you and me
personally, at least between our classes. The men who have culture
without wealth are jealous of the power and privileges of those who
possess money without culture; and on the other hand, the men whose time
has been too entirely absorbed by commercial pursuits to leave them any
margin sufficient to do justice to their intellectual powers, are often
painfully sensitive to the contempt of the cultivated, and strongly
disposed, from jealousy, to undervalue culture itself. Both are wrong so
far as they indulge any unworthy and unreasonable feeling of this kind.
The existence of the two classes is necessary to an advanced
civilization. The science of accumulating and administrating material
wealth, of which you yourself are a great practical master, is the
foundation of the material prosperity of nations, and it is only when
this prosperity is fully assured to great numbers that the arts and
sciences can develop themselves in perfect liberty and with the tranquil
assurance of their own permanence. The advancement of material
well-being in modern states tends so directly to the advancement of
intellectual pursuits, even when the makers of fortunes are themselves
indifferent to this result, that it ought always to be a matter of
congratulation for the intellectual class itself, which needs the
support of a great public with leisure to read and think. It is easy to
show how those arts and sciences which our class delights to cultivate
are built upon those developments of industry which have been brought
about by the energy of yours. Suppose the case of a scientific chemist:
the materials for his experiments are provided ready to his hand by the
industrial class; the record of them is preserved on paper manufactured
by the same industrial class; and the public which encourages him by its
attention is usually found in great cities which are maintained by the
labors of the same useful servants of humanity. It is possible, no
doubt, in these modern times, that some purely pastoral or agricultural
community might produce a great chemist, because a man of inborn
scientific genius who came into the world in an agricultural country
might in these days get his books and materials from industrial centres
at a distance, but his work would still be based on the industrial life
of others. No pastoral or agricultural community which was really
isolated from industrial communities ever produced a chemist. And now
consider how enorm