It is physically impossible for a well-educated intellectual
or brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts: just as it is for
him to make his dinner the principle object of them. All healthy people like
their dinner, but dinner is not the main object of their lives. So all healthy
minded people like making money, ought to like it, and enjoy the sensation of
winning it, but the main object of their life is not money; it is something
better than money.
A good soldier, for instance, mainly wishes to do his
fighting well. He is glad of his pay-very properly so, and justly grumbles when
you keep him ten years without it-still, his main notion of life is to win
battles not to be paid for winning them. So of the clergymen. So of the
doctors. They like fees no doubt, ought to like them; yet if they are brave and
well-educated, the entire object of their lives is not fee. They on the whole
desire to cure the sick, and if they are good doctors, and the choice were
fairly put to them they would rather cure their patient, and lose the fee than
kill him and get it. And so with all other brave and rightly trained men; their
work is first, their fee second, very important no double but still second. But
in every nation, I said, there are vast numbers of people who are ill-educated,
cowardly and more or less stupid. And with these people just as certainly the
fee is first and the work second.
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