nuine 'working man,' and the
shopkeeper thinks the life of the professional man a piece of organised
idleness, and the tradition appears ineradicable that all the clergy,
from bishops downwards, never work at all because they do not sit in
offices. It is of a piece with the theory of 'doing good'; for all men
are bigots when they attempt to measure the universal life of men by
their own little egoistic standards.

As to that imposing axiom, that all our actions must be measured by
their collective effects, I heartily agree to it, because it is
precisely here that I think my case is strongest. I do not, of course,
invite all men to follow my example by returning to what my friend
calls 'barbarism,' and there is so little danger of any such
catastrophe that it is not worth while discussing it. But if any
considerable number of men should think my example good, I would not
deter them from following it, because I believe that no greater service
could be done to society than to multiply the number of individuals who
prefer a simple to an artificial existence, who are willing to live
lives of honest labour and entire contentment, who will care not at all
for riches, but will spend their utmost care upon their virtues, who
will count 'self-possession,' the best of all possessions, and the
power of living in God's world in cheerful happiness and modest
usefulness the real programme of life which God has set before all His
children, and which alone is worth our hope and struggle. The basis of
all good citizenship is physical and moral health. Health is really
wholeness, and so we get the word holiness, for all these words are
products of the same idea. What service to the race can be greater,
both in its present value and its ultimate effect, than to produce men
and women both physically and morally whole? It is no doubt a duty to
do all we can to help the unfit, and assist the infirm; but it is
better wisdom and a truer duty to produce the fit and the whole. In
the degree that I am better equipped as a man, I am better equipped as
a member of the commonwealth. All questions of _doing_ good are
secondary to the question of _being_ good; and to be good is but a
synonym of moral wholeness. If a nation can succeed in producing
efficient human creatures, efficient first of all in body, because that
is the basis of all efficiency of mind, and will, and energy, there
will be no question of efficient citizenship. As for me,