So I thought, and this next, that if it were indeed true and beyond remedy, that no man would work unless he hoped by working to earn leisure, the hell of theologians was but little needed; for a thickly populated civilised country, where, you know, after all people must work at something, would serve their turn well enough.  Yet again I knew that this theory of the general and necessary hatefulness of work was indeed the common one, and that all sorts of people held it, who without being monsters of insensibility grew fat and jolly nevertheless.

So to explain this puzzle, I fell to thinking of the one life of which I knew something—­my own to wit—­and out tumbled the bottom of the theory.

For I tried to think what would happen to me if I were forbidden my ordinary daily work; and I knew that I should die of despair and weariness, unless I could straightway take to something else which I could make my daily work:  and it was clear to me that I worked not in the least in the world for the sake of earning leisure by it, but partly driven by the fear of starvation or disgrace, and partly, and even a very great deal, because I love the work itself:  and as for my leisure:  well I had to confess that part of it I do indeed spend as a dog does—­in contemplation, let us say; and like it well enough:  but part of it also I spend in work:  which work gives me just as much pleasure as my bread-earning work—­neither more nor less; and therefore could be no bribe or hope for my work-a-day hours.

Then next I turned my thought to my friends:  mere artists, and therefore, you know, lazy people by prescriptive right:  I found that the one thing they enjoyed was their work, and that their only idea of happy leisure was other work, just as valuable to the world as their work-a-day work:  they only differed from me in liking the dog-like leisure less and the man-like labour more than I do.

I got no further when I turned from mere artists, to important men—­ public men:  I could see no signs of their working merely to earn leisure:  they all worked for the work and the deeds’ sake.  Do rich gentlemen sit up all night in the House of Commons for the sake of earning leisure? if so, ’tis a sad waste of labour.  Or Mr. Gladstone? he doesn’t seem to have succeeded in winning much leisure by tolerably strenuous work; what he does get he might have got on much easier terms, I am sure.

Does it then come to this, that there are men, say a class of men, whose daily work, though maybe they cannot escape from doing it, is chiefly pleasure to them; and other classes of men whose daily work is wholly irksome to them, and only endurable because they hope while they are about it to earn thereby a little leisure at the day’s end?

If that were wholly true the contrast between the two kinds of lives would be greater than the contrast between the utmost delicacy of life and the utmost hardship could show, or between the utmost calm and utmost trouble.  The difference would be literally immeasurable.