As usual it is necessary to begin at the beginning. Work, as the dictionary says, is the exertion of energy, physical or mental. In common speech, however, we distinguish between the exertion of energy for the sake of pleasure or recreation, and the same exertion when it is made for the sake of or as a means to the earning or procuring of the means of living. The former we commonly call play; the work we commonly reserve for occupations by means of which we get the necessaries of life. It is clear, therefore, that work is a good thing, for that which enables us to live must be good. We must assume that to live is good and that therefore to work is good. And we may also freely agree with the Apostle when he says : 'if any man will not work , neither let him eat', for to eat what the labour of others has produced is, unless freely given, a form of robbery. It follows that nothing which truly sub-serves our life can be bad, and therefore there can be no form of necessary work which is in itself degrading. In these latter days we have to be more than usually clear in our minds about this. The idea is prevalent that physical labour is a bad thing, a thing to be avoided, a thing from which we may rightly seek release. We cannot discuss the question of work, the question of the factory system, of the machine, until we have right notions as to the nature of physical labour itself. For there can be nothing made, either for man's service or for his pleasure, which is not, at bottom, dependent upon some amount of physical labour for its existence. In sports and pastimes physical exertion is delighted in, but in the things we do to earn our living we regard the elimination of physical exertion as desirable and a mark of good civilization. We must therefore return again and again to this simple doctrine, that physical labour, manual work, is not in itself bad. It is the necessary basis of all human production and, in the most strict sense of the words, physical labour directed to the production of things needed for human life is both honourable and holy.