can attain? You would be indignant
if you saw a strong man walk into a theatre or a lecture-room, and,
calmly choosing the best place, take his feeble neighbour by the
shoulder, and turn him out of it into the back seats, or the street. You
would be equally indignant if you saw a stout fellow thrust himself up
to a table where some hungry children were being fed, and reach his arm
over their heads and take their bread from them. But you are not the
least indignant if, when a man has stoutness of thought and swiftness of
capacity, and, instead of being long-armed only, has the much greater
gift of being long-headed--you think it perfectly just that he should
use his intellect to take the bread out of the mouths of all the other
men in the town who are of the same trade with him; or use his breadth
and sweep of sight to gather some branch of the commerce of the country
into one great cobweb, of which he is himself to be the central spider,
making every thread vibrate with the points of his claws, and commanding
every avenue with the facets of his eyes. You see no injustice in this.

118. But there is injustice; and, let us trust, one of which honourable
men will at no very distant period disdain to be guilty. In some degree,
however, it is indeed not unjust; in some degree, it is necessary and
intended. It is assuredly just that idleness should be surpassed by
energy; that the widest influence should be possessed by those who are
best able to wield it; and that a wise man, at the end of his career,
should be better off than a fool. But for that reason, is the fool to be
wretched, utterly crushed down, and left in all the suffering which his
conduct and capacity naturally inflict?--Not so. What do you suppose
fools were made for? That you might tread upon them, and starve them,
and get the better of them in every possible way? By no means. They were
made that wise people might take care of them. That is the true and
plain fact concerning the relations of every strong and wise man to the
world about him. He has his strength given him, not that he may crush
the weak, but that he may support and guide them. In his own household
he is to be the guide and the support of his children; out of his
household he is still to be the father--that is, the guide and
support--of the weak and the poor; not merely of the meritoriously weak
and the innocently poor, but of the guiltily and punishably poor; of the
men who ought to have known