surround us, there exists the very plainest, simplest, and easiest means;
the only possible one for the cure of the evil about us, and for the
acquisition of a consciousness of the legitimacy of his life; the one
given by John the Baptist, and confirmed by Christ: not to have more than
one garment, and not to have money. And not to have any money, means,
not to employ the labor of others, and hence, first of all, to do with
our own hands every thing that we can possibly do.

This is so clear and simple! But it is clear and simple when the
requirements are simple. I live in the country. I lie on the oven, and
I order my debtor, my neighbor, to chop wood and light my fire. It is
very clear that I am lazy, and that I tear my neighbor away from his
affairs, and I shall feel mortified, and I shall find it tiresome to lie
still all the time; and I shall go and split my wood for myself.

But the delusion of slavery of all descriptions lies so far back, so much
of artificial exaction has sprung up upon it, so many people, accustomed
in different degrees to these habits, are interwoven with each other,
enervated people, spoiled for generations, and such complicated delusions
and justifications for their luxury and idleness have been devised by
people, that it is far from being so easy for a man who stands at the
summit of the ladder of idle people to understand his sin, as it is for
the peasant who has made his neighbor build his fire.

It is terribly difficult for people at the top of this ladder to
understand what is required of them. [Their heads are turned by the
height of this ladder of lies, upon which they find themselves when a
place on the ground is offered to them, to which they must descend in
order to begin to live, not yet well, but no longer cruelly, inhumanly;
for this reason, this clear and simple truth appears strange to these
people. For the man with ten servants, liveries, coachmen, cooks,
pictures, pianofortes, that will infallibly appear strange, and even
ridiculous, which is the simplest, the first act of--I will not say every
good man--but of every man who is not wicked: to cut his own wood with
which his food is cooked, and with which he warms himself; to himself
clean those boots with which he has heedlessly stepped in the mire; to
himself fetch that water with which he preserves his cleanliness, and to
carry out that dirty water in which he has washed himself.] {140}

But, besides the remoten