s is the pitiable story. Well now,
supposing us all to have the best intentions, we working men, as a body,
run some risk of bringing evil on the nation in that unconscious
manner--half hurrying, half pushed in a jostling march toward an end we
are not thinking of. For just as there are many things which we know
better and feel much more strongly than the richer, softer-handed classes
can know or feel them; so there are many things--many precious
benefits--which we, by the very fact of our privations, our lack of
leisure and instruction, are not so likely to be aware of and take into
our account. Those precious benefits form a chief part of what I may
call the common estate of society: a wealth over and above buildings,
machinery, produce, shipping, and so on, though closely connected with
these; a wealth of a more delicate kind, that we may more unconsciously
bring into danger, doing harm and not knowing that we do it. I mean that
treasure of knowledge, science, poetry, refinement of thought, feeling,
and manners, great memories and the interpretation of great records,
which is carried on from the minds of one generation to the minds of
another. This is something distinct from the indulgences of luxury and
the pursuit of vain finery; and one of the hardships in the lot of
working men is that they have been for the most part shut out from
sharing in this treasure. It can make a man's life very great, very full
of delight, though he has no smart furniture and no horses: it also
yields a great deal of discovery that corrects error, and of invention
that lessens bodily pain, and must at least make life easier for all.

Now the security of this treasure demands, not only the preservation of
order, but a certain patience on our part with many institutions and
facts of various kinds, especially touching the accumulation of wealth,
which from the light we stand in, we are more likely to discern the evil
than the good of. It is constantly the task of practical wisdom not to
say, "This is good, and I will have it," but to say, "This is the less of
two unavoidable evils, and I will bear it." And this treasure of
knowledge, which consists in the fine activity, the exalted vision of
many minds, is bound up at present with conditions which have much evil
in them. Just as in the case of material wealth and its distribution we
are obliged to take the selfishness and weaknesses of human nature into
account, and however we insis