3. The idle classes justify their idleness by claiming to attend to arts and sciences which are needful to the people. They undertake to provide the laboring people with these things, but unfortunately all that they offer under the name of arts and sciences is false arts and false sciences. So that instead of rewarding the people for their labor, they deceive and corrupt them with their offerings.
4. The European boasts to a Chinaman about the advantages of machinery production. "Machinery saves man from labor," says the European. "To be saved from labor would be a terrible calamity," retorts the Chinaman.
5. Riches may be obtained only in three ways: by
labor, begging or theft. The workingmen get so little for their labor because the share of the beggars and the thieves is too great. Henry George.
6. All men who do not labor themselves, but live by the labor of others, no matter what they may call themselves, as long as they do not labor but take the fruit of the labor of Others, all such men are robbers. And there are three classes of such robbers: some neither see, nor care to see that they are robbers, and rob their brother with equanimity; others feel that they are wrong, but imagine that they can excuse their robberies by the plea of such immaterial labors as they may consider useful to people, and they too continue to rob. Still others, and these, thanks be to God, are growing more numerous, realize their sin and endeavor to set themselves free from it.
V.
The Activities of Men Who Do Not Obey the Law of Laboring are Always Futile and Fruitless
1. The activities of idle men are such that instead of easing the labors of the working people they impose upon them additional burdens.
2. As the horse at the treadmill cannot stop, but must go on, even so is man incapable of doing nothing. Therefore there is as little merit in the fact of a man working as in the horse treading the mill. Not the fact that a man is working is of consequence, but what he is doing is of importance.
3. Man's dignity, his sacred duty and obligation demand that he use his hands and feet for the purpose for which they were given him, that he employ the food which he consumes upon the labor which produces this food, and
not to have them atrophied, or to wash them and cleanse them nor to use them merely as an instrument for conveying food, drink or cigarettes to the mouth.
4. Men who have given up working with their hands may be clever, but seldom are rational. If so much nonsense and foolishness has been written, printed and taught in our schools, if our writings, music, pictures are so refined and hard to understand, it is merely due to the fact that those who are responsible for these things do not toil with their hands and live the life of weakness and idleness.
Emerson,
5. Manual labor is particularly important because it prevents the straying of the mind: giving thought to trifles.
6. The brain of the idler is the favorite resort of the devil.
7. Men seek pleasure, rushing here and there, because they feel the emptiness of their life, but do not yet feel the emptiness of the whim that attracts them for the moment. Pascal
8. No one has ever counted the millions of days of hard, strenuous toil, the hundreds of thousands of lives which are being wasted to-day in our world upon the preparation of amusements. That is why the amusements of our world are so sad.
9. Man, like any other animal, is so made that he must work in order not to perish from hunger and cold. And this work, just as in the case of all animals, is not a torture, but a pleasure, if no one interferes with his work.
But men have so ordered their life that some, without working, compel others to work for them, and bored by this state of affairs think up all sorts of banel and vile things in order to pass away the time; others must work beyond
their strength and are embittered principally because they work for others and not for themselves.
It is not well with either of these two classes. Those wlio will not work, because their idleness ruins their souls; the others, because working to excess they waste their body.
But these latter are still better off than the idlers, for the soul is more precious than the body.
VI.
The Harm of Idleness
1. Do not be ashamed of any labor, even the dirtiest, be ashamed of one thing only, namely: idleness.
2. Do not respect people for their position or wealth, but for the work they do. The more useful this work is, the more respect they are entitled to. But it is different in the world: idle and rich men are respected, and those who perform the most useful of all labors, agriculturists and laborers, are not respected at all.
3. The idle rich seek to throw dust in people's eyes with their display of luxury. They feel that otherwise people would treat them with the contempt they deserve.
4. It is a shame for man to hear the counseclass="underline" "imitate the ant in his industry." And it is doubly shameful if he does not follow this counsel. Talmudic teaching.
5. One of the most remarkable delusions is the idea that the happiness of man consists in doing nothing.
6. Eternal idleness should have been included among the tortures of Hell, and they have given it a place among the joys of Paradise. Montaigne,
7. He who idles has always many assistants.
8. "Division of labor" is mostly an excuse for doing nothing, or performing some trifling tasks and shifting on
ЯМРЧЩ
154 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
the shoulders of others the labor which is necessary. Those who attend to this division of labor always take for themselves such work as seems the most pleasant to them, leaving to others that which appears to them hard.
And strangely enough, they are always deceived, for the work that seems to them the most agreeable, turns out to be the most onerous in the end, and that which they avoided the most pleasant.
9. Never trouble others to do what you can do yourself.
10. Doubts, sorrows, melancholy, resentment, despair— these are the fiends that lie in wait for a man, and the moment he enters upon a life of idleness, they attack him. The surest salvation from these evil spirits is persistent phjrsical labor. When a man takes up such labor, the devils dare not approach him, but merely snarl at him from afar.
Carlyle.
11. The Devil fishing for men uses all sorts of bait. But the idle man needs no bait, he is caught with the bare hook.
12. There are two proverbs: "Work will bend your back, but will not fill your pockets," and again: "Honest toil will earn you no mansions." These two proverbs are unjust, because it is better to have a bent back than be unjustly rich, and honest toil is to be preferred to mansions.
13. It is better to take a rope and go into the forest in search of a bundle of wood to be sold for food, than to beg food of people. If they refuse it, you are annoyed, if they give it, you are ashamed, which is worse.
Mohammed,
of a nobleman, the other lived by the labor of his hands. The rich brother said one day to the poor one: "Why don't you enter the service of my master? You would not know hardships or toil."
And the poor one replied: "Why don't you labor ? You would not know humiliation and servitude."
Philosophers say that it is better to eat in peace the bread earned by toil than to wear a golden girdle and be the servant of another. It is better to mix lime and clay with your hands than to fold them on your breast as a sign of servitude. Saadi,
15. The best life is not to stand at the door of the rich man speaking in a pleading voice. In order to have such life, have no fear of labor. Hindu wisdom,
16. If you will not labor, you must either crawl before others or use force upon them.
17. Alms are a good work only if they are given from the proceeds of your own labor.
The proverb says: the dry hand is tight, the sweating hand is generous. And so we read in the "Teachings of the 12 Apostles": "Let your alms come out of your hand covered with the sweat thereof."