That is, if he have the choice. Great
masses of our fellow-men are shut out from choosing, by reason of
absorbing toil, and it is part of the enlightenment of our age
that our understandings are being opened to the workingman's need
of a little leisure wherein to look about him and clear his
vision of the dust of the workshop. We know that there is a
drudgery which is inhuman, let it but encompass the whole life,
with only heavy sleep between task and task. We know that those
who are so bound can have no freedom to be men, that their very
spirits are in bondage. It is part of our philanthropy--it
should be part of our statesmanship--to ease the burden as we
can, and enfranchise those who spend and are spent for the
sustenance of the race. But what shall we say of those who are
free and yet choose littleness and bondage, or of those who,
though they might see the whole face of society, nevertheless
choose to spend all a life's space poring upon some single vice
or blemish? I would not for the world discredit any sort of
philanthropy except the small and churlish sort which seeks to
reform by nagging--the sort which exaggerates petty vices into
great ones, and runs atilt against windmills, while everywhere
colossal shams and abuses go unexposed, unrebuked.
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