have never taken even that one step, the number of people who (at
least in matters of any moment) arrive at the Secondary Vulgar
Error is much less than the number of the people who stop at the
Primary Vulgar Error. Very great multitudes of human beings think
it a very fine thing, the very finest of all human things, to
be very rich. A much smaller number, either from the exercise of
their own reflective powers, or from the indoctrination of romantic
novels and overdrawn religious books, run to the opposite extreme:
undervalue wealth, deny that it adds anything to human comfort and
enjoyment, declare that it is an unmixed evil, profess to despise
it. I dare say that many readers of the Idylls of the King will
so misunderstand that exquisite song of 'Fortune and her Wheel,'
as to see in it only the charming and sublime embodiment of a
secondary vulgar error,--the error, to wit, that wealth and outward
circumstances are of no consequence at all. To me that song appears
rather to take the further step, and to reach the conclusion
in which is embodied the deliberate wisdom of humankind upon this
matter: the conclusion which shakes from itself on either hand
either vulgar error: the idolization of wealth on the one side,
the contempt of it on the other: and to convey the sobered judgment
that while the advantages and refinements of fortune are so great
that no thoughtful man can long despise it, the responsibilities
and temptations of it are so great that no thoughtful man will
much repine if he fail to reach it; and thus that we may genially
acquiesce in that which it pleases God to send. Midway between two
vulgar errors: steering a sure track between Scylla and Charybdis:
the grovelling multitude to the left, the romantic few to the
right; stand the words of inspired wisdom. The pendulum had probably
oscillated many times between the two errors, before it settled at
the central truth; 'Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me