rovement,
exertion, and happiness in the world to come. You will here see that to
me labor has great dignity. It is not merely the grand instrument by
which the earth is overspread with fruitfulness and beauty, and the ocean
subdued, and matter wrought into innumerable forms for comfort and
ornament. It has a far higher function, which is to give force to the
will, efficiency, courage, the capacity of endurance, and of persevering
devotion to far-reaching plans. Alas, for the man who has not learned to
work! He is a poor creature. He does not know himself. He depends on
others, with no capacity of making returns for the support they give; and
let him not fancy that he has a monopoly of enjoyment. Ease, rest, owes
its deliciousness to toil; and no toil is so burdensome as the rest of
him who has nothing to task and quicken his powers.

I do not, then, desire to release the laborer from toil. This is not the
elevation to be sought for him. Manual labor is a great good; but, in so
saying, I must be understood to speak of labor in its just proportions.
In excess it does great harm. It is not a good, when made the sole work
of life. It must be joined with higher means of improvement, or it
degrades instead of exalting. Man has a various nature, which requires a
variety of occupation and discipline for its growth. Study, meditation,
society, and relaxation should be mixed up with his physical toils. He
has intellect, heart, imagination, taste, as well as bones and muscles;
and he is grievously wronged when compelled to exclusive drudgery for
bodily subsistence. Life should be an alternation of employments, so
diversified as to call the whole man into action. Unhappily our present
civilization is far from realizing this idea. It tends to increase the
amount of manual toil, at the very time that it renders this toil less
favorable to the culture of the mind. The division of labor, which
distinguishes civilized from savage life, and to which we owe chiefly the
perfection of the arts, tends to dwarf the intellectual powers, by
confining the activity of the individual to a narrow range, to a few
details, perhaps to the heading of pins, the pointing of nails, or the
tying together of broken strings; so that while the savage has his
faculties sharpened by various occupations, and by exposure to various
perils, the civilized man treads a monotonous, stupefying round of
unthinking toil. This cannot, must not, always