Labour

674. Is the necessity of labour a law of nature?

Spirit: "That labour is a law of nature, and is proved by the fact that it is a necessity, and that civilisation obliges man to perform a greater amount of labour, because it increases the sum of his needs and of his enjoyments."
675. Ought we to understand by “labour” only occupations of a material nature?

Spirit: "No; the spirit labours like the body. Every sort of useful occupation is a labour."
676. Why is labour imposed upon mankind?

Spirit: "It is a consequence of his corporeal nature. It is an expiation, and, at the same time, a means of developing his intelligence. Without labour man would remain in the infancy of intelligence. This is why he is made to owe his food, his safety, and his well-being entirely to his labour and activity. To him who is too weak in body for the rougher kinds of work, God gives intelligence to make up for it; but the action of the intelligence is also a labour."
677. Why does nature herself provide for all the wants of the animals?

Spirit: "Everything in nature labours. The animals labour as really as you do, but their work, like their intelligence, is limited to the care of their own preservation; and this is why labour, among them, does not lead to progress, while, among men, it has a double aim, viz., the preservation of the body, and the development of thought, which is also a necessity for him. and which raises him continually to a higher level. When I say that the labour of the animals is limited to the care of their preservation, I mean that this is the aim which they propose to themselves in working. But they are also, unconsciously, and while providing only for their material needs, agents that second the views of the Creator; and their labour none the less concurs to the working out of the final end of nature, although you often fail to discover its immediate result."
678. In worlds more advanced than the earth, is man subjected to the same necessity of labour?

Spirit: "The nature of the labour is always relative to that of the wants it supplies; the less material are those wants, the less material is the labour. But you must not suppose that man, in those worlds, remains inactive and useless; idleness would be a torture instead of a benefit."
679. Is he who possesses a sufficiency of worldly goods for his subsistence enfranchised from
the law of labour?

Spirit: "From material labour perhaps, but not from the obligation of rendering himself useful according to his means, and of developing his own intelligence and that of others, which is also a labour. If the man, to whom God has apportioned a sufficiency of means for insuring his corporeal existence, be not constrained to win his bread by the sweat of his brow, the obligation of being useful to his fellow-creatures is all the greater in his case, because the portion appointed to him gives him a greater amount of leisure for doing good."
680. Are there not men who are incapable of working at anything whatever, and whose existence is entirely useless?

Spirit: "God is just; He condemns only him who is voluntarily useless; for such an one lives upon the labour of others. He wills that each should make himself useful according to his faculties."
681. Does the law of nature impose upon children the obligation of labouring for their
parents?

Spirit: "Certainly it does, just as it imposes on parents the duty of labouring for their children. For this reason God has given a place in nature to the sentiment of filial and paternal affection, in order that the members of a family may be led, by their mutual affection, to aid each other reciprocally-a duty which is too often lost sight of in your present state of society."