ly this degradation of the operative into a machine, which, more
than any other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations
everywhere into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom
of which they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their universal
outcry against wealth, and against nobility, is not forced from them
either by the pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. These
do much, and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of society
were never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are
ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make
their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure.
It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper classes, but
they cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind of labor to
which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes them less
than men. Never had the upper classes so much sympathy with the lower,
or charity for them, as they have at this day, and yet never were they
so much hated by them: for, of old, the separation between the noble and
the poor was merely a wall built by law; now it is a veritable
difference in level of standing, a precipice between upper and lower
grounds in the field of humanity and there is pestilential air at the
bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever to come when the nature of
right freedom will be understood, and when men will see that to obey
another man, to labor for him, yield reverence to him or to his place,
is not slavery. It is often the best kind of liberty,--liberty from
care. The man who says to one, Go, and he goeth, and to another, Come,
and he cometh, has, in most cases, more sense of restraint and
difficulty than the man who obeys him. The movements of the one are
hindered by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, by the bridle on
his lips: there is no way by which the burden may be lightened; but we
need not suffer from the bridle if we do not champ at it. To yield
reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal,
is not slavery; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live
in this world. There is, indeed, a reverence which is servile, that is
to say, irrational or selfish: but there is also noble reverence, that
is to say, reasonable and loving; and a man is never so noble as when he
is reverent in this kind; nay, even if the feeling pass the bounds of
mere reason, so th