Robert Louis Stevenson
8 min
In this collection of essays, Robert Louis Stevenson challenges the societal preoccupation with productivity and industriousness. He presents a defense of idleness, suggesting that the drive to constantly labour in 'lucrative professions' often obscures the true value of life. Rather than equating idleness with doing nothing, Stevenson defines it as a different, often more enriching, way of engaging with the world—one that prioritizes experience, personal reflection, and the cultivation of contentment over rigid professional success.
Stevenson critiques the modern obsession with 'the great handicap race for sixpenny pieces,' arguing that formal education and rigid career paths often narrow the soul. He contends that those who take time to wander, observe, and pursue 'the Science of the Aspects of Life' gain a richer, more nuanced understanding of reality than those who solely pursue academic or financial credentials. For Stevenson, the ability to find peace, observe beauty in the mundane, and maintain an ironical, patient perspective toward the world is an art form that the overly industrious often lack.
Expanding on this theme, Stevenson examines the nature of childhood and the importance of play. He notes that children possess an innate, imaginative capacity to transform their environment, turning mundane objects into vessels for grand adventures. He warns against the loss of this spirit in adulthood, advocating for a return to the 'spirit of our first years,' where personal interests and imaginative pursuits were prioritized over purely utilitarian or social expectations.
In discussing the 'English Admirals,' Stevenson celebrates figures who lived with a grand, quixotic, and often reckless sense of purpose. He argues that it is this 'heroic feeling'—the capacity to act with flair, courage, and a disregard for narrow self-interest—that truly enlivens a nation's spirit. While these actions may seem irrational to a 'Benthamite arithmetician,' Stevenson posits that such performances are essential to the human experience, providing inspiration and beauty far beyond any mere material output.
Sam: But if that person does useful work, why should their enjoyment matter to anybody else?
Alex: Because, Stevenson argues, their temperament affects everyone nearby. He contrasts the hurried, irritable worker with companions who improve an evening simply by being good company. His strongest formulation is the “duty of being happy”: happiness can benefit people without either person keeping account.
Sam: That gives pleasure moral weight. But someone still has to earn enough to live.
Alex: He recognizes that constraint. His recommendation that someone remain idle if happiness requires it comes with “within practical limits.” This is a challenge to making work supreme, not a worked-out arrangement for supporting everyone.
Sam: Now there’s an apparent contradiction. El Dorado ends by saying “the true success is to labour.” How does that fit a defense of idlers?
Alex: The distinction is between activity you value and achievement you expect to complete you. In El Dorado, Stevenson argues that happiness depends on continuing desires and interests, not finally possessing everything you want. Curiosity makes activity rewarding before any final arrival.
Sam: So he isn’t telling us to abandon ambition. He’s questioning the promise that one completed project will settle our lives.
Alex: His examples include finishing a major book, marriage, and raising children. Each apparent ending opens another field of concern or effort. Even familiar countryside keeps changing with the weather and seasons, offering new things to notice.
Sam: For research, the closest example is his claim that problems generate further problems. We never become as learned as we hoped.
Alex: And he treats that incompleteness as a source of pleasure, not just frustration. “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive” is his conclusion. But that does not erase his earlier warning against sacrificing health and fellowship to imagined importance.
Sam: The naval essay seems a harder test. He admires people who sacrifice their lives. Does the same account of enjoyment really extend that far?
Alex: Stevenson extends it there, and the tension matters. The English Admirals praises courage and dramatic conduct as examples that inspire others. He also acknowledges cruelty, filthy conditions, forced service, and the deaths that accompany these celebrated actions.
Sam: What makes those stories evidence for his argument, rather than simply stirring stories?
Alex: Consider his account of Greenville’s ship resisting a Spanish fleet of fifty vessels. The struggle lasts fifteen hours. Stevenson uses the story to argue that spectacular courage can encourage people far beyond the original battle, even in ordinary office work.
Sam: That illustrates what he admires. It doesn’t establish how many readers became braver, or whether admiration outweighed the damage.
Alex: No, and those numbers describe the battle, not a measured effect on readers. His further claim concerns motivation: heroes may act from a taste for intense experience and noble conduct, rather than a calculation about future fame. That is his interpretation, not demonstrated access to their thoughts.
Sam: There’s another thread here: people acting a part. The admirals make courage visible through gestures and speeches. Children also need actions and props.
Alex: Child’s Play makes that connection especially useful. Stevenson challenges the assumption that children simply possess stronger imaginations than adults. A child may need to ride a chair or fight furniture because experience has not yet supplied enough material for an entirely inward story.
Sam: So the props aren’t just evidence of imaginative abundance. In his account, they also compensate for what the child cannot yet imagine unaided.
Alex: His breakfast memory captures how thoroughly stories organize play. His cousin’s sugar-covered porridge becomes a snowy country. Stevenson’s milk-covered porridge becomes a country flooding, and eating turns into reporting which islands and valleys remain.
Sam: The food becomes secondary to the story. What does he think adults should do differently because of that?
Alex: Expect less exact reporting from children immersed in make-believe. He compares their mistakes with adult incompetence that we readily excuse. His closing plea is for patience, rather than treating every inaccurate account as deliberate dishonesty.
Sam: But his claims about children’s senses and motives are broad. How much confidence should a listener place in them?
Alex: These essays offer memories, imagined conversations, literary examples, and historical narratives, not systematic observation or controlled comparisons. They can expose an overlooked possibility without showing how common it is. I would trust the distinctions more than the sweeping claims about whole kinds of people.
Sam: Then who should read the collection, and where should they begin?
Alex: Researchers thinking about education or working habits should start with An Apology for Idlers, especially its contrast between recognized study and learning from life. Read El Dorado for its account of ambition without final arrival. Child’s Play rewards readers interested in imagination; The English Admirals most sharply tests the moral limits of his admiration for wholehearted action.
Sam: And what should everyone else carry away, without accepting every example or generalization?
Alex: Visible achievement is not the whole measure of a life. Stevenson asks what our pursuits make us capable of noticing, enjoying, and giving to other people.
Sam: Leave some room for what doesn’t look like work.