Undoubtedly there is a modern tendency to accept this view of the dignity of physical labor. At any rate, we differ from the savage in thinking it more fitting that man should toil than that his wife should labor to support him--though it cannot be denied that even now the number of physical toilers among women greatly exceeds the number of such toilers among men. But in whatever measure we admit this attitude of mind, there can be no question that it is exclusively a modern attitude. Time out of mind, physical labor has been distasteful to mankind, and it is a later development of philosophy that appreciates the beneficence of the task so little relished. The barbarian forces his wife to do most of the work, and glories in his own freedom. Early civilization kept conquered foes in thraldom, developing an hereditary body of slaves, whose function it was to do the physical work. The Hebrew explained the necessity for labor as a curse imposed upon Father Adam and Mother Eve. Plato and Aristotle, voicing the spirit of the Greeks, considered manual toil as degrading. To-day we hear much of the dignity of labor; but if we would avoid cant we must admit that now--scarcely less than in all the olden days--the physical toiler is such because he cannot help himself. Few indeed are the manual laborers who know any other means of getting their daily bread than that which they employ. The most strenuous advocates of the strenuous life are not themselves tillers of the soil or workers in factories or machine shops. The farm youth of intelligence does not remain a farmer; he goes to the city, and we find him presently at the head of a railroad or a bank, or practising law or medicine. The more intelligent laborer becomes finally a foreman, and no longer handles the axe or sledge. We should think it grotesque were we to see a man of intellectual power obstinately following a pursuit that cost him habitual physical toil. When now and then a Tolstoi offers an exception to this rule, we feel that he is at least eccentric; and we may be excused the doubt whether he would follow the manual task cheerfully if he did not know that he could at any moment abandon it. It is because he knows that the world understands him to be only a dilettante that he rejoices in his task. After all, then, judged by the modern practice, rather than by the philosopher's precept, the old Hebrew and Greek ideas were not so far wrong. Using the poetical language which was so native to them, it might be said that the necessity for physical labor is a curse--a disgrace.