e love of complete idleness, and the hope of
enjoying it at some distant date, leads the wealthy man on, to his last
hour, in a train of augmented industry. Thus has nature most wisely
counteracted

---
{68} There are many instances where habit has rendered a particular
sort of labour absolutely a want. It has become a necessary,--a means
of enjoyment without which life has become a burthen.
-=-

[end of page #82]

the disposition of man to idleness; by making the very propensity to it,
after a certain time, active in promoting industry.

But this can never be the case with a race of men: {69} and, as a
nation consists of a greater number of individuals, so, also, its
existence consists of successive generations.

There is a difference between idleness and inaction. It is the natural
propensity of man to be idle, but not to be inactive. Enjoyment is his
aim, after he has secured the means of existence. Enjoyment and
idleness are supposed, in many cases, to go hand in hand; at any rate,
they can be reconciled, whereas inaction and enjoyment are
irreconcilable. {70}

But we may still go farther. As taste for any particular enjoyment is
acquired when a man is young, and the same taste continues in a more
advanced age; a man who has been long in business has had no time to
acquire a taste for those enjoyments that are incompatible with, or
perhaps that admit of being substituted for it.

Reading the study of the fine arts, and such other means of employing
time as men enjoy, who, at an early period of life, are exempted from
labour, afford no amusement to the man who has been always
accustomed to a life of business, {71} with whom there is an absolute
ne-

---
{69} It is perhaps amongst chances that seem likely enough; the only
one that has never happened, that of a race of misers, in the same
lineal descent, for several generations. The reason why I say it never
has happened is, that, if it had, the effects would have become so
conspicuous, by the riches accumulated, that they could not have
passed unobserved.

{70} By inaction is not meant the opposite of loco-motion, such as
laying =sic= in bed, or basking in the sun; it is supposed that a man, to
enjoy himself, must be reading, talking, in company, or _doing
something_.

{71} They sometimes affect this, but it is little else than through
vanity. It would be easy to give a hundred striking proofs, but their
frequency renders that unnecessary.

Hunting