Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

AN APOLOGY FOR IDLEKS
see so many) takes his determination, votes for the
sixpences, and in the emphatic Americanism, ' goes
for' them. And while such an one is ploughing
distressfully up the road, it is not hard to under-
stand his resentment when he perceives cool persons
in the meadows by the wayside, lying with a hand-
kerchief over their ears and a glass at their elbow.
Alexander is touched in a very delicate place by
the disregard of Diogenes. Where was the glory
of having taken Rome, for those tumultuous bar-
barians who poured into the Senate-house, and
found the Fathers sitting silent and unmoved by
their success ? It is a sore thing to have laboured
along and scaled the arduous hill-tops, and when all
is done, find humanity indifferent to your achieve-
ment. Hence physicists condemn the unphysical ;
financiers have only a superficial toleration for those
who know little of stocks ; literary persons despise
the unlettered ; and people of all pursuits combine
to disparage those who have none.
But though this is one difficulty of the subject, it
is not the greatest. You could not be put in prison
for speaking against industry, but you can be sent
to Coventry for speaking like a fool. The greatest
difficulty with most subjects is to do them well;
therefore, please to remember this is an apology.
It is certain that much may be judiciously argued
in favour of diligence ; only there is, something to
be said against it, and that is what, on the present
occasion, I have to say. To state one argument is
not necessarily to be deaf to all others, and that a
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