Text of the meditation
The cause of the common lack of thoroughness lies in the thirst for pleasure. Every employer of labour knows how difficult it is to find men and women who will put thought and energy into their work, and do it completely and satisfactorily. Bad workmanship abounds.
Skill and excellence are acquired by few. Thoughtlessness, carelessness and laziness are such common vices that it should cease to appear strange that, in spite of "social reform," the ranks of the unemployed continue to swell, for those who scamp their work today will, another day, in the hour of deep necessity, look and ask for work in vain.
The law of "the survival of the fittest" is not based on cruelty; it is based on justice; it is one aspect of that divine equity that everywhere prevails. Vice is "beaten with many stripes"; if it were not so, how could virtue be developed? The thoughtless and lazy cannot take precedence over, or stand equally with, the thoughtful and industrious.
The mind that is occupied with pleasure cannot also be concentrated upon the perfect performance of duty.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.