108 ESSAYS AND LEITERS
The most cruel of men — t)ie Xeros, the Peter the Cireats — were constantly occupied, never remaining for a moment at their own disposal without activity or amusement.
Even if work be not a vice, it can from no point of view he considered a virtue.
Work can no more he considered a virtue than nutrition. Work is a necessity, to he deprived of whidi involves suffering, and to raise it to tlie rank of a merit is as monstrous as it would he to do the same for nutrition. The strange value our society attaches to nork can only he explained as a reaction from the view held hy our ancestors, who thou^rlit i<lh'ness an attribute of nohility, and almost a merit, as indee«l it is still rcirarded hy some rich and uneducated people to-<lay.
Work, the exercise of our ortrans, cannot he a merit, because it is a necessity for every man and every animal —as is shown alike hy the capers of a tethered calf ami by the silly exercises to wliich rich and well-fed people amon«f ourselves are a<ldicted, wIjo find no more reason- able or useful employment for their mental faculties than readin^'^ newspaj»ers and novels, or playinij che.ss or cards, nor for their muscles than gymnastics, fencintj, lawn-tennis, and racinp.
In my opinion, not only is work not a virtue, but iu our ill-organized society it is often a moral anapsthetic, like tobacco, wine, and other means of stupefying- and blinding one's self to the disorder and emptiness of our lives ; and it is just as such that M. Zola recommends it to young- people.
Dumas says something quite different.
Tlie following is the letter he sent to the editor of the Gau/ois :
Dear Sir,
Yon ask my opinion of the aspirations which seem to be arising among the students in the schools, and of the polemics which preceded and followed the incidents at the Sorbonne.
