exact proportion with bodily application, while freeing itself from
every thing superfluous. It appeared that by dedicating to physical
toil eight hours, that half of the day which I had formerly passed
in the oppressive state of a struggle with ennui, eight hours
remained to me, of which only five of intellectual activity,
according to my terms, were necessary to me. For it appeared, that
if I, a very voluminous writer, who had done nothing for nearly
forty years except write, and who had written three hundred printed
sheets;--if I had worked during all those forty years at ordinary
labor with the working-people, then, not reckoning winter evenings
and leisure days, if I had read and studied for five hours every
day, and had written a couple of pages only on holidays (and I have
been in the habit of writing at the rate of one printed sheet a
day), then I should have written those three hundred sheets in
fourteen years. The fact seemed startling: yet it is the most
simple arithmetical calculation, which can be made by a seven-year-
old boy, but which I had not been able to make up to this time.
There are twenty-four hours in the day; if we take away eight hours,
sixteen remain. If any man engaged in intellectual occupations
devote five hours every day to his occupation, he will accomplish a
fearful amount. And what is to be done with the remaining eleven
hours?

It proved that physical labor not only does not exclude the
possibility of mental activity, but that it improves its quality,
and encourages it.

In answer to the question, whether this physical toil does not
deprive me of many innocent pleasures peculiar to man, such as the
enjoyment of the arts, the acquisition of learning, intercourse with