“The Child is father of the Man”—William Wordsworth
Without leisure, play, recreation, art, and worship, man lacks contact with the divine attributes of God philosophers call the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. In a child’s play, an adult’s favorite recreation or pastime, the enjoyment of beauty, or a festive event like a wedding, a person experiences life’s great goodness and senses the richness that lies at the heart of reality: “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things” Hopkins writes in “The Grandeur of God.” In relishing the joy of pure fun or the good company of friends and family and the savory tastes of delicious cooking on holiday occasions, a person appreciates the fullness of joy that inspires King David to say “Taste and see the sweetness of the Lord” and moves Odysseus in the Odyssey to praise hospitality as “something like perfection.” As St. Thomas Aquinas writes, “No man can live without pleasure.” God designed man for happiness and beatitude, and life’s sweetness intimates this universal truth.
Dickens’ novel Hard Times depicts the manufacturing city of Coketown as a society where life is all toil and no enjoyment. A place where “the English people are as hard worked as any people upon whom the sun shines,” the city affords rare opportunities for a glimpse of the Transcendentals. Because play is judged “useless,” a state of unproductive idleness and a waste of time better spent learning practical, useful 
subjects to prepare for a career and for the struggle to survive, children in Gradgrind Academy are forbidden to attend a circus, read fairy tales and nursery rhymes, and engage in the imaginative realm of make-believe and have wonder. The children never heard of the man in the moon, never read the line “Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are,” or had any idea of “the cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat that ate the rat who ate the malt.” Because they are deprived of the pure fun of play, they do not savor the goodness of life. They have no idea of the freshness deep down things, the taste of life’s sweetness, or something like perfection. Without these quintessential human experiences, the children in Dickens’ novel have no natural knowledge of God’s presence in the world. They do not discover the goodness of the created world that God declares in Genesis: “And behold it was very good.” Their childhood deprives them of the enchantment of play that Robert L. Stevenson captures in A Child’s Garden of Verses: “The world is so filled with a number of things, /I think we should all be as happy as kings.”
Because Coketown worships work, money, and material success and assumes that economic and social life function on the basis of competition and the survival of the fittest, time is money and work alone is “the one thing needful.” Gradgrind Academy teaches only Facts: “Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.” The school does not teach history, religion, literature, or any of the liberal arts, and sports like rugby and cricket have no place in the curriculum. Leisure and recreation, the cultivation of friendship and beauty, and an enjoyment of the arts dissipate time and spoil a person’s rise to prosperity in a fiercely competitive society. The ambitious who seek wealth and social status scorn all activities or human relationships that divert them from the acquisition of lucrative positions. One character, Bitzer, claims “I don’t want recreations. I never did, and I never shall,” and he also remarks “I don’t want a wife and a family.” Without the balance of work and play, the characters in Hard Times do not rejuvenate their spirits or nourish their hearts. They live only to work and do not work in order to live and to play.
Without the education and refinement of the heart, the characters act only in the name of self-interest. When accused of acting mercenary, young Tom Gradgrind replies, “Who is not mercenary?” The pupils of the school lack the virtues of the heart—charity, love of neighbor, kindness, compassion, and mercy—that introduce them to the truth of God as the origin and author of love, He who loved man “first” as St. John explains: “for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God.” Deprived of play, leisure, and love, the characters in the book have no road to God. Because the children have never tasted the goodness of pleasure, they do not know mirth, laughter, or fun. Instead Tom Gradgrind complains to his sister, “I am sick of my life, Loo. I hate it altogether, and I hate everybody except you.” Without an education based on the Transcendentals, the child’s mind, heart, and conscience do not naturally lead to a knowledge and love of God. They do not see, hear, taste, or feel the goodness of the world.
In Coketown, a polluted city devoid of all beauty, “a town of red brick, or would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it,” no one experiences the attraction of the beautiful. Whether it is red brick turned black, a sky filled with smoke trails, a river discolored with purple dye, or the monotony of “several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another,” the experience of the beautiful holds no place in the business of manufacturing or in the ordinary lives of workers named “Hands” as if they existed only to work. No one in the novel ever alludes to the heavens that declare the glory of God, the resplendent beauty of flowers, sunrises, and sunsets, or even the beauty of arrangement and decor in a room.
Children are warned of the impractical nature of beautiful decoration and art: “You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets.” So too painting pictures of birds and butterflies on crockery is nonsense and fancy. The classroom also, “a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room,” is another drab, dreary environment to discourage any interest in the impracticality of beauty. The absence of beauty means the loss of wonder, the natural response to the miracle of color, light, splendor, and glory of creation. Without the radiance of the beautiful casting its brightness throughout the world, man suffers separation from another one of the channels that leads to a knowledge and love of God—the invisible things of God known through the visible as St. Paul writes.
When society, popular culture, and education fail to value and honor the transcendental realities, the absence of truth, goodness, and beauty reduce human life to a crass, secular world governed only by economic forces where man lives in order to work and suffers a dehumanized existence. Man’s heart, soul, and heart suffer, and he lacks an interior life, the sensitivities of the heart, and normal human affections. Man lacks the emotional, moral, and intellectual resources to enrich the lives of others and to appreciate the abundance of pleasures and the fullness of joy life affords. The children in the Gradgrind Academy who are denied the play of childhood, the wonder of fairy tales, and the fun of the circus learn only seriousness, never show mirth or laughter, and have no love of life. Without an education in wonder at the true, the good, and the beautiful and the education of the heart, children do not view life as a great adventure, bring joy to others, develop a conscience, have any affection for another person, or express gratitude for any of life’s blessings.
As Dickens shows, when childhood suffers—whether in the Victorian England or twenty-first century America– and the young receive merely a factual education devoid of liberal arts, they lack moral standards, habits of virtue, and a sense of the beauty of goodness and the ugliness of evil. Three graduates of the school soon fall into an immoral way of life that proves utilitarian education useless. Tom indulges in the vices of gambling and drunkenness and robs a bank, heartlessly framing an innocent man of the theft. Bitzer, when begged for a favor and asked if he has a heart, refuses and explains it is not accessible to compassion but only to reason, meaning self-interest. Without emotion Louisa marries an older man whom she does not love and then welcomes the romantic interest of another man who senses her unhappiness. What the world judged useless and impractical—the simple childhood pleasures loved for their own sake—prove to be invaluable and priceless. While the nursery rhymes, circus, and fairy tales do not prepare “Hands” to work in the factories, they open the mind to wonder, goodness, beauty, and truth—the path to God. The Child is father to the Man, not to the Worker.