"For while a whole day spent in gardening is the best of anodynes and the most benign of soporifics, the higher functions of the mind go to sleep aft… - Lewis Mumford

The two poles of civilization, then, are mechanically organized work and mechanically organized destruction and extermination. Roughly the same forces and the same methods of operation were applicable to both areas. To some extent systematic daily work served to keep in check the licentious energies that were now available for turning mere dreams and wanton fantasies into actualities: but among the governing classes no such salutary check operated. Sated with leisure, war gave them 'something to do' and by its incidental hardships, responsibilities, and mortal risks, provided the equivalent of honorable labor. War became not merely the 'health of the state,' as Nietzsche called it: in addition, it was the cheapest form of mock-creativity, for in a few days it could produce visible results that undid the efforts of many lifetimes.

More than one recent observer has pointed out that the prospective achievement of universal leisure, with the six-hour day and the five-day week, carries the threat of intolerable emptiness and boredom. The hope expressed by Julian Huxley and others that this vacancy will be profitably filled by continued studies in the school and the university, to use the time once occupied by office or factory work, over-rates both the attraction and the nutritive value of such fare, and fails to take note of the ominous rebellion against it already manifested by those college students who find no joy in exercising their minds, and who would rather dull them by drugs or stone them by violent sounds.

Max Beer, in his History of British Socialism, points out that Bacon looked for the happiness of mankind chiefly in the application of science and industry. But by now it is plain that if this alone were sufficient, we could all live in heaven tomorrow. Beer points out that More, on the other hand, looked to social reform and religious ethics to transform society; and it is equally plain that if the souls of men could be transformed without altering their material and institutional activities, Christianity, Mohammedanism, and Buddhism might have created an earthly paradise almost any time this last two thousand years. The truth is, as Beer sees, that these two conceptions are still at war with each other: idealism and science continue to function in separate compartments; and yet "the happiness of man on earth" depends upon their combination.