"Strange, neighbour? Well, I don't know. I have often heard my old
kinsman say the one aim of all people before our time was to avoid
work, or at least they thought it was; so of course the work which
their daily life forced them to do, seemed more like work than that
which they seemed to choose for themselves."

"True enough," said Morsom. "Anyhow, they soon began to find out
their mistake, and that only slaves and slaveholders could live
solely by setting machines going."

Clara broke in here, flushing a little as she spoke: "Was not their
mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been
living?--a life which was always looking upon everything, except
mankind, animate and inanimate--'nature,' as people used to call it--
as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people
thinking in this way, that they should try to make 'nature' their
slave, since they thought 'nature' was something outside them."

"Surely," said Morsom; "and they were puzzled as to what to do, till
they found the feeling against a mechanical life, which had begun
before the Great Change amongst people who had leisure to think of
such things, was spreading insensibly; till at last under the guise
of pleasure that was not supposed to be work, work that was pleasure
began to push out the mechanical toil, which they had once hoped at
the best to reduce to narrow limits indeed, but never to get rid of;
and which, moreover, they found they could not limit as they had
hoped to do."

"When did this new revolution gather head?" said I.