第14章 Lay Morals(14)

Services differ so widely with different gifts,and some are so inappreciable to external tests,that this is not only a matter for the private conscience,but one which even there must be leniently and trustfully considered.For remember how many serve mankind who do no more than meditate;and how many are precious to their friends for no more than a sweet and joyous temper.To perform the function of a man of letters it is not necessary to write;nay,it is perhaps better to be a living book.So long as we love we serve;so long as we are loved by others,I would almost say that we are indispensable;and no man is useless while he has a friend.The true services of life are inestimable in money,and are never paid.Kind words and caresses,high and wise thoughts,humane designs,tender behaviour to the weak and suffering,and all the charities of man's existence,are neither bought nor sold.

Yet the dearest and readiest,if not the most just,criterion of a man's services,is the wage that mankind pays him or,briefly,what he earns.There at least there can be no ambiguity.St.Paul is fully and freely entitled to his earnings as a tentmaker,and Socrates fully and freely entitled to his earnings as a sculptor,although the true business of each was not only something different,but something which remained unpaid.A man cannot forget that he is not superintended,and serves mankind on parole.He would like,when challenged by his own conscience,to reply:'Ihave done so much work,and no less,with my own hands and brain,and taken so much profit,and no more,for my own personal delight.'And though St.Paul,if he had possessed a private fortune,would probably have scorned to waste his time in making tents,yet of all sacrifices to public opinion none can be more easily pardoned than that by which a man,already spiritually useful to the world,should restrict the field of his chief usefulness to perform services more apparent,and possess a livelihood that neither stupidity nor malice could call in question.Like all sacrifices to public opinion and mere external decency,this would certainly be wrong;for the soul should rest contented with its own approval and indissuadably pursue its own calling.Yet,so grave and delicate is the question,that a man may well hesitate before he decides it for himself;he may well fear that he sets too high a valuation on his own endeavours after good;he may well condescend upon a humbler duty,where others than himself shall judge the service and proportion the wage.

And yet it is to this very responsibility that the rich are born.They can shuffle off the duty on no other;they are their own paymasters on parole;and must pay themselves fair wages and no more.For I suppose that in the course of ages,and through reform and civil war and invasion,mankind was pursuing some other and more general design than to set one or two Englishmen of the nineteenth century beyond the reach of needs and duties.Society was scarce put together,and defended with so much eloquence and blood,for the convenience of two or three millionaires and a few hundred other persons of wealth and position.It is plain that if mankind thus acted and suffered during all these generations,they hoped some benefit,some ease,some wellbeing,for themselves and their descendants;that if they supported law and order,it was to secure fair-play for all;that if they denied themselves in the present,they must have had some designs upon the future.Now,a great hereditary fortune is a miracle of man's wisdom and mankind's forbearance;it has not only been amassed and handed down,it has been suffered to be amassed and handed down;and surely in such a consideration as this,its possessor should find only a new spur to activity and honour,that with all this power of service he should not prove unserviceable,and that this mass of treasure should return in benefits upon the race.If he had twenty,or thirty,or a hundred thousand at his banker's,or if all Yorkshire or all California were his to manage or to sell,he would still be morally penniless,and have the world to begin like Whittington,until he had found some way of serving mankind.His wage is physically in his own hand;but,in honour,that wage must still be earned.He is only steward on parole of what is called his fortune.He must honourably perform his stewardship.He must estimate his own services and allow himself a salary in proportion,for that will be one among his functions.And while he will then be free to spend that salary,great or little,on his own private pleasures,the rest of his fortune he but holds and disposes under trust for mankind;it is not his,because he has not earned it;it cannot be his,because his services have already been paid;but year by year it is his to distribute,whether to help individuals whose birthright and outfit have been swallowed up in his,or to further public works and institutions.