Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/311

 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XTTT. 119

enlist the services of all ranks in discussing and endea- voring to meet, in the most practical way, the claims of the working-classes; and acts on the decided view that for these purposes recourse should be had, in due mea- sure and degree, to the help of the law and of State authority.

20. Let it be laid down, in the first place, that human- ity must remain as it is. It is impossible to reduce human society to a level. The Socialists may do their utmost, but all striving against nature is vain. There naturally exist among mankind innumerable differences of the most important kind; people differ in capability, in diligence, in health, and in strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of inequality in condition. Such inequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community ; social and public life can only go on by the help of various kinds of capacity and the playing of many parts ; and each man, as a rule, chooses the part which peculiarly suits his case. As regards bodily labor, even had man never fallen from the state of innocence, he would not have been wholly unoccu- pied; but that which would then have been his free choice and his delight, became afterwards compulsory, and the painful expiation of his sin. Cursed be the earth in thy work ; in thy labor thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life* In like manner, the other pains and hardships of life will have no end or cessation on this earth; for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and they must be with man as long as life lasts. To suffer and to endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity ; let men try as they may, no strength and no artifice will ever succeed in banishing from human life the ills and troubles which beset it. If any there are who pretend


 * Genesis ill. 17.

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