GOLD VERSUS IDEALS 



I recall very clearly the impression made upon me in 

 early manhood by the cynical words of a successful 

 business man, whose pursuit of money had not al- 

 together warped his mind away from other interests, 

 and whose keenness of insight and sanity of judgment 

 gave weight to his utterances. "My lad," said he, 

 "be advised by one who knows the world. Rest as- 

 sured there is no man who does not sooner or later come 

 to see the day when he appreciates the value of money. 

 No man is all his life a scoffer before the shrine of Mam- 

 mon." 



I chose not to believe that cynic then. I do not like 

 to admit to myself that I quite believe him now. Yet 

 I fear that the wider one's outlook on history, the fuller 

 one's knowledge of mankind, the nearer must one 

 come to conceding the general truth of that unwelcome 

 estimate. 



At the very worst, however, perhaps the estimate 

 is susceptible of a less unwholesome interpretation than 

 the cynical phrase-maker himself would have put upon 

 it. After all, gold is only a symbol. A mountain of it, 

 on an uninhabited island, would be worthless to a 

 Crusoe whom fate stranded there. But in our civiliza- 

 tion it may be the symbol of ideal things no less than of 

 sordid gratifications of the sense. It may be essential 

 to the securing of mental and spiritual no less than of 

 material food. It not only may be; it must be essen- 

 tial, since it is symbolic of all things that sane mortals 

 desire. 



And that is why even the most idealistic dreamer 

 may not always scoff before the shrine of Mammon. 



