15 



agreeable and necessary as a condition of 

 physical and moral health. 



And when all have given to society the 

 work which best corresponds to their innate 

 and acquired abilities, each has a right to the 

 same reward, because each has contributed 

 equally to the totality of labour which 

 sustains the life of the social aggregate, and 

 jointly with it, that of each individual. 



The peasant who digs the ground performs 

 a work in appearance more modest, but quite 

 as necessary and meritorious as that of the 

 workman who makes a locomotive, of the 

 engineer who perfects it, or of the scholar 

 who struggles with the unknown in his study 

 or laboratory. 



It is only necessary that in a society all 

 should work, just as in the individual 

 organism all the cells, for instance, the nerve 

 cells, the muscle cells, or bone cells, fulfil 

 their different functions, more or less modest 

 in appearance, but each equally necessary and 

 useful biologically to the. life of the whole 

 organism. 



In the biological organism no living cell 

 remains inactive, and it is only nourished by 

 material exchanges in proportion to its work; 

 in the social organism no individual ought to 

 live without working, whatever may be the 

 form of his work. 



Thus the greatest number of artificial diffi- 

 culties which opponents raise against socialism 

 are swept away. 



But who will black the boots under the 



