harsh, insisting that those who labor to live are not merely stuck in the mud; they’re obeying the most fundamental impulse of being alive.
The subtext is quietly polemical, and it makes sense coming from a 19th-century poet formed by New England’s religious seriousness and the Transcendentalist air around him. Transcendentalism often prized the soul’s higher striving, sometimes at the expense of ordinary needs; Very, who wrote intensely religious verse and wrestled with ecstatic states, is unusually clear-eyed here about the body’s claim. He grants necessity its dignity. “It is life, though that of this world” sounds like a concession, but it’s also a defense: worldly life may not be the whole story, yet it’s still life, still animated by instinct, still worthy of moral attention.
Why it works is in the moral rebalancing. Very smuggles compassion into a framework that could easily turn harsh, insisting that those who labor to live are not merely stuck in the mud; they’re obeying the most fundamental impulse of being alive.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work |
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