The first thing, then, for our modern world to acquire is the conviction and experience that well-directed work is the necessary and universal condition of physical and intellectual health, and for this reason is the way to happiness. From this it necessarily follows that the idle class is to be regarded, not as a superior and favored class, but as that which they are,--spiritually defective and diseased persons who have lost the right principle for the guidance of their lives. As soon as this opinion becomes general and established, then, and only then, will the better era for the world begin. Until that time, the world will suffer from the excessive work of some, balancing the insufficient work of others, and it still remains a question which of these two types is in reality the more unfortunate. Why is it then that these principles--to which the experience of thousands of years testifies, which any one, whether he works or does not work, can test for himself, and which all the religions and philosophies preach--have not made their just impression? Why is it, for instance, that there are still thousands of women who defend with much passion many passages of Bible-teaching, and yet, with astonishing composure and in opposition to an express command of the Bible, take one day at the most, or perhaps none at all, for work, and six for refined idleness? All this proceeds in large degree from an irrational division and arrangement of work, which thus ill-arranged may indeed become a positive burden. And this brings me back to the title of my Essay. Instruction in the art of work is possible only for him who is already convinced of my first proposition, that some work is necessary, and who would gladly give himself to work if it were not that, to his surprise, some hindrance confronts him. Yet, work, like every other art, has its ways of dexterity, by means of which one may greatly lessen its laboriousness; and not only the willingness to work, but even the capacity to work, is so difficult to acquire that many persons fail of it altogether. The first step, then, toward the overcoming of a difficulty is in recognizing the difficulty. And what is the difficulty which chiefly hinders work? It is laziness. Every man is naturally lazy. It always costs one an effort to rise above one’s customary condition of physical indolence. Moral laziness is, in short, our original sin. No one is naturally fond of work; there are only differences of natural and constitutional excitability. Even the most active-minded, if they yielded to their natural disposition, would amuse themselves with other things rather than with work.