I am contented to take an
increase in one single power or faculty of his soul. Let him be
endowed with a greater propensity to industry and labour; a more
vigorous spring and activity of mind; a more constant bent to
business and application. Let the whole species possess naturally
an equal diligence with that which many individuals are able to
attain by habit and reflection; and the most beneficial
consequences, without any allay of ill, is the immediate and
necessary result of this endowment. Almost all the moral, as well
as natural evils of human life, arise from idleness; and were our
species, by the original constitution of their frame, exempt from
this vice or infirmity, the perfect cultivation of land, the
improvement of arts and manufactures, the exact execution of
every office and duty, immediately follow; and men at once may
fully reach that state of society, which is so imperfectly
attained by the best regulated government. But as industry is a
power, and the most valuable of any, Nature seems determined,
suitably to her usual maxims, to bestow it on men with a very
sparing hand; and rather to punish him severely for his
deficiency in it, than to reward him for his attainments. She has
so contrived his frame, that nothing but the most violent
necessity can oblige him to labour; and she employs all his other
wants to overcome, at least in part, the want of diligence, and
to endow him with some share of a faculty of which she has
thought fit naturally to bereave him.
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