‘Idle people are dead lifelong.’ This is the famous quote of Thomas Fuller, a philosopher.
Idleness has long been regarded as an evil, but many people don’t realize just why. What’s wrong with being idle? What’s wrong with hanging around day after day, doing little or nothing constructive? The answer, as with everything else in life, has to do with several things, not having any sense of accomplishment, where one thought goes when one is idle, and how one gets along with others when one is idle.
From the beginning of civilization until the industrial revolution, a man could, as a rule, produce by hard work little more than was required for the subsistence of himself and his family, although his wife worked at least as hard as he did, and his children added their labour as soon as they were old enough to do so.
Leisure is essential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was only rendered possible by the labours of the many. But their labours were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good. And with modern technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization.
In India, men often work long hours even when they are well off; such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure for wage earners, except as the grim punishment of unemployment; in fact, they leisure even for their sons.
Vocabulary
Indignant—angry
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