He knows that this
luckier fellow has a joy in his work which he can never feel in business;
that his success in it can never be embittered by the thought that it is
the failure of another; that if he does it well, it is pure good; that
there cannot be any competition in it--there can be only a noble
emulation, as far as the work itself is concerned. He can always look up
to his work, for it is something above him; and a business man often has
to look down upon his business, for it is often beneath him, unless he is
a pretty low fellow."
I listened to all this in surprise; I knew that the banker was a
cultivated man, a man of university training, and that he was a reader and
a thinker; but he had always kept a certain reserve in his talk, which he
now seemed to have thrown aside for the sake of the Altrurian, or because
the subject had a charm that lured him out of himself. "Well, now," he
continued, "the question is of the money consideration, which is the first
consideration with us all: does it, or doesn't it degrade the work, which
is the life, of those among us whose work is the highest? I understand
that this is the misgiving which troubles you in view of our conditions?"
The Altrurian assented, and I thought it a proof of the banker's innate
delicacy that he did not refer the matter, so far as it concerned the
aesthetic life and work, to me; I was afraid he was going to do so.
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