La partie adverse se contente de vivre modestement, et préfère profiter du temps ainsi gagné pour observer les autres et prendre du bon temps, mais leurs protestations ont des accents de bravade et de gasconnade. Il ne devrait pourtant pas en être ainsi. Cette prétendue oisiveté, qui ne consiste pas à ne rien faire, mais à faire beaucoup de choses

The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refuses to have anything as a gift.

In his work ‘On the Meaning of Life’ (1927), Schlick writes: ‘[T]he deification of work as such, the great gospel of our industrial age, has been exposed as idolatry.’ He argues that true meaning in life can be found only in those things that ‘exist for their own sake and carry their satisfaction in themselves,’ only in ‘free, purposeless action …

I am in a fair way of having no other tasks than such as I shall like to give my self, and of enjoying what I look upon as a great happiness, leisure to read, study, make experiments, and converse at large . . . on such points as may produce something for the common benefit of mankind, uninterrupted by the little cares and fatigues of business.