down to breakfast--then is the world mad. But the world is not mad, only in
ignorance--an interested ignorance, kept up by strenuous exertions, from
which infernal darkness it will, in course of time, emerge, marvelling at
the past as a man wonders at and glories in the light who has escaped from
blindness.


CHAPTER XI

This our earth produces not only a sufficiency a superabundance, but in one
year pours a cornucopia of good things forth, enough to fill us for many
years in succession. The only reason we do not enjoy it is the want of
rational organisation. I know, of course, and all who think know, that some
labour or supervision will always necessary, since the plough must travel
the furrow and the seed must must be sown; but I maintain that a tenth,
nay, a hundredth, part of the labour and slavery now gone through will be
sufficient, and that in the course of time, as organisation perfects itself
and discoveries advance, even that part will diminish. For the rise and fall
of the tides alone furnish forth sufficient power to do automatically all
the labour that is done on the earth. Is ideal man, then, to be idle? I
answer that, if so, I see no wrong, but a great good. I deny altogether that
idleness is an evil, or that it produces evil, and I am well aware why the
interested are so bitter against idleness--namely, because it gives time for
thought, and if men had time to think their reign would come to an end.
Idleness--that is, the absence of the necessity to work for subsistence--is
a great good.

I hope succeeding generations will be able to be ideal. I hope that
nine-tenths of their time will be leisure time; that they may enjoy their
days, and the earth, and the beauty of this beautiful world; that they may