was to work all day, and care
at night only for food and rest, than to do no useful thing all day,
eat unearned food, and spend the evening, as the morning, in "change
of follies and relays of joy." No, my good friend, that is one of the
fatalest deceptions. It is not a noble thing, in sum and issue of it,
not to care to be amused. It is indeed a far higher _moral_ state, but
is a much lower _creature_ state, than that of the upper classes.

20. Yonder poor horse, calm slave in daily chains at the railroad
siding, who drags the detached rear of the train to the front again,
and slips aside so deftly as the buffers meet; and, within eighteen
inches of death every ten minutes, fulfils his changeless duty all day
long, content, for eternal reward, with his night's rest, and his
champed mouthful of hay;--anything more earnestly moral and beautiful
one cannot image--I never see the creature without a kind of worship.
And yonder musician, who used the greatest power which (in the art he
knew) the Father of spirits ever yet breathed into the clay of this
world;--who used it, I say, to follow and fit with perfect sound the
words of the 'Zauberfloete' and of 'Don Giovanni'--foolishest and most
monstrous of conceivable human words and subjects of thought--for the
future "amusement" of his race!--No such spectacle of unconscious (and
in that unconsciousness all the more fearful) moral degradation of the
highest faculty to the lowest purpose can be found in history. But
Mozart is nevertheless a nobler creature than the horse at the siding;
nor would it be the least nearer the purpose of his Maker that he, and
all his frivolous audiences, should evade the degradation of the
profitless piping, only by living, like horses, in daily physical
labor for daily bread.

21. There are three things to which man is born[A]--labor, and sorrow,
and joy. Each of these three things has its baseness and its
nobleness. There is base labor, and noble labor. There is base sorrow,
and noble sorrow. There is base joy, and noble joy. But you must not
think to avoid the corruption of these things by doing without the
things themselves. Nor can any life be right that has not all three.
Labor without joy is base. Labor without sorrow is base. Sorrow
without labor is base. Joy without labor is base.

[A] I ask the reader's thoughtful attention to this
paragraph, on which much of what else I have to say depends.

22. I dare say you think I am a l