not on that which shall cause them to pine away, not
as objects to wash and clean, and merely for the purpose of stuffing into
one's mouth food, drink, and cigarettes. This is the significance that
physical labor possesses for man in every community; but in our
community, where the avoidance of this law of labor has occasioned the
unhappiness of a whole class of people, employment in physical labor
acquires still another significance,--the significance of a sermon, and
of an occupation which removes a terrible misfortune that is threatening
mankind.

To say that physical labor is an insignificant occupation for a man of
education, is equivalent to saying, in connection with the erection of a
temple: "What does it matter whether one stone is laid accurately in its
place?" Surely, it is precisely under conditions of modesty, simplicity,
and imperceptibleness, that every magnificent thing is accomplished; it
is impossible to plough, to build, to pasture cattle, or even to think,
amid glare, thunder, and illumination. Grand and genuine deeds are
always simple and modest. And such is the grandest of all deeds which we
have to deal with,--the reconciliation of those fearful contradictions
amid which we are living. And the deeds which will reconcile these
contradictions are those modest, imperceptible, apparently ridiculous
ones, the serving one's self, physical labor for one's self, and, if
possible, for others also, which we rich people must do, if we understand
the wretchedness, the unscrupulousness, and the danger of the position
into which we have drifted.

What will be the result if I, or some other man, or a handful of men, do
not despise physical labor, but regard it as indispensable to our
happiness and to the appeasement of our conscience? This will be the
result, that there will be one man, two men, or a handful of men, who,
coming into conflict with no one, without governmental or revolutionary
violence, will decide for ourselves the terrible question which stands
before all the world, and which sets people at variance, and that we
shall settle it in such wise that life will be better to them, that their
conscience will be more at peace, and that they will have nothing to
fear; the result will be, that other people will see that the happiness
which they are seeking everywhere, lies there around them; that the
apparently unreconcilable contradictions of conscience and of the
constitution of this world will b