creature on earth less adapted for rest and idleness than man.”[1] And no one is dispensed from this, no matter what his rank or condition may be; no one is exempted from the law of toil and labor. Not even the prince and first father of all men, Adam, could evade it. While, he was still innocent and just, and in the garden of paradise, where idleness was not so apt, as it now is, to lead to a wicked, reckless mode of life even there he was commanded by God to labor: “And the Lord God…put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it and to keep it.”[2] But was Adam obliged to work in order to provide himself with food? No, answers St. Chrysostom, he had not to work for a livelihood, since he was master of the whole earth, and that earth would of itself, without cultivation, have produced fruits and means of livelihood in abundance. Why, then, had he to work? “For the sake of having a becoming occupation,”[3] that he might live as a reasonable being who must never be idle, but always have some suitable work to employ his time at. But when Adam transgressed the divine command, ate the forbidden fruit, lost his first justice, and was expelled from paradise, how was it with him then? Alas! then was another sentence pronounced on him; for he had to work then, not merely for the sake of having a becoming occupation, but to earn his bread with toil and labor and the sweat of his brow: a sentence which fell on all his de scendants. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thoti eat bread,” said God to him, “till thou return to the earth out of which thou wast taken; for dust thou art, and into dust shalt thou return.”[4]
Hence the idle man does nothing for the end for which he is created. From this St. Bernard concludes that, as man is born to labor, if he avoids it he neglects that for which he was created.[5] And during the time that he is not engaged m some becoming occupation he does not live as a rational being, according to the end for which he came into the world. Therefore the idle man was looked on by the holy Fathers, and by heathen philosophers as well, as a corpse, only fit to be buried in the earth. Paulinus once said to the philosopher Seneca, who used to inveigh with special severity against idlers: “But as far as I can see the
- ↑ Nihil minus otio et quieti natum est, quam hominis natura.
- ↑ Dominus Deus…posuit eum in paradiso voluptatis, ut operaretur et custodiret illum.—Gen. ii. 15.
- ↑ Ad honestum exercitium.
- ↑ In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donee revertaris in terrain de qua sumptus es; quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.—Gen. iii. 19.
- ↑ Homo ad laborem natus, si laborem refugit, non facit ad quod natus est, ad quod in venit in mundum.—St. Bern. Serm.: Ecce nos reliquimus.
