ed to life; they grow accustomed to consider their position
as justifiable; and they convert themselves physically into utterly
useless parasites, and mentally they dislocate their brains and become
mental eunuchs. And in precisely the same manner, according to the
measure of their folly, do they acquire self-conceit, which deprives them
forever of all possibility of return to a simple life of toil, to a
simple, clear, and universally human train of reasoning.

Division of labor always has existed in human communities, and will
probably always exist; but the question for us lies not in the fact that
it has existed, and that it will exist, but in this,--how are we to
govern ourselves so that this division shall be right? But if we take
investigation as our rule of action, we by this very act repudiate all
rule; then in that case we shall regard as right every division of labor
which we shall descry among men, and which appears to us to be right--to
which conclusion the prevailing scientific science also leads.

Division of labor!

Some are busied in mental or moral, others in muscular or physical,
labor. With what confidence people enunciate this! They wish to think
so, and it seems to them that, in point of fact, a perfectly regular
exchange of services does take place.

But we, in our blindness, have so completely lost sight of the
responsibility which we have assumed, that we have even forgotten in
whose name our labor is prosecuted; and the very people whom we have
undertaken to serve have become the objects of our scientific and
artistic activity. We study and depict them for our amusement and
diversion. We have totally forgotten that what we need to do is not to
study and depict them, but to serve them. To such a degree have we lost
sight of this duty which we have taken upon us, that we have not even
noticed that what we have undertaken to perform in the realm of science
and art has been accomplished not by us, but by others, and that our
place has turned out to be occupied.

It proves that while we have been disputing, one about the spontaneous
origin of organisms, another as to what else there is in protoplasm, and
so on, the common people have been in need of spiritual food; and the
unsuccessful and rejected of art and science, in obedience to the mandate
of adventurers who have in view the sole aim of profit, have begun to
furnish the people with this spiritual food, and still so furnish them.
For