OVERWORK.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 988, 24 January 1883, Page 3

OVERWORK.

In America, according to Mr Herbert Spencer, the passion for work is such that relaxation becomes impossible. “ A man’s hair is grey ten years sooner than in England.” Such overwork is a sin against posterity. “ A man’s constitution should be regarded, as an entailed estate. An excess of labour is irrational, like the miser’s useless jarold. It is high time to preach the gospel of relaxation.” The only thing one feels inclined to grumble at in Mr Spencer is that he seems to regard America as the only land needing that gospel. The need may he greatest across the Atlantic, but is it not pressing enough even in this worn-out old continent? George Eliot mourned the decline of “ oldfashioned leisure” twenty years ago, and since then things have got steadily worse. Even the idle are laboriously idle, and sports and exercises of all kinds become the field of furious competition. As for the workers, the scramble of life grows yearly more exhausting, and no ordinary person is allowed to protest against it, either in deed or word, on penalty of being set down as an idler or,a reprobate. Such protests are only permitted to a philosopher or a Pope, and we may think ourselves lucky that for once two such high authorities should concur, in denouncing the rush for gold which threatens, to destroy ns. But, perhaps, with a practical people, Mr Spencer’s threat that they will impair their health and ruin their future is likely to be more effectual than the old Christian warning that they are selling their souls.