The 'Protestant Work Ethic' is, I feel compelled to note, not actually protestant at all, but monastic: it is the spirit of Laborare est orare, to work is to pray. In the tradition of western contemplative life, physical work is considered the most agreeable state of being for the religious, though it seems to me to promote a constant state of exhaustion. The difference, it seems to me, is that the Benedictine ethic is to labor at what you love, whereas the Protestant ethic is to slog away at what you hate. This ethic does not seem to procure spiritual enlightenment with the same efficacy as Saint Benedict's; see American Gothic. Do they appear to be felices et beati?