heaped upon your life that there exists no possibility of doing good
to people; you will experience the joy of living in freedom, with the
possibility of good; you will break a window,--an opening into the
domain of the moral world which has been closed to you.

"But this is absurd," people usually say to you, for people of our
sphere, with profound problems standing before us,--problems
philosophical, scientific, artistic, ecclesiastical and social. It
would be absurd for us ministers, senators, academicians professors,
artists, a quarter of an hour of whose time is so prized by people,
to waste our time on any thing of that sort, would it not?--on the
cleaning of our boots, the washing of our shirts, in hoeing, in
planting potatoes, or in feeding our chickens and our cows, and so
on; in those things which are gladly done for us, not only by our
porter or our cook, but by thousands of people who value our time?

But why should we dress ourselves, wash and comb our hair? why should
we hand chairs to ladies, to guests? why should we open and shut
doors, hand ladies, into carriages, and do a hundred other things
which serfs formerly did for us? Because we think that it is
necessary so to do; that human dignity demands it; that it is the
duty, the obligation, of man.

And the same is the case with physical labor. The dignity of man,
his sacred duty and obligation, consists in using the hands and feet
which have been given to him, for that for which they were given to
him, and that which consumes food on the labor which produces that
food; and that they should be used, not on that which shall cause
them to pine away, not as objects to wash and clean, and merely for
the purpose of stuffing into one's mouth food, drink, and cigarettes.