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Number 9. RUSKIN ON WORK. 453 ax ܫܚܠܦ ܩܚ mak Hr re ger rests on two bases. Within its proper limits, on a basis which is lawful and everlastingly necessary ; beyond them, on a basis unlawful, and everlastingly corrupting the frame-work of society. The lawful basis of wealth is, that a man who works should be paid the fair value of his and that if he does not choose to spend it to-day,he should have free leave to keep work ; it, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an industrious man working daily, and laying by daily, attains at last the possession of an accumulated sum of wealth, to which he has absolute right. The idle person who will not work, and the wasteful person who lays nothing by, at the end of the same time will be doubly poor-poor in possession, and dissolute in moral habit ; and he will then naturally covet the money which the other has saved. And if he is then allowed to attack the other, and rob him of his wellearned wealth, there is no more any motive for saving, or any reward for good conduct; and all society is thereupon dissolved, or exists only in systems of rapine. Therefore the first necessity of social life is the clearness of national conscience in enforcing the law-that he should keep who has JUSTIY BARNED. That law, I say, is the proper basis of distinction between rich and poor. But there is also a false basis of distinction; namely, the power held over those who earn wealth by those who levy or exact it. There will be always a number of men who would fain set themselves to the accumulation of wealth as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily, that class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect, and, more or less, cowardly. It is physically impossible for a well educated, intellectual, or brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts; as physically impossible as it is for him to make his dinner the principal object of them. All healthy people like their dinners, but their dinner is not the main object of their lives. So all healthily minded people like making money-ought to [I І4] wer re- .*ker- Massa like it, and to enjoy the sensation of winning it : but the main object of their life is not money; it is something better than money. A good soldier, for instance, mainly wishes to do his fighting well. He is glad of his pay-very properly so, and justly grumbles when you keep him ten years without it-still, his main notion of life is to win battles, not to be paid for They like pew-rents, and baptismal fees, of course ; but winning them. So of clergymen. yet, if they are brave and well educated, the pew-rent is not the sole object of their lives, and the baptismal fee is not the sole purpose of the baptism ; the clergyman's object is essentially to baptize and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of doctors. They like fees no doubt, -ought to like them; yet if they are brave and well educated, the entire object of their lives is not fees. They, on the whole, desire to cure the sick ; and,-if they are good doctors, and the choice were fairly put to them -would rather cure their patient. and lose their And so with all their fee, than kill him, and get it. other brave and rightly trained men; work is first, their fee second-very important always, but still second. But in every nation, as I said, there are a vast class who are ill educated, cowardly, and more or less stupid. And with these people, just as certainly the fee is first, and the work second, as with brave people the work is first, and the fee second. And this is no small distinction. It is the whole distinction in a man; distinction between life and death in a man; between heaven and hell for him. must serve one or other. with you, and your fee second, work is your master, and the lord of work, who is God. But if your fee is first with you, and your work second, fee is your master, and the lord of fee, who is the Devil; and not only the levil, but the lowest of devils-the least erected fiend that fell.' So there you have it in brief terms; Work first-you are God's servants; Fee first You cannot serve two masters :-you If your work is first