The first principle of all action is leisure. Both are required, but leisure is better than occupation and is its end; and therefore the question must be asked, what ought we to do when at leisure?
—Aristotle, Politics

The poore, the foule, the false, love can Admit, but not the busied man.
—John Donne, “Breake of Day”

Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration. . . . 
—T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
 

One can learn a lot about a culture from the words and ideas it pushes into early retirement. Our own age is rich in such conceptual emeriti, as anyone who has pondered the recent careers of terms like “manly,” “respectable,” “virtuous,” or “disinterested” (to take just four) knows well. One of the greatest casualties resulting from this policy of premature superannuation concerns the word “leisure,” an idea that for the Greeks and for the doctors of the Church was inextricably bound up with the highest aspirations of humanity. For Plato, for Aristotle, for Aquinas, we live most fully when we are most fully at leisure. Leisur —the Greek word is σχολή , whence our word “school”—meant the opposite of “downtime.” Leisure in this sense is not idleness, but activity undertaken for its own sake: philosophy, aesthetic delectation, and religious worship are models. It is significant that in both Greek and Latin, the words