It seems to have been a pattern wilderness.For you, a simple wholesome food, ready cooked, was provided.You took no thought for rent and taxes; you had no poor among you--no poor-rate collectors.
You suffered not from indigestion, nor the hundred ills that follow over-feeding; an omer for every man was your portion, neither more nor less.You knew not you had a liver.Doctors wearied you not with their theories, their physics, and their bills.You were neither landowners nor leaseholders, neither shareholders nor debenture holders.The weather and the market reports troubled you not.The lawyer was unknown to you; you wanted no advice; you had nought to quarrel about with your neighbour.No riches were yours for the moth and rust to damage.Your yearly income and expenditure you knew would balance to a fraction.Your wife and children were provided for.Your old age caused you no anxiety; you knew you would always have enough to live upon in comfort.Your funeral, a simple and tasteful affair, would be furnished by the tribe.And yet, poor, foolish child, fresh from the Egyptian brickfield, you could not rest satisfied.You hungered for the fleshpots, knowing well what flesh-pots entail: the cleaning of the flesh-pots, the forging of the flesh-pots, the hewing of wood to make the fires for the boiling of the flesh-pots, the breeding of beasts to fill the pots, the growing of fodder to feed the beasts to fill the pots.
All the labour of our life is centred round our flesh-pots.On the altar of the flesh-pot we sacrifice our leisure, our peace of mind.
For a mess of pottage we sell our birthright.
Oh! Children of Israel, saw you not the long punishment you were preparing for yourselves, when in your wilderness you set up the image of the Calf, and fell before it, crying--"This shall be our God."You would have veal.Thought you never of the price man pays for Veal? The servants of the Golden Calf! I see them, stretched before my eyes, a weary, endless throng.I see them toiling in the mines, the black sweat on their faces.I see them in sunless cities, silent, and grimy, and bent.I see them, ague-twisted, in the rain-soaked fields.I see them, panting by the furnace doors.
I see them, in loin-cloth and necklace, the load upon their head.Isee them in blue coats and red coats, marching to pour their blood as an offering on the altar of the Calf.I see them in homespun and broadcloth, I see them in smock and gaiters, I see them in cap and apron, the servants of the Calf.They swarm on the land and they dot the sea.They are chained to the anvil and counter; they are chained to the bench and the desk.They make ready the soil, they till the fields where the Golden Calf is born.They build the ship, and they sail the ship that carries the Golden Calf.They fashion the pots, they mould the pans, they carve the tables, they turn the chairs, they dream of the sauces, they dig for the salt, they weave the damask, they mould the dish to serve the Golden Calf.
The work of the world is to this end, that we eat of the Calf.War and Commerce, Science and Law! what are they but the four pillars supporting the Golden Calf? He is our God.It is on his back that we have journeyed from the primeval forest, where our ancestors ate nuts and fruit.He is our God.His temple is in every street.His blue-robed priest stands ever at the door, calling to the people to worship.Hark! his voice rises on the gas-tainted air--"Now's your time! Now's your time! Buy! Buy! ye people.Bring hither the sweat of your brow, the sweat of your brain, the ache of your heart, buy Veal with it.Bring me the best years of your life.Bring me your thoughts, your hopes, your loves; ye shall have Veal for them.
Now's your time! Now's your time! Buy! Buy!"Oh! Children of Israel, was Veal, even with all its trimmings, quite worth the price?
And we! what wisdom have we learned, during the centuries? I talked with a rich man only the other evening.He calls himself a Financier, whatever that may mean.He leaves his beautiful house, some twenty miles out of London, at a quarter to eight, summer and winter, after a hurried breakfast by himself, while his guests still sleep, and he gets back just in time to dress for an elaborate dinner he himself is too weary or too preoccupied to more than touch.If ever he is persuaded to give himself a holiday it is for a fortnight in Ostend, when it is most crowded and uncomfortable.
He takes his secretary with him, receives and despatches a hundred telegrams a day, and has a private telephone, through which he can speak direct to London, brought up into his bedroom.
I suppose the telephone is really a useful invention.Business men tell me they wonder how they contrived to conduct their affairs without it.My own wonder always is, how any human being with the ordinary passions of his race can conduct his business, or even himself, creditably, within a hundred yards of the invention.I can imagine Job, or Griselda, or Socrates liking to have a telephone about them as exercise.Socrates, in particular, would have made quite a reputation for himself out of a three months' subscription to a telephone.Myself, I am, perhaps, too sensitive.I once lived for a month in an office with a telephone, if one could call it life.I was told that if I had stuck to the thing for two or three months longer, I should have got used to it.I know friends of mine, men once fearless and high-spirited, who now stand in front of their own telephone for a quarter of an hour at a time, and never so much as answer it back.They tell me that at first they used to swear and shout at it as I did; but now their spirit seems crushed.
That is what happens: you either break the telephone, or the telephone breaks you.You want to see a man two streets off.You might put on your hat, and be round at his office in five minutes.
