[53] Raffles, op. cit. i. 246 sq.
Progress in civilisation implies an increase of industry. Both the necessities and the comforts of life grow more numerous; hence more labour is required to provide for them, and at the same time there is more inducement to accumulate wealth. The advantages, both private and public, accruing from diligence are more clearly recognised, and the government, in particular, is anxious that the people should work so as to be able to pay their taxes. All this leads to condemnation of idleness and approbation of industry; and the influence of habit must operate in the same direction among a nation whose industrial propensities have been the cause of its civilisation. But in the archaic State war is still regarded as a nobler occupation than labour; and whilst agriculture is held in honour, trade and handicraft are frequently despised.
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]
[54] Blas Valera, quoted by Garcilasso de la Vega, First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, ii. 34. See also ibid. ii. 14; Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, ii. 413.
[55] Herrera, General History of the West Indies, iv. 339.
[56] Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru, i. 57.
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]
[57] See Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, iv. p. lxvii.; Geiger, Civilization of the Eastern Irānians, i. 70; Rawlinson, Religions of the Ancient World, p. 108; Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, ii. 29, xxxvi. 15, xxxvii. 14, &c.
[58] Vendîdâd, xviii. 16.
[59] Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, xxi. 27.