The world idleness is used in two different senses.
It sometimes means the state of a man who is not employed in any work. Idleness
in this sense is not blameable, as every man requires occasional periods of rest
and recreation, and it is the height of folly to attempt to be always at work.
When, however, we speak of the evils of idleness, we man by idleness the
neglect of work at a time when we ought to be working.
There can be no doubt that the tendency to idleness
is this sense is most prejudicial to virtue, happiness, and success in life The
boy who allows himself at school or college to contract idle habits, is laying
a sure foundation for failure and unhappiness in h future life. In the first
place, his idleness prevents him from educating himself thoroughly for his
future career. In the second place, the idle habits he has formed by wasting
his time in the pas will make it extremely difficult for him to work steadily
in his profession or calling. These both at school and in after-life the idle
man finds himself distanced in the race by others of inferior ability who have
the advantages of being endowed with industrious habits.
The idle man’s predominant feeling its aversion to
work, hum by the course he pursues he often defeats his own object. Few people.
are able to live in this world without having the necessity of labour imposed
upon them, and those who through idleness neglect to work at the proper time
often have to work all the harder in the end. Th. farmer who neglects to mend
his damaged fences will have to work hard in hunting for his wandering sheep or
cattle. And after all finds he must mend sooner or later the gaps through which
they escaped. The hardest and most painful work is that which we might have
done with thoroughness and comfort, if we had industriously commenced it at the
right time.
But, it may be urged. There are some men who are so
wealthy that they need not work. Even such men gain no-thing by idleness. i hey
may indeed avoid labour, but total abstinence from labour is the surest way to
unhappiness. Interchange of labour and rest is the normal state of mankind, and
whoever tires to go through his life without labour will be despised by himself
and others as an idler, and lose his self-respect., more men are plugged into
melancholy by want to occupation than by any other cause. The feeling of this
want often drives men into evil courses. This fact is expressed in the proverb
that “Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.”
Of course the idle man, who thus takes refuges in
folly or vice to escape from the melancholy state of listlessness with which he
is threatened, on change the form of his unhappiness. In order to get a fair
proportion of happiness, it is absolutely necessary what we should work. It is
about as impossible to enjoy rest and amusement without earning them by hard
work, as to enjoy our meals without a previous interval of abstinence from
food. When the idle man thinks to make him happy by continual indulgence in his
lazy inclinations, he is as foolish as a child who imagines he would be
perfectly happy if he were allowed to eat sweetmeats all day long. ‘Whatever
poetry may feign of Lotus-eaters or dwellers in the Earthy Paradise. it is not
on such easy terms that we are allowed to secure for ourselves contentment and
happiness in this workday world.