idlers for whom civilization has no uses, or the deadened
toilers, men or beasts, whose labor shuts the door on choice?

That man seems to me a little less than human who lives as if our
life in the world were but just begun, thinking only of the
things of sense, recking nothing of the infinite thronging and
assemblage of affairs the great stage over, or of the old wisdom
that has ruled the world. 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. Is it because
we are better at being common scolds than at being wise advisers
that we prefer little reforms to big ones? Are we to allow the