第17章 Lay Morals(17)

The true Bohemian,a creature lost to view under the imaginary Bohemians of literature,is exactly described by such a principle of life.The Bohemian of the novel,who drinks more than is good for him and prefers anything to work,and wears strange clothes,is for the most part a respectable Bohemian,respectable in disrespectability,living for the outside,and an adventurer.But the man Imean lives wholly to himself,does what he wishes,and not what is thought proper,buys what he wants for himself,and not what is thought proper,works at what he believes he can do well and not what will bring him in money or favour.You may be the most respectable of men,and yet a true Bohemian.

And the test is this:a Bohemian,for as poor as he may be,is always open-handed to his friends;he knows what he can do with money and how he can do without it,a far rarer and more useful knowledge;he has had less,and continued to live in some contentment;and hence he cares not to keep more,and shares his sovereign or his shilling with a friend.The poor,if they are generous,are Bohemian in virtue of their birth.Do you know where beggars go?Not to the great houses where people sit dazed among their thousands,but to the doors of poor men who have seen the world;and it was the widow who had only two mites,who cast half her fortune into the treasury.

But a young man who elects to save on dress or on lodging,or who in any way falls out of the level of expenditure which is common to his level in society,falls out of society altogether.I suppose the young man to have chosen his career on honourable principles;he finds his talents and instincts can be best contented in a certain pursuit;in a certain industry,he is sure that he is serving mankind with a healthy and becoming service;and he is not sure that he would be doing so,or doing so equally well,in any other industry within his reach.Then that is his true sphere in life;not the one in which he was born to his father,but the one which is proper to his talents and instincts.And suppose he does fall out of society,is that a cause of sorrow?Is your heart so dead that you prefer the recognition of many to the love of a few?Do you think society loves you?Put it to the proof.Decline in material expenditure,and you will find they care no more for you than for the Khan of Tartary.You will lose no friends.If you had any,you will keep them.Only those who were friends to your coat and equipage will disappear;the smiling faces will disappear as by enchantment;but the kind hearts will remain steadfastly kind.Are you so lost,are you so dead,are you so little sure of your own soul and your own footing upon solid fact,that you prefer before goodness and happiness the countenance of sundry diners-out,who will flee from you at a report of ruin,who will drop you with insult at a shadow of disgrace,who do not know you and do not care to know you but by sight,and whom you in your turn neither know nor care to know in a more human manner?Is it not the principle of society,openly avowed,that friendship must not interfere with business;which being paraphrased,means simply that a consideration of money goes before any consideration of affection known to this cold-blooded gang,that they have not even the honour of thieves,and will rook their nearest and dearest as readily as a stranger?I hope I would go as far as most to serve a friend;but I declare openly I would not put on my hat to do a pleasure to society.I may starve my appetites and control my temper for the sake of those I love;but society shall take me as I choose to be,or go without me.Neither they nor I will lose;for where there is no love,it is both laborious and unprofitable to associate.

But it is obvious that if it is only right for a man to spend money on that which he can truly and thoroughly enjoy,the doctrine applies with equal force to the rich and to the poor,to the man who has amassed many thousands as well as to the youth precariously beginning life.And it may be asked,Is not this merely preparing misers,who are not the best of company?But the principle was this:that which a man has not fairly earned,and,further,that which he cannot fully enjoy,does not belong to him,but is a part of mankind's treasure which he holds as steward on parole.To mankind,then,it must be made profitable;and how this should be done is,once more,a problem which each man must solve for himself,and about which none has a right to judge him.Yet there are a few considerations which are very obvious and may here be stated.Mankind is not only the whole in general,but every one in particular.Every man or woman is one of mankind's dear possessions;to his or her just brain,and kind heart,and active hands,mankind intrusts some of its hopes for the future;he or she is a possible well-spring of good acts and source of blessings to the race.This money which you do not need,which,in a rigid sense,you do not want,may therefore be returned not only in public benefactions to the race,but in private kindnesses.Your wife,your children,your friends stand nearest to you,and should be helped the first.There at least there can be little imposture,for you know their necessities of your own knowledge.And consider,if all the world did as you did,and according to their means extended help in the circle of their affections,there would be no more crying want in times of plenty and no more cold,mechanical charity given with a doubt and received with confusion.Would not this simple rule make a new world out of the old and cruel one which we inhabit?

[After two more sentences the fragment breaks off.]