In making shoes and because he makes them a man can gain heaven,
provided that the shoemaker strives to be perfect, as a shoemaker, as
our Father in heaven is perfect.
Fourier, the socialist dreamer, dreamed of making work attractive in his
phalansteries by the free choice of vocations and in other ways. There
is no other way than that of liberty. Wherein consists the charm of the
game of chance, which is a kind of work, if not in the voluntary
submission of the player to the liberty of Nature--that is, to chance?
But do not let us lose ourselves in a comparison between work and play.
And the sense of making ourselves irreplaceable, of not meriting death,
of making our annihilation, if it is annihilation that awaits us, an
injustice, ought to impel us not only to perform our own occupation
religiously, from love of God and love of our eternity and
eternalization, but to perform it passionately, tragically if you like.
It ought to impel us to endeavour to stamp others with our seal, to
perpetuate ourselves in them and in their children by dominating them,
to leave on all things the imperishable impress of our signature. The
most fruitful ethic is the ethic of mutual imposition.
Above all, we must recast in a positive form the negative commandments
which we have inherited from the Ancient Law. Thus where it is written,
"Thou shalt not lie!" let us understand, "Thou shalt always speak the
truth, in season and out of season!" although it is we ourselves, and
not others, who are judges in each case of this seasonableness.
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