Part 14 (1/2)

[60] [Read this and the next paragraph with attention; they contain clear statements, which I cannot mend, of things most necessary.]

[61] [Mainly; not altogether. Conclusive reward of high virtue is loving and crowning, not helping; and conclusive punishment of deep vice is hating and crus.h.i.+ng, not merely hindering.]

[62] Compare Chaucer's ”villany” (clownishness).

Full foul and chorlishe seemed she, And eke villanous for to be, And little coulde of norture To wors.h.i.+p any creature.

[63] [I leave this paragraph, in every syllable, as it was written, during the rage of the American war; it was meant to refer, however, chiefly to the Northerns: what modifications its hot and partial terms require I will give in another place: let it stand now as it stood.]

[64] Supply and demand! Alas! for what n.o.ble work was there ever any audible ”demand” in that poor sense (Past and Present)? Nay, the demand is not loud, even for ign.o.ble work. _See_ ”Average Earnings of Betty Taylor,” in _Times_ of 4th February of this year [1863]: ”Worked from Monday morning at 8 A.M. to Friday night at 5.30 P.M. for 1_s._ 5-1/2_d._”--_Laissez faire._ [This kind of slavery finds no Abolitionists that I hear of.]

[65] [”That the sacred grove is nothing but logs.”]

[66] Ames, by report of Waldo Emerson, says ”that a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in the water.” Yes, that is comfortable; and though your raft cannot sink (being too worthless for that), it may go to pieces, I suppose, when the four winds (your only pilots) steer compet.i.tively from its four corners, and carry it, [Greek: os oporinos Borees ph.o.r.eesin akanthas], and then more than your feet will be in the water.

[67] [”Not with water, but with ruin.” The worst ruin being that which the Americans chiefly boast of. They sent all their best and honestest youths, Harvard University men and the like, to that accursed war; got them nearly all shot; wrote pretty biographies (to the ages of 17, 18, 19) and epitaphs for them; and so, having washed all the salt out of the nation in blood, left themselves to putrefaction, and the morality of New York.]

[68] [This paragraph contains the gist of all that precede.]

[69] [Whenever you are puzzled by any apparently mistaken use of words in these essays, take your dictionary, remembering I had to fix terms, as well as principles. A Duke is a ”dux” or ”leader;” the flying wedge of cranes is under a ”ducal monarch”--a very different personage from a queen bee. The Venetians, with a beautiful instinct, gave the name to their King of the Sea.]

[70] [This is a perfect picture of the French under the tyrannies of their Pelican Kings, before the Revolution. But they must find other than Pelican Kings--or rather, Pelican Kings of the Divine brood, that feed their children, and with their best blood.]

[71] [Read carefully, from this point; because here begins the statement of things requiring to be done, which I am now re-trying to make definite in _Fors Clavigera_.]

[72] [”Evil on the top of Evil.” Delphic oracle, meaning iron on the anvil.]

[73] [Permit me to enforce and reinforce this statement, with all earnestness. It is the sum of what needs most to be understood in the matter of education.]

[74] [A pregnant paragraph, meant against English and Scotch landlords who drive their people off the land.]

[75] [In Lucian's dialogue, ”The sale of lives.”]

[76] [I raise this a.n.a.lysis of the _Tempest_ into my text; but it is nothing but a hurried note, which I may never have time to expand. I have retouched it here and there a little, however.]

[77] Of Shakspeare's names I will afterwards speak at more length; they are curiously--often barbarously--much by Providence,--but a.s.suredly not without Shakspeare's cunning purpose--mixed out of the various traditions he confusedly adopted, and languages which he imperfectly knew. Three of the clearest in meaning have been already noticed.

Desdemona, ”[Greek: dysdaimonia],” ”miserable fortune,” is also plain enough. Oth.e.l.lo is, I believe, ”the careful;” all the calamity of the tragedy arising from the single flaw and error in his magnificently collected strength. Ophelia, ”serviceableness,” the true lost wife of Hamlet, is marked as having a Greek name by that of her brother, Laertes; and its signification is once exquisitely alluded to in that brother's last word of her, where her gentle preciousness is opposed to the uselessness of the churlish clergy--”A _ministering_ angel shall my sister be, when thou liest howling.” Hamlet is, I believe, connected in some way with ”homely” the entire event of the tragedy turning on betrayal of home duty. Hermione ([Greek: erma]), ”pillar-like,” ([Greek: he eidos eche chryses 'Aphrodites]). t.i.tania ([Greek: t.i.tene]), ”the queen;” Benedict and Beatrice, ”blessed and blessing;” Valentine and Proteus, enduring (or strong), (valens), and changeful. Iago and Iachimo have evidently the same root--probably the Spanish Iago, Jacob, ”the supplanter,” Leonatus, and other such names, are interpreted, or played with, in the plays themselves. For the interpretation of Sycorax, and reference to her raven's feather, I am indebted to Mr. John R. Wise.

CHAPTER VI.

MASTERs.h.i.+P.

136. As in all previous discussions of our subject, we must study the relation of the commanding rich to the obeying poor in its simplest elements, in order to reach its first principles.

The simplest state of it, then, is this:[78] a wise and provident person works much, consumes little, and lays by a store; an improvident person works little, consumes all his produce, and lays by no store. Accident interrupts the daily work, or renders it less productive; the idle person must then starve, or be supported by the provident one, who, having him thus at his mercy, may either refuse to maintain him altogether, or, which will evidently be more to his own interest, say to him, ”I will maintain you, indeed, but you shall now work hard, instead of indolently, and instead of being allowed to lay by what you save, as you might have done, had you remained independent, _I_ will take all the surplus. You would not lay it up for yourself; it is wholly your own fault that has thrown you into my power, and I will force you to work, or starve; yet you shall have no profit of your work, only your daily bread for it; [and compet.i.tion shall determine how much of that[79]].”

This mode of treatment has now become so universal that it is supposed to be the only natural--nay, the only possible one; and the market wages are calmly defined by economists as ”the sum which will maintain the labourer.”

137. The power of the provident person to do this is only checked by the correlative power of some neighbour of similarly frugal habits, who says to the labourer--”I will give you a little more than this other provident person: come and work for me.”

The power of the provident over the improvident depends thus, primarily, on their relative numbers; secondarily, on the modes of agreement of the adverse parties with each other. The accidental level of wages is a variable function of the number of provident and idle persons in the world, of the enmity between them as cla.s.ses, and of the agreement between those of the same cla.s.s. _It depends, from beginning to end, on moral conditions._