d both of individual
and national morals at a time when the dissolution or enfeeblement of
theological beliefs is disturbing the foundations on which most current
moral teaching has been based. In the field of morals action holds a
much larger place than reasoning--a larger place even in elucidating our
difficulties and illuminating the path on which we should go. It is by
the active pursuit of an immediate duty that the vista of future duties
becomes most clear, and those who are most immersed in active duties are
usually little troubled with the perplexities of life, or with minute
and paralysing scruples. A public opinion which discourages idleness and
places high the standard of public duty is especially valuable in an age
when the tendency to value wealth, and to measure dignity by wealth, has
greatly increased, and when wealth in some of its most important forms
has become wholly dissociated from special duties. The duties of the
landlord who is surrounded by a poor and in some measure dependent
tenantry, the duties of the head of a great factory or shop who has a
large number of workmen or dependents in his employment, are
sufficiently obvious, though even in these spheres the tie of duty has
been greatly relaxed by the growing spirit of independence, which makes
each class increasingly jealous of the interference of others, and by
the growing tendency of legislation to regulate all relations of
business and contracts by definite law instead of leaving them, as in
the past, to voluntary action. But there are large classes of fortunes
which are wholly, or almost wholly, dissociated from special and
definite duties. The vast and ever-increasing multitude whose incomes
are derived from national, or provincial, or municipal debts, or who are
shareholders or debenture-holders in great commercial and industrial
undertakings, have little or no practical control over, or interest in,
those from whom their fortunes are derived. The multiplication of such
fortunes is one of the great characteristics of our time, and it brings
with it grave dangers. Such fortunes give unrivalled opportunities of
luxurious idleness, and as in themselves they bring little or no social
influence or position, those who possess them are peculiarly tempted to
seek such a position by an ostentation of wealth and luxury which has a
profoundly vulgarising and demoralising influence upon Society. The
tendency of idleness to lead to immorality has long