Douglass isn't simply saying hard work pays off—he's insisting that *friction itself* is the engine of change, not merely an obstacle to endure. The distinction matters because it reframes struggle not as something to minimize or overcome as quickly as possible, but as the very condition that sharpens and transforms us. When you watch someone learn an instrument, for instance, it's the difficulty of each passage that builds their capability; remove the struggle and you remove the growth. Douglass, writing from slavery and freedom both, understood that comfort breeds stagnation—that a society without conflict won't simply drift, but will calcify into injustice.