【每天读一点英文】gnuhpc注释版：Work, Labor, and Play

By Wystan Hugh Auden

     So far as I know, Miss Hannah Arendt was the first person to define the essential difference between work and labor. To be happy, a man must feel, firstly, free and, secondly, important. He cannot be really happy if he is compelled by society to do what he does not enjoy doing, or if what he enjoys doing is ignored by society as of no value or importance. In a society where slavery in the strict sense has been abolished, the sign that what a man does is of social value is that he is paid money to do it, but a laborer today can rightly be called a wage slave. A man is a laborer if the job society offers him is of no interest to himself but he is compelled to take it by the necessity of earning a living and supporting his family.
     The antithesis（[an·tith·e·sis || æn'tɪθɪsɪs]n.  对立面; 对照; 对立; 对偶） to labor is play. When we play a game, we enjoy what we are doing, otherwise we should not play it, but it is a pu