The origin and development of the moral ideas

In the kingdom of the Peruvian Incas there was a law that no one should be idle. “Children of five years old were employed at very light work, suitable to their age. Even the blind and lame, if they had no other infirmity, were provided with certain kinds of work. The rest of the people, while they were healthy, were occupied each at his own labour, and it was a most infamous and degrading thing among these people to be chastised in public for idleness.”54 If any of them was slothful, or slept in the day, he was whipped or had to carry the stone.55 The reason for these measures was that the whole duty of defraying the expenses of the government belonged to the people, and that, without money and with little property, they paid their taxes in labour; hence to be idle was, in a manner, to rob the exchequer.56

One of the characteristics of Zoroastrianism is its appreciation of labour.57 The faithful man must be vigilant, alert, and active; sleep itself is merely a concession to the demons, and should therefore be kept within the limits of necessity.58 The lazy man is the most unworthy of men, because he eats his food through impropriety and injustice.59 And of all kinds of labour the most necessary is husbandry.60 Man has been placed upon earth to preserve Ahura Mazda’s good creation, and this can only be done by careful tilling of the soil, eradication of thorns and weeds, and reclamation of the tracks over which Angra Mainyu has spread the curse of barrenness. Zoroaster asked, “What is the food that fills the Religion of Mazda?” and Ahura Mazda answered, “It is sowing corn again and again, O Spitama Zarathustra! He who sows corn sows righteousness.”61 According to Xenophon, the king of the Persians considered the art of agriculture and that of war to be the most honourable and necessary occupations, and paid the greatest attention to both.62 He appointed officers to overlook the tillers of the ground, as well as to collect tribute from them; for “those who cultivate the ground inefficiently will neither maintain the garrisons, nor be able to pay their tribute.”63

In his description of ancient Egypt Herodotus tells us that one of its kings made a law to the effect that every Egyptian should annually declare to the governor of his district by what means he maintained himself, and that, if he failed to do this, or did not show that he lived by honest means, he should be punished with death.64 Whether this statement be correct or not,65 it seems certain that the Egyptians were anxious to encourage industry.66 An ostracon which has often been quoted contains the maxim, “Do not spare thy body whilst thou art young, for food cometh by the arms and provisions by the legs.”67

A law against idleness resembling that which is reported to have existed in Egypt was established at Athens, according to some writers by Draco or Pisistratus,68 according to others by Solon, who is said to have borrowed it from the Egyptians.69 Plutarch states that, as the city was filled with persons who assembled from all parts on account of the great security which prevailed in Attica and the country withal was poor and barren, Solon turned the attention of the citizens to manufactures. For this purpose he ordered that trades should be accounted honourable, that the council of the Areopagus should examine into every man’s means of subsisting and chastise the idle, and that no son should be obliged to maintain his father if the father had not taught him a trade.70 Thucydides puts the following words in the mouth of Pericles:—“To avow poverty with us is no disgrace; the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect the State because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics.”71 In Xenophon’s ‘Memorabilia’ Socrates recommends industry as a means of supporting life, of maintaining the health and strength of the body, of promoting temperance and honesty.72 According to Plato idleness is the mother of wantonness, whereas by labour the aliment of passion is diverted into other parts of the body.73 Agriculture was highly praised.

It is the best of all the occupations and arts by which men procure the means of living.74 Where it flourishes all other pursuits are in full vigour, but when the ground is allowed to lie barren other occupations are almost stopped.75 It is an exercise for the body, and strengthens it for discharging the duties that become a man of honourable birth.76 It requires people to accustom themselves to endure the colds of winter and the heats of summer.77 It renders them fit for running, throwing, leaping.78 It gives them the greatest gratification for their labour, it is the most attractive of all employments.79 It receives strangers with the richest hospitality.80 It offers the most pleasing first-fruits to the gods, and the richest banquets on festival days.81 It teaches men justice, for it is those who treat the earth best that she recompenses with the most numerous benefits.82 It instructs people to assist one another, for it cannot be conducted without the aid of other men.83 It does not give such constant occupation to a person’s mind as to prevent him from attending to the interests of his friends or his native land.84 The possession of an estate stimulates men to defend their country in arms.85 In short, agriculture renders citizens most useful, most virtuous, and best affected towards the commonwealth.86

The argumentative manner in which these views were expressed by the philosophers indicates, however, that industrial occupations were deficient in public appreciation.87 Herodotus says that not only among most barbarians but also throughout Greece those who are given wholly to war are honoured above others.88 This was especially the case at Sparta, where a freeman was forbidden to engage in any industrial occupation.89 Contrasting Lycurgus’ legislation with that of Solon, Plutarch observes that in a state where the earth was sufficient to support twice the number of inhabitants and where there were a multitude of Helots to be worn out by servitude, it was right to set the citizens free from laborious and mechanic arts and to employ them in arms as the only art fit for them to learn and exercise.90 At Thebes there was a law that no man could hold office who had not retired from business for ten years, because it was looked upon as a mean employment.91 Even at Athens, in spite of its democratic institutions and its laws against idleness, trade and handicrafts were despised, both by the general public and by the philosophers.

Xenophon’s Socrates said that the industrial arts are objectionable and justly held in little repute in communities, because they weaken the bodies of those who work at them by compelling them to sit and to live indoors and in some cases to pass whole days by the fire; for when the body becomes effeminate the mind loses its strength.92 Moreover, mechanical occupations leave those who practise them no leisure to attend to the interests of their friends or the commonwealth, hence men of that class seem unsuited alike to be of advantage to their connections and to be defenders of their country.93 Plato maintains that manual arts are a reproach because they “imply a natural weakness of the higher principle”;94 by their meanness they maim and disfigure the souls as well as the bodies of those who are employed in them.95 When Hesiod said that “work is no disgrace,”96 he could certainly not have meant that there was no disgrace for example in the manufacture of shoes or in selling pickles.97 And in his ‘Laws’ Plato lays down the regulation that no citizen or servant of a citizen should be occupied in handicraft arts; “for he who is to secure and preserve the public order of the State has an art which requires much study and many kinds of knowledge, and does not admit of being made a secondary occupation.”98 Aristotle, again, observes that in a community which has an aristocratic form of government the mechanic and the labourer will not be citizens, because honours are there given according to virtue and merit, and “no man can practise virtue who is living the life of a mechanic or