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ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sanewisdom who take least thought for the morrow.We shall once more value ends above meansand prefer the good to the useful. We shallhonour those who can teach us how to pluckthe hour and the day virtuously and well, thedelightful people who are capable of takingdirect enjoyment in things, the lilies of thefield who toil not, neither do they spin.

But beware! The time for all this is not yet.For at least another hundred years we must pre-tend to ourselves and to every one that fair isfoul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fairis not. Avarice and usury and precaution mustbe our gods for a little longer still. For onlythey can lead us out of the tunnel of economicnecessity into daylight.

I look forward, therefore, in days not so veryremote, to the greatest change which has everoccurred in the material environment of life forhuman beings in the aggregate. But, of course,it will all happen gradually, not as a catastrophe.Indeed, it has already begun. The course ofaffairs will simply be that there will be everlarger and larger classes and groups of peoplefrom whom problems of economic necessityhave been practically removed. The criticaldifference will be realised when this conditionhas become so general that the nature of one’sduty to one’s neighbour is changed. For itwill remain reasonable to be economically pur-posive for others after it has ceased to bereasonable for oneself.