Whether work should be placedamong the causes of happiness or among the causes of unhappiness may perhaps beregarded as a doubtful question. There is certainly much work which isexceedingly weary and an excess of work is always very painful. I think,however, that, provided work is not excessive in amount, even the dullest workis to most people less painful 【正反表达】 than idleness. Thereare in work all grades, from mere relief of tedium up to the profoundestdelights, according to the nature of the work and the abilities of the worker.Most of the work that most people have to do is not in itself interesting, buteven such work has certain great advantages. To begin with, it fills a goodmany hours of the day without the need of deciding what one shall do. Mostpeople, when they are left free to fill their own time according to their ownchoice, are at a loss 【正反表达】 to think of anythingsufficiently pleasant to be worth doing. And whatever they decide on, they aretroubled by the feeling that something else would have been pleasanter. To beable to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and atpresent very few people have reached this level. Moreover, the exercise ofchoice is in itself tiresome. Except to people with unusual initiative it ispositively agreeable to be told what to do at each hour of the day, providedthe orders are not too unpleasant. Most of the idle rich suffer unspeakableboredom as the price of their freedom from toil. At times they may find reliefby hunting big game in Africa, or by flying round the world, but the number ofsuch sensations is limited, especially after youth is past. Accordingly themore intelligent rich men work nearly as hard as if they were poor, while richwomen for the most part keep themselves busy with innumerable trifles of whoseearth-shaking importance 【抽象表达】 they are firmlypersuaded. Worktherefore is desirable, first and foremost, as a preventive of boredom, for theboredom that a man feels when he is doing necessary though uninteresting workis as nothing in comparison with the boredom that he feels when he has nothingto do with his days. With this advantage of work another is associated, namelythat it makes holidays much more delicious when they come. Provided a man doesnot have to work so hard as to impair his vigor, he is likely to find far morezest in his free time than an idle man could possibly find.