ing
justice. If one man is rewarded for a moderate amount of forethought by
becoming a millionaire, and his unsuccessful rivals punished by
starvation or the workhouse, the lottery of life is not arranged on
principles of justice. A man must be a very determined optimist if he
denied the painful truth to be found in such statements. He must be
blind to many evils if he does not perceive the danger of dulling his
sympathies by indifference to the fate of the unsuccessful. The rich
man in Clough's poem observes that, whether there be a God matters very
little--

For I and mine, thank somebody,
Manage to get our victual.

But, even if we are not very rich, we must often, I think, doubt
whether we are not wrapping ourselves in a spirit of selfish
complacency when we are returning to a comfortable home and passing
outcasts of the street. We must sometimes reflect that our comfort is
not simply a reward for virtue or intelligence, even if it be not
sometimes the prize of actual dishonesty. To shut our eyes to the mass
of wretchedness around us is to harden our hearts, although to open our
hands is too often to do more harm than good. It is no wonder that we
should be tempted to declaim against competition, when the competition
means that so many unfortunates are to be crowded off their narrow
standing-ground into the gulf of pauperism.

This may suggest the moral which I have been endeavouring to bring out.
Looking at society at large, we may surely say that it will be better
in proportion as every man is strenuously endeavouring to play his
part, and in which the parts are distributed to those best fitted to
play them. We must admit, too, that for any period to which we can look
forward, the great mass of mankind will find enough to occupy their
energies in labouring primarily for their own support, and so bearing
the burden of their own needs and the needs of their families. We may
infer, too, that a society will be the better so far as it gives the
most open careers to all talents, wherever displayed, and as it shows
respect for the homely virtues of industry, integrity, and forethought,
which are essential to the whole body as to its constituent members.
And we may further say that the corresponding motives in the individual
cannot be immoral. A desire of independence, the self-respect which
makes a man shrink from accepting as a gift what he can win as a fair
reward, the love of fairplay, which makes him use