П.
It is Not a Hardship, But a Joy, to Obey the
Command to Labor
L "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy
daily bread." Such is the immutable law of the body.
Just as the law of the woman is to bear her children in pain, so the law of labor is imposed upon man. A woman cannot free herself of that law. If she adopt a child born of another, it will always be a stranger to her and she will lose the joy of motherhood. Even so with the labor of man. If a man eat the bread earned by another, he deprives himself of the joy of labor. Bondareff.
2. Man fears death and is subject unto it. A man without knowledge of good and evil might seem happy, but he irresistibly strives towards that knowledge. Man loves idleness and the satisfaction of his desires without suffering, and yet it is labor and suffering that mean life to him and to his kind.
3. What a dreadful error to think that the soul of man may live the highest life of the spirit, while his body is maintained in idleness and luxury! The body is always the first disciple of the soul. Thoreau.
4. If a man, living alone, releases himself from tlie law of laboring, he executes himself immediately through the weakening and decaying of his body. But if a man releases himself from that law by compelling others to labor for him, he immediately executes himself through the eclipsing and weakening of his soul.
5. Man lives the life of the body and of the spirit. And there is a law of the life of the body and a law of the life of the spirit. The law of the life of the body is labor. The law of the life of the spirit is love. If a man violate the law of the life of the body, the law of labor, he is bound to violate the law of the life -of the spirit, the law of love.
6. No matter how gorgeous may be the attire presented to you by a king, your homespun garments are
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 147
better; no matter how delicate may be the viands of the rich, the bread of-your own table is sweeter. Saadi.
7. If you labor much for others, do not let your labor seem burdensome, seek no praise for it, remember that your labor, if performed for others with love, avails above all things for your true self, your soul.
8. The power of God makes all people equal, taking away from those who have much, giving unto those who have little. Rich men have more things and less joy from them. The poor have fewer things, but more joy. The water from a brook, and a piece of bread taste sweeter to a poor laborer after his toil than the most expensive viands and beverages to a rich idler. The rich man has tasted all things and is bored, he finds no joy in anything. The laborer, after his toil, finds each time new pleasures in food, in drink and in rest.
9. Hell is hidden behind pleasures, Paradise behind labor and privations. Mohammed,
10. Without the toil of the hand there can be no sound body, neither can there be sound thoughts in the head.
11. Would you be always in good humor? Labor until you are weary. Idleness makes men dissatisfied and cross. Laboring beyond measure may produce the same effect.
12. One of the best and purest of pleasures is rest after labor. Kant.
in.
The Best Toil is Tilling the Soil
1. In the course of time all men will recognize that truth which has been already realized by the foremost men of all races that the principal virtue of mankind con-
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148 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
sists in obeying the laws of the Supreme Being. "Earth thou art, to earth shalt thou return," this is the first law of our life which we acknowledge. And the second law is to cultivate the earth from which we were taken and to which we must return. The tilling of the soil, and the love of animals and plant life which is bound up with it, help the man best of all to realize the meaning of life, and to live it. Ruskin,
2. Agriculture is not merely one of the occupations proper to man. Agriculture is the one occupation proper to all men; agricultural labor gives man the maximum of freedom and the maximum of happiness.
3. To him who does not till the earth, the earth says: "Because thou dost not work me with thy right hand and with thy left, thou shalt always stand before the door of the stranger with other b^gars, thou shalt always live on the offal of the rich." Zarathustra.
4. In our present mode of life the most futile and useless work receives the greatest reward; work in sweat shops, tobacco factories, pharmacies, banks, business offices, or at literature, music, etc., but agricultural labor IS the poorest paid. If money rewards be considered of importance, this is very unjust. But if one considers the joy of labor and its effect upon the health of the body and the fascination of it, such a division of reward is perfectly just.
5. Manual labor, and particularly tilling the soil, is good not only for the body, but also for the soul. Men who do not labor with their hands cannot have a sound idea of things. Such men are forever thinking, speaking,
. listening or reading. Their mind has no rest, is excited and easily wanders. Agricultural labor, on the other hand,
is useful to man because in addition to resting him it enables him to realize simply, clearly and reasonably the place of man in life.
6. I am very fond of peasants. They are not educated enough to reason incorrectly. Montaigne.
IV.
What is Known as Division of Labor is Merely
a Brief for Idleness
1. Lately much has been said to show that the principal cause of success in production is division of labor. We say "division of labor," but this term is incorrect. In our society it is not labor that is divided, but human beings—these are divided into human particles, broken into small pieces, ground into dust: in a factory one man makes only one minute portion of an article, because that tiny fragment of reason which he retains is insufficient to make a complete pin or a complete nail, and is exhausted in the task of pointing the pin or heading the nail. It is true that it is good and desirable to make as many pins daily as possible, but if we realized the material with which we finish them, we would realize how unprofitable it all is. It is unprofitable because we polish them with the dust of the human soul.
It is possible to chain and torture people, to harness them like animals, to kill them like flies in the summer time, and yet these people may remain in a certain sense, perhaps in the best sense, free. But to crush their immortal souls, to choke and transform men into movers of machinery, herein is true slavery. Only this degradation and transformation of men into machines forces the workingmen to fight madly, destructively and vainly for freedom, the true meaning of which they do not understand. Their resentment is not aroused by the pressure of hunger, not by the pangs of
injured pride (these two causes have always had their effect, but the foundations of society have never been as shaky as they are now). It is not that they are not well fed, but that they do not experience any pleasure in the toil whereby they earn their daily bread, and for this reason they look upon wealth as the only source of pleasure.
It is not that these men suffer from the contempt felt for them by the upper classes, but they cannot bear their own self-contempt because they feel that the labor to which they are condemned degrades and depraves them, making them something less than men.
Never have the upper classes shown so much love and sympathy to the lower classes as now, and yet they have never been more hated. Ruskin.
2. Men, like all animals, must labor and toil with hands and feet. Men may compel others to do what they need, but still they must expend bodily energy on something. If men will not perform necessary and reasonable tasks, they will do what is useless and foolish. This is what happens among the wealthy classes.