A man who has come to recognise his calling to labour will be naturally inclined to that change of labour which is proper for him for the satisfying of his outward and inward wants, and he will reverse this order only when he feels an irresistible impulse to some special labour, and when other men require this labour from him. The nature of labour is such that the satisfying of all men's wants requires that very alternation of different kinds of labour which renders labour easy and pleasant.
Only the erroneous idea that labour is a curse could lead men to free themselves from some kinds of labour, that is, to seize other men's labour, requiring from other men that forced occupation with a special labour which is called nowadays the division of labour.
We have become so accustomed to our false conception of the arrangement of labour that it seems to us that for a boot-maker, a machinist, a writer, a musician, it would be better to be freed from the labour proper to man. Where there is no violence over other men's labour, nor a false belief in the pleasure of idleness, no man will for the sake of his special labour free himself from physical labour necessary for the satisfying of his wants, because special occupation is not a privilege, but a sacrifice to a man's inclination and for the sake of his brethren.
A boot-maker in a village having torn himself from his usual pleasant labour in the field, and having begun his labour of mending or making boots for his neighbours, deprives himself of a pleasant, useful labour in the field for the sake of others, only because he is fond of sewing, and knows that nobody will do it better than he does, and that people will be thankful to him.
But he cannot wish to deprive himself of the pleasant alternation of labour for all his life. The same with the starosta, the machinist, the writer, the learned man.
It is only to our perverted ideas, that it seems, when the master sends his clerk to be a peasant, or government sentences one of its ministers to deportation, that they are punished and have been dealt with hardly. In reality they have had a great good done to them; that is, they have exchanged their heavy special work for a pleasant alternation of labour.
In a natural society all is different. I know a commune where the people earn their living themselves. One of the members of this community was more educated than the rest; and they require him to deliver lectures, for which he has to prepare himself during the day, that he may be able to deliver them in the evening. He does it joyfully, feeling that he is useful to others, and that he can do it well. But he grows tired of the exclusive mental labour, and his health suffers accordingly. The members of the community therefore pity him, and ask him to come and labour in the field again.
For men who consider labour to be the essential thing and the joy of life, the ground, the basis, of it will always be the struggle with nature,—not only in agricultural labour, but also in that of handicraft, mental work, and intercourse with men.
The divergence from one or many of these kinds of labour, and specialities of labour, will be performed only when a man of special gifts, being fond of this work, and knowing that he performs it better than anybody else, will sacrifice his own advantage in order to fulfil the demands which others put directly to him.
Only with such a view of labour and the natural division of labour resulting from it, will that curse disappear which in our imagination we have put upon labour; and every labour will always be a joy, because man will do either an unquestionably useful, pleasant, and easy work, or will be conscious that he makes a sacrifice by performing a more difficult special labour for the good of others.