o be meddled with; they say, "How very
much he must have done for society before society could have been
prevailed upon to give him so much money;" so magnificent an organisation
overawes them; they regard it as a thing dropped from heaven.

"Money," they say, "is the symbol of duty, it is the sacrament of having
done for mankind that which mankind wanted. Mankind may not be a very
good judge, but there is no better." This used to shock me at first,
when I remembered that it had been said on high authority that they who
have riches shall enter hardly into the kingdom of heaven; but the
influence of Erewhon had made me begin to see things in a new light, and
I could not help thinking that they who have not riches shall enter more
hardly still.

People oppose money to culture, and imply that if a man has spent his
time in making money he will not be cultivated--fallacy of fallacies! As
though there could be a greater aid to culture than the having earned an
honourable independence, and as though any amount of culture will do much
for the man who is penniless, except make him feel his position more
deeply. The young man who was told to sell all his goods and give to the
poor, must have been an entirely exceptional person if the advice was
given wisely, either for him or for the poor; how much more often does it
happen that we perceive a man to have all sorts of good qualities except
money, and feel that his real duty lies in getting every half-penny that
he can persuade others to pay him for his services, and becoming rich. It
has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want
of money is so quite as truly.

The above may sound irreverent, but it is conceived in a spirit of the
most utter reverence for those things which do alone deserve it--that is,
for the things which are, which mould us and fashion us, be they what
they may; for the things that have power to punish us, and which will
punish us if we do not heed them; for our masters therefore. But I am
drifting away from my story.

They have another plan about which they are making a great noise and
fuss, much as some are doing with women's rights in England. A party of
extreme radicals have professed themselves unable to decide upon the
superiority of age or youth. At present all goes on the supposition that
it is desirable to make the young old as soon as possible. Some would
have it that this is wrong, and that the object of educatio