Читать книгу Human Work онлайн

68 страница из 74

Regarding it, as we must under the Want theory, as done only to gratify a want; regarding it, as we must under the Ego concept, as done by the individual for the individual, it does seem a poor thing enough. Why should we honour and approve the never-so-ingenious efforts of a person to keep himself alive, so scornfully described in a poem of Robert Buchanan:

“Struggle, speculate, dig, and bleed,

Reap the whirlwind of Venus’ seed,

O senseless, impotent human breed!”

But beyond the legitimate scorn of a social creature for what he estimates as an individual activity, comes our illegitimate scorn based on lamentable, evil conditions.

The work of the free mother in the matriarchal period was never despised; when men enslaved women their work became contemptible. So when the despised captive was made to labour, his work also was held contemptible. And then, as Veblen shows so irrefutably, this primitive attitude was retained through all the centuries in the stagnant pool of leisure-class life, that singular medium wherein the active modern world may find preserved a sedimentary deposit of most ancient times. This class and its customs and habits of mind, being revered by us, we have made permanent and constantly reinforced the scorn of work which else would have been contradicted long since by every fact of progressing civilisation.