hopelessness, drive right through their work. Such men are the salt
of the earth. But must there not be something wrong with a state of
society which drives these into that bitter heroism, and the most
part into shirking, into the depths often of half-conscious self-
contempt and degradation? Be sure that there is, that the blindness
and hurry of civilisation, as it now is, have to answer a heavy
charge as to that enormous amount of pleasureless work--work that
tries every muscle of the body and every atom of the brain, and
which is done without pleasure and without aim--work which everybody
who has to do with tries to shuffle off in the speediest way that
dread of starvation or ruin will allow him.

I am as sure of one thing as that I am living and breathing, and it
is this: that the dishonesty in the daily arts of life, complaints
of which are in all men's mouths, and which I can answer for it does
exist, is the natural and inevitable result of the world in the
hurry of the war of the counting-house, and the war of the
battlefield, having forgotten--of all men, I say, each for the
other, having forgotten, that pleasure in our daily labour, which
nature cries out for as its due.

Therefore, I say again, it is necessary to the further progress of
civilisation that men should turn their thoughts to some means of
limiting, and in the end of doing away with, degrading labour.

I do not think my words hitherto spoken have given you any occasion
to think that I mean by this either hard or rough labour; I do not
pity men much for their hardships, especially if they be accidental;
not necessarily attached to one class or one condition, I mean. Nor
do I think (I were crazy or dreaming else) that the work of the