nomy to be no science; because, namely, it has omitted the
study of exactly the most important branch of the business--the study of
_spending_. For spend you must, and as much as you make, ultimately. You
gather corn:--will you bury England under a heap of grain; or will you,
when you have gathered, finally eat? You gather gold:--will you make
your house-roofs of it, or pave your streets with it? That is still one
way of spending it. But if you keep it, that you may get more, I'll give
you more; I'll give you all the gold you want--all you can imagine--if
you can tell me what you'll do with it. You shall have thousands of gold
pieces;--thousands of thousands--millions--mountains, of gold: where
will you keep them? Will you put an Olympus of silver upon a golden
Pelion--make Ossa like a wart? Do you think the rain and dew would then
come down to you, in the streams from such mountains, more blessedly
than they will down the mountains which God has made for you, of moss
and whinstone? But it is not gold that you want to gather! What is it?
greenbacks? No; not those neither. What is it then--is it ciphers after
a capital I? Cannot you practise writing ciphers, and write as many as
you want? Write ciphers for an hour every morning, in a big book, and
say every evening, I am worth all those noughts more than I was
yesterday. Won't that do? Well, what in the name of Plutus is it you
want? Not gold, not greenbacks, not ciphers after a capital I? You will
have to answer, after all, 'No; we want, somehow or other, money's
_worth_.' Well, what is that? Let your Goddess of Getting-on discover
it, and let her learn to stay therein.

II. But there is yet another question to be asked respecting this
Goddess of Getting-on. The first was of the continuance of her power;
the second is of its extent.

Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all the world's Pallas, and
all the world's Madonna. They could teach all men, and they could
comfort all men. But, look strictly into the nature of the power of your
Goddess of Getting-on; and you will find she is the Goddess--not of
everybody's getting on--but only of somebody's getting on. This is a
vital, or rather deathful, distinction. Examine it in your own ideal of
the state of national life which this Goddess is to evoke and maintain.
I asked you what it was, when I was last here;[5]--you have never told
me. Now, shall I try to tell you?

Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that