"Plenty of reward," said he--"the reward of creation. The wages
which God gets, as people might have said time agone. If you are
going to ask to be paid for the pleasure of creation, which is what
excellence in work means, the next thing we shall hear of will be a
bill sent in for the begetting of children."

"Well, but," said I, "the man of the nineteenth century would say
there is a natural desire towards the procreation of children, and a
natural desire not to work."

"Yes, yes," said he, "I know the ancient platitude,--wholly untrue;
indeed, to us quite meaningless. Fourier, whom all men laughed at,
understood the matter better."

"Why is it meaningless to you?" said I.

He said: "Because it implies that all work is suffering, and we are
so far from thinking that, that, as you may have noticed, whereas we
are not short of wealth, there is a kind of fear growing up amongst
us that we shall one day be short of work. It is a pleasure which we
are afraid of losing, not a pain."

"Yes," said I, "I have noticed that, and I was going to ask you about
that also. But in the meantime, what do you positively mean to
assert about the pleasurableness of work amongst you?"

"This, that ALL work is now pleasurable; either because of the hope
of gain in honour and wealth with which the work is done, which
causes pleasurable excitement, even when the actual work is not