For every human heart longs for rest. The humblest and least intellectual know the need of it, and in its highest moods, the soul seeks relief from constant strain. Indeed, the imagination has found no better name for a future and happier existence than a state of eternal rest. If work, then, is necessary, and rest is the cessation of work, then the saying--“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”--is indeed a bitter curse and this earth is a “vale of tears.” In every generation there are but few who can on such terms be said to lead a worthy or a human life; and even these can do so only by dooming other human beings to the curse of work and by holding these others fast bound in its slavery. It was from this point of view that the ancient authors pictured the hopeless slavery of the many as the condition under which the few might become free citizens of a civilized State; and even in the nineteenth century, a considerable part of the population of one great nation, with Christian preachers, Bible in hand, directing them, maintained on the field of battle the proposition that one race should be from generation to generation condemned to be the slave of another. Culture, it is said, grows only under conditions of wealth, and wealth only through accumulation of capital, and capital only through accumulation of the work of those who are not justly paid; that is to say, through injustice. Such are the conceptions of society which at once confront us as we approach our subject. The following pages are not, however, to be devoted to any profound consideration either of the relative or of the absolute truth of these conceptions. I suggest, at this point, only the obvious truth, that if, not some people, but all, would work and work faithfully, the “Social Question,” as it is called, would be forthwith solved; and I may add, that by no other means whatever is it likely to be solved. Faithful work, however, is not to be brought about by compulsion. Even if the physical means of universal compulsion were present, no fruitful work would come of it. It is the desire for work which must be kindled in man; and this brings us back again to consider the principles which may be applied to this desire.