he likes to make boots, because he knows that no one else can do it
so well as he, and that people will be grateful to him for it; but
the desire cannot occur to him, to deprive himself, for the whole
period of his life, of the cheering rotation of labor.

It is the same with the starosta [village elder], the machinist, the
writer, the learned man. To us, with our corrupt conception of
things, it seems, that if a steward has been relegated to the
position of a peasant by his master, or if a minister has been sent
to the colonies, he has been chastised, he has been ill-treated.
But in reality a benefit has been conferred on him; that is to say,
his special, hard labor has been changed into a cheerful rotation of
labor. In a naturally constituted society, this is quite otherwise.
I know of one community where the people supported themselves. One
of the members of this society was better educated than the rest;
and they called upon him to read, so that he was obliged to prepare
himself during the day, in order that he might read in the evening.
This he did gladly, feeling that he was useful to others, and that
he was performing a good deed. But he grew weary of exclusively
intellectual work, and his health suffered from it. The members of
the community took pity on him, and requested him to go to work in
the fields.

For men who regard labor as the substance and the joy of life, the
basis, the foundation of life will always be the struggle with
nature,--labor both agricultural and mechanical, and intellectual,
and the establishment of communion between men. Departure from one
or from many of these varieties of labor, and the adoption of
special labor, will then only occur when the man possessed of a
special branch, and loving this work, and knowing that he can