71.Vacations were once the prerogative of the privileged few, even as late as the 19th century. Now they are considered the right of all, except for such unfotrunate masses as, for example, the bulk of puplation in certain countries, for whom life, save for sleep and brief periods of rest, is uniterrupted toil.
Vacations are more necessary now than before because today the average life is less well-rounded and has become increasingly compartmentalized. 72. I suppose the idea of vacations, as we conceive it, must be incomprehensible to primitive peoples. Rest of some kind has of course always been a part of the rhythm of human life, but earlier ages did not find it necessary to organize it in the way that modern man has done. Holidays and feast days were sufficient.
With modern man’s increasing tensions, with the stultifying quality of so much of his work, this break in the year’s routine became steadily more necessary. 73. Vacations became mandatory for the purpose of renewal and repair. And so it came about that in the United States, the most self-indulgent of nations, the most tense and compartmentalized, vacations have come to take a predominant place in domestic conversation.