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182. It is also singular that anybody should find satisfaction in giving definitions to labor, poverty, etc., from which one can argue that labor and poverty may be brought to an end; thus it is said that labor is the pain of doing what one does not know how to do, so that it may be rendered non-existent by acquiring skill. This is what the Germans call "fighting a mirror." It is only literary sleight-of-hand. Labor remains just what it always was—a pitiless fact, an inevitable necessity. A man who has capital on which he can live without work is living on past labor accumulated and reapplied. There is no way in which one of the sons of men can live without labor except by enslaving some of his fellowmen to work for him. Therefore the essence of personal and civil liberty must be found in a state of things in which each one labors for himself, is secured against laboring for any one else, and is assured the enjoyment of the fruits of his own labor. Civil liberty, when considered by itself, must consist in such laws and institutions as secure an equilibrium of rights and duties, and allow no privileges to arise on one side and no servitudes on the other. Labor is all expenditure of human energy, by which the sustentation of society is carried on. It is expenditure of human energy, and never can be anything else. Therefore, it wears men out and consumes them. In a limited measure, and, in youth, for a limited time, it may be pleasurable, but, as it is sure to surpass the limits of degree or the limits of time as a man grows old, it is certain to be an oppression and destruction to the individual, against which his will must revolt and under which his happiness must be sacrificed, because his physical powers are sure to decay while yet his will is strong to wish and to undertake. The "sustentation of