第130章 A PRACTICAL CONCLUSION.(14)

This task will wear away your lives and the lives of your sons and grandsons;but for what purpose,if not for tasks like this,were lives given to men?Ye shall cease to count your thousand-pound scalps;the noble of you shall cease!Nay,the very scalps,as I say,will not long be left,if you count only these.Ye shall cease wholly to be barbarous vulturous Chactaws,and become noble European nineteenth-century men.Ye shall know that Mammon,in never such gigs and flunky 'respectabilities'in not the alone God;that of himself he is but a devil and even a brute-god.

"Difficult?Yes,it will be difficult.The short-fibre cotton;that,too,was difficult.The waste-cotton shrub,long useless,disobedient as the thistle by the wayside;have ye not conquered it,made it into beautiful bandana webs,white woven shirts for men,bright tinted air garments wherein flit goddesses?Ye have shivered mountains asunder,made the hard iron pliant to you as soft putty;the forest-giants--marsh-jotuns--bear sheaves of golden grain;AEgir--the Sea-Demon himself stretches his back for a sleek highway to you,and on Firehorses and Windhorses ye career.Ye are most strong.

Thor,red-bearded,with his blue sun-eyes,with his cheery heart and strong thunder-hammer,he and you have prevailed.Ye are most strong,ye Sons of the icy North,of the far East,far marching from your rugged Eastern Wildernesses,hitherward from the gray dawn of Time!

Ye are Sons of the Jotun-land;the land of Difficulties Conquered.

Difficult?You must try this thing.Once try it with the understanding that it will and shall have to be done.Try it as ye try the paltrier thing,making of money!I will bet on you once more,against all Jotuns,Tailor-gods,Double-barrelled Law-wards,and Denizens of Chaos whatsoever!""A question arises here:Whether,in some ulterior,perhaps not far-distant stage of this 'Chivalry of Labour,'your Master-Worker may not find it possible,and needful,to grant his Workers permanent interest in his enterprise and theirs?So that it become,in practical result,what in essential fact and justice it ever is,a joint enterprise;all men,from the Chief Master down to the lowest Overseer and Operative,economically as well as loyally concerned for it?

Which question I do not answer.The answer,near or else far,is perhaps,Yes;and yet one knows the difficulties.Despotism is essential in most enterprises;I am told they do not tolerate 'freedom of debate'on board a seventy-four.Republican senate and plebiscite would not answer well in cotton mills.And yet,observe there too,Freedom--not nomad's or ape's Freedom,but man's Freedom;this is indispensable.We must have it,and will have it!To reconcile Despotism with Freedom--well,is that such a mystery?Do you not already know the way?It is to make your Despotism just.Rigorous as Destiny,but just,too,as Destiny and its Laws.The Laws of God;all men obey these,and have no 'Freedom'at all but in obeying them.

The way is already known,part of the way;and courage and some qualities are needed for walking on it."

"Not a May-game is this man's life,but a battle and a march,a warfare with principalities and powers.No idle promenade through fragrant orange-groves and green flowery spaces,waited on by the choral Muses and the rosy Hours:it is a stern pilgrimage through burning sandy solitudes,through regions of thick-ribbed ice.He walks among men,loves men,with inexpressible soft pity,as they cannot love him,but his soul dwells in solitude in the uttermost parts of creation.