"If one thing after the other is discovered, and it is found that one or two elements can be made to do our work, the time may come when everybody will know so much that man will do nothing but——"
"But direct?"
"Yes."
"Isn't that something? Working with the hands or thinking are not the only things which man can do, in order to go forward and to advance."
"What I mean is this: We are told that idleness is wrong, and that people are happier when they are busy at some useful occupation."
"If that is a good definition of happiness, then we should make everything we use as crude and primitive as the people used to make them a thousand years ago. There would be no object in learning, because learning makes people discontented."
"I heard a story once about some wise man who offered his fortune to the man who could prove he was contented. The first applicant wanted the fortune, because he said he was contented. The wise man answered by saying, that if he was contented he would not want the fortune."
"Quite true; the contented man does not exist, because it is not human nature to be so. That is one of the qualities which distinguishes man from the rest of the animal creation."
"But is it true that the invention of labor-saving tools has caused a lot of misery to working people?"
"Do you know of any tools that are not labor-saving? The mason's trowel is a labor-saving tool, invented to prevent him from using his hands to put on the mortar; the bolo or the knife is just as much a labor-saving tool as the planing machine; the sickle saves labor and so does the reaper. The difficulty is that some people do not stop to think that the saving of labor applies just as forcibly to a simple tool as to a complicated one."