"The reward of labour is _life_.

Is that not enough ?" "But no reward for especially good work," quoth I.
"Plenty of reward," said he--"the reward of creation.

The wages which God gets, as people might have said time agone.

If you are going to ask to be paid for the pleasure of creation, which is what excellence in work means, the next thing we shall hear of will be a bill sent in for the begetting of children." "Well, but," said I, "the man of the nineteenth century would say there is a natural desire towards the procreation of children, and a natural desire not to work." "Yes, yes," said he, "I know the ancient platitude,--wholly untrue; indeed, to us quite meaningless.

Fourier, whom all men laughed at, understood the matter better." "Why is it meaningless to you ?" said I.
He said: "Because it implies that all work is suffering, and we are so far from thinking that, that, as you may have noticed, whereas we are not short of wealth, there is a kind of fear growing up amongst us that we shall one day be short of work.