ist in idleness; and every one who was capable of work must
work to support himself; and then a certain amount of work must be done
by the able-bodied to support those who were either too old or too
young to support themselves. But the labouring class, the producers,
were forced by the constitution of things to work even more than that;
because there were a certain number of persons in the community,
capitalists and leisurely people, who lived in idleness on the labour
of the workers.

He put aside the great majority of simple workers, the labouring
classes, because there was no doubt about their position. If a man did
his work honestly, and supported himself and his family, living
virtuously, and endeavouring to bring up his children virtuously, that
was a fine simple life. Then came the professional classes, who were
necessary too, doctors, lawyers, priests, soldiers, sailors, merchants,
even writers and artists; all of them had a work to do in the world.

This then seemed the law of one's being: that men were put into the
world, and the one thing that was clear was that they were meant to
work; did duty stop there? had a man, when his work was done, a right
to amuse and employ himself as he liked, so long as he did not
interfere with or annoy other people? or had he an imperative duty laid
upon him to devote his energies, if any were left, to helping other
people?

What in fact _was_ the obscure purpose for which people were sent into
the world? It was a pleasant place on the whole for healthy persons,
but there was still a large number of individuals to whom it was by no
means a pleasant place. No choice was given us, so far as we knew, as
to whether we would enter the world or not, nor about the circumstances
which were to surround us. Our lives indeed were strangely conditioned
by an abundance of causes which lay entirely outside our control, such
as heredity, temperament, environment. One supposed oneself to be
free, but in reality one was intolerably hampered and bound.

The only theory that could satisfactorily account for life as we found
it was, that either it was an educational progress, and that we were
being prepared for some further existence, for which in some mysterious
way our experience, however mean, miserable, and ungentle, must be
intended to fit us; or else it was all a hopeless mystery, the work of
some prodigious power who neither loved or hated, but just chose to act
so. In any case