elieve not. For my own part, I
want but little money, I hope; and I do not want to be decent at all,
but to be good.

CHAPTER IV

We have spoken of that supreme self-dictation which keeps varying from
hour to hour in its dictates with the variation of events and
circumstances. Now, for us, that is ultimate. It may be founded on some
reasonable process, but it is not a process which we can follow or
comprehend. And moreover the dictation is not continuous, or not
continuous except in very lively and well-living natures; and
betweenwhiles we must brush along without it. Practice is a more
intricate and desperate business than the toughest theorising; life is
an affair of cavalry, where rapid judgment and prompt action are alone
possible and right. As a matter of fact, there is no one so upright but
he is influenced by the world's chatter; and no one so headlong but he
requires to consider consequences and to keep an eye on profit. For the
soul adopts all affections and appetites without exception, and cares
only to combine them for some common purpose which shall interest all.
Now respect for the opinion of others, the study of consequences and the
desire of power and comfort, are all undeniably factors in the nature of
man; and the more undeniably since we find that, in our current
doctrines, they have swallowed up the others and are thought to conclude
in themselves all the worthy parts of man. These, then, must also be
suffered to affect conduct in the practical domain, much or little
according as they are forcibly or feebly present to the mind of each.

Now a man's view of the universe is mostly a view of the civilised
society in which he lives. Other men and women are so much more grossly
and so much more intimately palpable to his perceptions, that they stand
between him and all the rest; they are larger to his eye than the sun,
he hears them more plainly than thunder; with them, by them, and for
them, he must live and die. And hence the laws that affect his
intercourse with his fellow-men, although merely customary and the
creatures of a generation, are more clearly and continually before his
mind than those which bind him into the eternal system of things,
support him in his upright progress on this whirling ball, or keep up
the fire of his bodily life. And hence it is that money stands in the
first rank of considerations and so powerfully affects the choice. For
our society is built with money for mort