IV

It is a mistake to suppose that the great captains of industry, the
great organizers and directors of manufacture and commerce and
monetary exchange, are engrossed in a vulgar pursuit of wealth. Too
often they suffer the vulgarity of wealth to display itself in the
idleness and ostentation of their wives and children, who "devote
themselves," it may be, "to expense regardless of pleasure"; but we
ought not to misunderstand even that, or condemn it unjustly. The
masters of industry are often too busy with their own sober and
momentous calling to have time or spare thought enough to govern
their own households. A king may be too faithful a statesman to be
a watchful father. These men are not fascinated by the glitter of
gold: the appetite for power has got hold upon them. They are in
love with the exercise of their faculties upon a great scale; they
are organizing and overseeing a great part of the life of the world.
No wonder they are captivated. Business is more interesting that
pleasure, as Mr. Bagehot said, and when once the mind has caught
its zest, there's no disengaging it. The world has reason to be
grateful for the fact.

It was this fascination that had got hold upon the faculties of the
man whom the world was afterward to know, not as a prince among
merchants--for the world forgets merchant princes--but as a prince
among benefactors; for beneficence breeds gratitude, gratitude
admiration, admiration fame, and the world remembers its
benefactors. Business, and business alone, interested him, or
seemed to him worth while. The first time he was asked to subscribe
money for a benevolent object he declined. Why should he subscribe?