He seemed to have lived many lives, and always lives of labour;
he had grown, I gathered from his simple talk, to have a great love of
the earth, the lives of flocks and herds, and of all the plants that
grew out of the earth or flourished in it. I had thought before, in a
foolish way, that all this might be put away from the spirit, in the
land where there was no need of such things; but I saw now that there
was a claim for labour, and a love of common things, which did not
belong only to the body, but was a real desire of the spirit. He spoke
of the pleasures of tending cattle, of cutting fagots in the forest
woodland among the copses, of ploughing and sowing, with the breath of
the earth about one; till I saw that the toil of the world, which I had
dimly thought of as a thing which no one would do if they were not
obliged, was a real instinct of the spirit, and had its counterpart
beyond the body. I had supposed indeed that in a region where all
troublous accidents of matter were over and done with, and where there
was no need of bodily sustenance, there could be nothing which
resembled the old weary toil of the body; but now I saw gladly that this
was not so, and that the primal needs of the spirit outlast the visible
world.
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