otun_-land; the land of Difficulties
Conquered. Difficult? You must try this thing. Once try it
with the understanding that it will and shall have to be done.
Try it as ye try the paltrier thing, making of money! I will bet
on you once more, against all Jotuns, Tailor-gods, Double-
barrelled Law-wards, and Denizens of Chaos whatsoever!

Chapter V

Permanence

Standing on the threshold, nay as yet outside the threshold, of a
'Chivalry of Labour,' and an immeasurable Future which it is to
fill with fruitfulness and verdant shade; where so much has not
yet come even to the rudimental state, and all speech of positive
enactments were hasardous in those who know this business only by
the eye,--let us here hint at simply one widest universal
principle, as the basis from which all organisation hitherto has
grown up among men, and all henceforth will have to grow: The
principle of Permanent Contract instead of Temporary.

Permanent not Temporary:--you do not hire the mere redcoated
fighter by the day, but by the score of years' Permanence,
persistance is the first condition of all fruitfulness in the
ways of men. The 'tendency to persevere,' to persist in spite of
hindrances, discouragements and 'impossibilities:' it is this
that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak;
the civilised burgher from the nomadic savage,--the Species Man
from the Genus Ape! The Nomad has his very house set on wheels;
the Nomad, and in a still higher degree the Ape, are all for
'liberty;' the privilege to flit continually is indispensable
for them. Alas, in how many ways, does our humour, in this
swift-rolling self-abrading Time, shew itself nomadic, apelike;
mournful enough to him that looks on it with eyes! This humour
will have to abate; it is the first element of all fertility in
human things, that such 'liberty' of apes and nomads do by
freewill or constraint abridge itself, give place to a better.
The civilised man lives not in wheeled houses. He builds stone
castles, plants lands, makes lifelong marriage-contracts;--has
long-dated hundred-fold possessions, not to be valued in the
money-market; has pedigrees, libraries, law-codes; has memories
and hopes, even for this Earth, that reach over thousands of
years. Life-long marriage-contracts: how much preferable were
year-long or month-long--to the nomad or ape!

Month-long contracts please me little, in any province where
there can by possib