【瓦尔登湖】经济篇（4）

But men labor under a mistake.

The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost.

By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal.

It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, are so occupied with the factitious cares and labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.

Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that.

Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day;

[00:46.07]he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market.

He has no time to be anything but a machine.

How can he remember well his ignorance, which his growth requires, who has so often to use his knowledge?