[4] 1927. London: Hogarth Press, 1928.
[5] Goethe, _Zahmen Xenien IX_ (Gedichte aus dem Nachlass).
[6] Wilhelm Busch, in _Die fromme Helene_, says the same thing on a
lower level: ‘The man who has cares has brandy too.’
[7] Goethe even warns us that ‘nothing is so hard to bear as a train of
happy days’. This may be an exaggeration all the same.
[8] When there is no special disposition in a man imperatively
prescribing the direction of his life-interest, the ordinary work
all can do for a livelihood can play the part which Voltaire wisely
advocated it should do in our lives. It is not possible to discuss
the significance of work for the economics of the libido adequately
within the limits of a short survey. Laying stress upon importance
of work has a greater effect than any other technique of living in
the direction of binding the individual more closely to reality; in
his work he is at least securely attached to a part of reality, the
human community. Work is no less valuable for the opportunity it and
the human relations connected with it provide for a very considerable
discharge of libidinal component impulses, narcissistic, aggressive
and even erotic, than because it is indispensable for subsistence
and justifies existence in a society. The daily work of earning a
livelihood affords particular satisfaction when it has been selected by
free choice, _i.e._ when through sublimation it enables use to be made
of existing inclinations, of instinctual impulses that have retained
their strength, or are more intense than usual for constitutional
reasons. And yet as a path to happiness work is not valued very highly
by men. They do not run after it as they do after other opportunities
for gratification. The great majority work only when forced by
necessity, and this natural human aversion to work gives rise to the
most difficult social problems.
[9] Cf. ‘Formulations regarding the Two Principles in Mental
Functioning’ (1911), _Collected Papers_, vol. iv.; and _Introductory
Lectures on Psycho-Analysis_ (1915-17), London, 1922, chapter xxiii.