To eat his bread in sorrow and the sweat of his face was, we are apt
to forget, the first sign of man's loss of innocence. And having
learned that we must reverse the myth in order to see its meaning
(since innocence is not at the beginning, but rather at the end of the
story of mankind), we might accept it as part of whatever religion we
may have, that the evil of our world is exactly commensurate with the
hardship of useful tasks and the wastefulness and destructiveness of
pleasures and diversions. Evil and also folly and inefficiency, for
each of these implies the existence of much work badly done, of much
work to no purpose, of a majority of men so weak and dull as to be
excluded from choice and from leisure, and a minority of men so weak
and dull as to use choice and leisure mainly for mischief. To reverse
this original sinful constitution of the world is the sole real
meaning of progress. And the only reason for wishing inventions to be
perfected, wealth to increase, freedom to be attained, and, indeed,
the life of the race to be continued at all, lies in the belief that
such continued movement must bring about a gradual diminution of
pleasureless work and wasteful play. Meanwhile, in the wretched past
and present, the only aristocracy really existing has been that of the
privileged creatures whose qualities and circumstances must have been
such that, whether artisans or artists, tillers of the ground or
seekers after truth, poets, philosophers, or mothers and nurses, their
work has been their pleasure. This means _love_; and love means
fruitfulness.