To the
question, "Will it not seem strange to people if you do this?" it
appeared that this strangeness lasted only a week, and after the lapse of
that week, it would have seemed strange had I returned to my former
conditions of life. With regard to the question, "Is it necessary to
organize this physical labor, to institute an association in the country,
on my land?" it appeared that nothing of the sort was necessary; that
labor, if it does not aim at the acquisition of all possible leisure, and
the enjoyment of the labor of others,--like the labor of people bent on
accumulating money,--but if it have for its object the satisfaction of
requirements, will itself be drawn from the city to the country, to the
land, where this labor is the most fruitful and cheerful. But it is not
requisite to institute any association, because the man who labors,
naturally and of himself, attaches himself to the existing association of
laboring men.

To the question, whether this labor would not monopolize all my time, and
deprive me of those intellectual pursuits which I love, to which I am
accustomed, and which, in my moments of self-conceit, I regard as not
useless to others? I received a most unexpected reply. The energy of my
intellectual activity increased, and increased in exact proportion with
bodily application, while freeing itself from every thing superfluous. It
appeared that by dedicating to physical toil eight hours, that half of
the day which I had formerly passed in the oppressive state of a struggle
with _ennui_, eight hours remained to me, of which only five of
intellectual activity, according to my terms, were necessary to me. For
it appeared, that if I, a very voluminous writer, who had done nothing
for nearly forty years except write, and who had written three hundred
printed sheets;--if I had worked during all those forty years at ordinary
labor with the working-people, then, not reckoning winter evenings and
leisure days, if I had read and studied for five hours every day, and had
written a couple of pages only on holidays (and I have been in the habit
of writing at the rate of one printed sheet a day), then I should have
written those three hundred sheets in fourteen years. The fact seemed
startling: yet it is the most simple arithmetical calculation, which can
be made by a seven-year-old boy, but which I had not been able to make up
to this time. There are twenty-four hours in the day; if we take away
eig