heating, clothing, medicine, water, massage, gymnastics, electric,
and other means of healing,--all these clever devices are merely an
expedient to sustain the bodily life of man removed from its natural
conditions of labor. It turned out that all these devices of the
human mind for the agreeable arrangement of the physical existence
of idle persons are precisely analogous to those artful contrivances
which people might invent for the production in vessels hermetically
sealed, by means of mechanical arrangements, of evaporation, and
plants, of the air best fitted for breathing, when all that is
needed is to open the window. All the inventions of medicine and
hygiene for persons of our sphere are much the same as though a
mechanic should hit upon the idea of heating a steam-boiler which
was not working, and should shut all the valves so that the boiler
should not burst. Only one thing is needed, instead of all these
extremely complicated devices for pleasure, for comfort, and for
medical and hygienic preparations, intended to save people from
their spiritual and bodily ailments, which swallow up so much
labor,--to fulfil the law of life; to do that which is proper not
only to man, but to the animal; to fire off the charge of energy
taken win in the shape of food, by muscular exertion; to speak in
plain language, to earn one's bread. Those who do not work should
not eat, or they should earn as much as they have eaten.

And when I clearly comprehended all this, it struck me as
ridiculous. Through a whole series of doubts and searchings, I had
arrived, by a long course of thought, at this remarkable truth: if
a man has eyes, it is that he may see with them; if he has ears,
that he may hear; and feet, that he may walk; and hands and back,
that he may labor; and that if a man will not employ those members
for that purpose for which they are intended, it will be the worse