one, _is_ degrading, though often in measure,
refreshing, wholesome, and necessary. So it is highly
necessary and wholesome to eat sometimes; but degrading to
eat all day, as to labor with the hands all day. But it is
not degrading to think all day--if you can. A highly-bred
court lady, rightly interested in politics and literature,
is a much finer type of the human creature than a servant of
all work, however clever and honest.

Granting this, it follows as a direct consequence that it is the duty
of all persons in higher stations of life, by every means in their
power to diminish their demand for work of such kind, _and to live
with as little aid from the lower trades_, as they can possibly
contrive.

128. I suppose you see that this conclusion is not a little at
variance with received notions on political economy? It is popularly
supposed that it benefits a nation to invent a want. But the fact is,
that the true benefit is in extinguishing a want--in living with as
few wants as possible.

I cannot tell you the contempt I feel for the common writers on
political economy, in their stupefied missing of this first principle
of all human economy--individual or political--to live, namely, with
as few wants as possible, and to waste nothing of what is given you to
supply them.

129. This ought to be the first lesson of every rich man's political
code. "Sir," his tutor should early say to him, "you are so placed in
society,--it may be for your misfortune, it _must_ be for your
trial--that you are likely to be maintained all your life by the labor
of other men. You will have to make shoes for nobody, but some one
will have to make a great many for you. You will have to dig ground
for nobody, but some one will have to dig through every summer's hot
day for you. You will build houses and make clothes for no one, but
many a rough hand must knead clay, and many an elbow be crooked to the
stitch, to keep that body of yours warm and fine. Now remember,
whatever you and your work may be worth, the less your keep costs, the
better. It does not cost money only. It costs degradation. You do not
merely employ these people. You also tread upon them. It cannot be
helped;--you have your place, and they have theirs; but see that you
tread as lightly as possible, and on as few as possible. What food,
and clothes, and lodging, you honestly need, for your health and
peace, you may righteously take. See that yo