It is interesting to note the place assigned to work by the Hebrew and Christian religions which, having their origin in the folkways and the daydreams of the masses, are very sympathetic to the poor toilers of earth. Yet we are told that to keep the Sabbath holy, the day must not be defiled with labor. There is no mention of the blessedness of labor in the Beatitudes; the command to consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field which toil not neither do they spin and yet are clothed and fed, reveals a spirit very remote from that of industry. Heaven is thought of as a place of eternal rest. A similar popular valuation of labor is revealed in the myths of antiquity. The gods do not work. Vulcan, the exception to this rule, is always made to appear ridiculous among the gods; they are said to laugh at his awkwardness. The “labors” of Hercules are not really toil but exhibitions of miraculous strength. For the most part in the legends which have expressed the wish-fancies of mankind, the hero does everything but work; he fights, makes love, kills dragons, goes on strange voyages, wins a kingdom, in fact, his adventures may be interpreted as symbolic expressions of the wish of mankind to escape the common burden of toil. I think, moreover, men belittle their work when they accept the broad distinction between the “brain” worker and the “hand” worker. Psychologists say that thinking is as truly bodily activity as is any other form of labor, and there is very little so-called work that does not require thought. There is every conceivable gradation from that labor which is almost wholly routine, to that which consists of nothing but solving problems. No one knows the point where labor ceases to be brain work and becomes manual. The world’s work requires of men many kinds of activity, some of great importance, some of little. There is no use either of idealizing it or in despising it. Men do their work because they have to and are neither noble nor ignoble because of it. The problem is how can I in my situation make my position a place where a man has really lived and toiled and thought and realized values through his effort, and has not permitted himself to become an automaton or a fool. The labor problem however tends to become one primarily not of the significance of work at all, but of improving the material conditions of those who toil. This latter problem is wholly justifiable. But because of the prevailing mental confusion about labor itself, it is generally assumed that if a man works he should receive a different sort of “education” from that of other educated people, and that his training should be the means to ends that have little to do with interest in education as such.