Man's justification in life is that he is a function. His days on earth must produce a result. That is why we shall eternally regret the abolishing of the trades by the extreme division of labour. Industrial civilization has withdrawn from a vast number of men the pleasure that they used to find in their work. A high salary may make a man satisfied to have worked, but it does not give him satisfaction in the work itself, the joy of employing the present hour in the realization of a definite object. Industry has operated against the artisan to the advantage of the idler, and also to the advantage of capital against labour. Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war. The hedemonic value of muscular activity has been so far diminished that the only moments when workmen are conscious of living are those when the normal man relaxes--the moments of repose; and, necessarily, the temptation has been to dilate these hours of negative sensation to the point of absorbing in them the whole pleasure of living. Alcohol has afforded the means. In order to suppress this source of excitation, people with good intentions but unhealthy minds--that is to say, out of touch with reality--have contemplated opposing the pleasure of learning to the pleasure of drinking. If such a task were possible, physiological intoxication would be replaced by cerebral intoxication, and that would not be a very desirable result. To follow a day of muscular effort with an evening of intellectual effort, is to double the total fatigue without real profit to the man subjected to such a régime. Consider the poor wretch who, after ten hours of shoving a block of wood under the sharp teeth of a circular saw, comes back, after a picked-up supper, to listen to a gentleman address him on the holiness of justice! But justice would require the preacher to take turns with the artisan in shoving the blocks of wood and in comfortably studying the fruitful principles of social charlatanism. Poor people who, with their instinctive need of priests, believe themselves victors because, having denied a dogma, they now applaud the moral aspect of this same dogma, but deformed by hypocrisy and hatred! It is through education--a very ancient invention--that the clergy has dominated the people and the world; and it is through education also, that the lay preachers are determined to clip the last claws of the vital instinct.