Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1904-12-16

mercial commodity, becomes the
worst of blights when it relates to the
things of the heart, religion, or of the
country.
Almost everybody is in accord in
finding shameful the traffic in ones
sentiments, his honor, his robe of Of
flee, his pen, or his mandate. Unfor-
tunately, that which suffers no con-
tradiction in theory, that which, as we
say, resembles a banality more than
high moral truth, has the utmost
difficulty to enter into practice. Traf-
fic has invaded the world. The mer-
chants are installed up to the sane
tuary-and by sanctuary 1 mean not
only religious things, but all that hui
manity holds sacred and inviolate. 1t
Is not money which complexities life;
it is our mercenary spirit which cor
rupts and adulterates it.
The mercenary spirit brings us to
one single question: How much will
that bring me?" He resumes it all
in an axiom: with money one can
procure anything" With those two
principles of conduct society can
descend to degrees of infamy that are
impossible to picture or to imagine.
How much will it bring me? That
question, so legitimate when it re-
CARDS the precautions that each one
should take to assure his subsistence
by his work, becomes terrible as soon
as it overflows its limits and domi-
mates all ones life. That is so true
that it destroys even the labor which
is our breadwinner. I furnish paid
labor, nothing better, but If l have no
other inspiration during this labor
than to get my pay, nothing is worse.
A man who has for motive of action
his salary only, does poor work. What
interests him is not his work but the
money. If he can shirk his work
without cutting his pay be sure he
will do it. Mason, laborer, mechanic,
he who does not love his labor and
does not put interest or dignity into
it, is bad workman.
The physician who thinks only of
his fee is a man to whom it would not
be well to confide ones life, for what
actuates him is the desire to garnish
his purse at the expense of yours.
If it is to his interest that you should
suffer a long time, he is capable of
cultivating your ailment instead of
restoring your health. He who cares
only for the profit in the instruction of
children is a poor professor. for the
profit is mediocre, but his teaching
even poorer. What does mercenary
journalism value? The day when you
write only for the penny, your prose
ceases to be worth even that penny.
The nearer human labor touches OBJ
jects of an elevated nature. the more
the mercenary spirit, if it intervenes,
sterilizes and corrupts it. They are a
thousand times right who say that all
work merits a compensation, that all
men who consecrate their efforts to
entertain life should have their place
in the sunshine: and whatsoever does
nothing useful does not earn his liv.
ing-in word, is but a parasite.
But there is no graver social error
than to reach point where to reap q
gain becomes the sole motive of &C.
ton. The best of us which we put
into our work. let it be force of arms,
warmth of heart, or the tension of in
telligence, Is precisely what no one
can pay us for. Nothing proves more
clearly that man is not a machine
than this fact: two men at work with
the same strength, the same gestures,
produce results entirely different.
Where is the cause of this phenome-
non? In the divergence of their in
tentions. One has mercenary spirit,
and the other simple soul. Both re-
ceive their pay; but the work Of one
is sterile, the other has put his soul
in his work. The work of the first
is like the grain of sand which re-
mains to all eternity a grain of sand
out of which nothing can come; while
the other is like the living seed thrown
to the earth: it terminates and brings
harvest. There is no other way to
explain why so many persons have
not succeeded, while employing the
same external means as the others.
Authorizations do not reproduce and the
labor of a mercenary person brings
forth no fruit.
Without doubt We are obliged to
bow before the economic facts; TO
recognize the difficulties OF life. From
day to day it becomes a more urgent
question how to properly combine
ones means of action. to be able TO
feed, clothe, lodge and bring up ones
family. He who does not calculate
and foresee is a visionary, a blockhead,
to be sooner or later obliged to hold
out his hand to those whose parsi-
mony he dispises. And yet what would
become of US ii this kind of care en-
tirely absorbed US? ii, perfectly ac-
countable, we wished to measure our
effort with the money that it brings to
do nothing more that would not end in
a receipt, and consider useless and lost
pains all which could not be aligned
in ciphers in an account book?
Were our mothers paid anything
for loving us, for bringing us up?
What would become of our filial piety
II we wished IN he maid som OF hing to