far below consideration at all. Friend Moro, for instance, would probably,
in Europe or America, not have been one of the 'lights of science,' nor 'an
ornament to the bar'; but he would at least have been a very acceptable
average teacher, advocate, or official. Here, however, after leaving the
intermediate school, it was necessary for him to take a conscientious
valuation of his mental capacity; and he arrived at the conclusion that it
would be better to become a first-rate factory-overseer than a mediocre
teacher or official. And he could carry out this--perhaps too
severe--resolve without socially degrading himself, for in Freeland manual
labour does not degrade as it does in Europe and America, where the
assertion that it does not degrade is one of the many conventional lies
with which we seek to impose upon ourselves. Despite all our democratic
talk, work is among us in general a disgrace, for the labourer is a
dependent, an exploited servant--he has a master over him who can order
him, and can use him for his own purpose as he can a beast of burden. No
ethical theory in the world will make master and servant equally
honourable. But here it is different. To discover how great the difference
is, one need merely attend a social reunion in Freeland. It is natural, of
course, that persons belonging to the same circle of interests should most
readily associate together; but this must not be supposed to imply the
existence of anything even remotely like a breaking up of society into
different professional strata. The common level of culture is so high,
interest in the most exalted problems of humanity so general, even among
the manual labourers, that _savants_, artists, heads of the government,
find innumerable points of contact, both intellectual and aesthetic, even
with factory-hands and agricultural labourers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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