 for the parents will take care that
the children shall begin earning money (which means doing good to society) at an
early age; then the children will be independent early, and they will not press
on the parents, nor the parents on them, and they will like each other better
than they do now.
    This is the true philanthropy. He who makes a colossal fortune in the
hosiery trade, and by his energy has succeeded in reducing the price of woollen
goods by the thousandth part of a penny in the pound - this man is worth ten
professional philanthropists. So strongly are the Erewhonians impressed with
this, that if a man has made a fortune of over £ 20,000 a year they exempt him
from all taxation, considering him as a work of art, and too precious to be
meddled with; they say, »How very much he must have done for society before
society could have been prevailed upon to give him so much money;« so
magnificent an organization overawes them; they regard it as a thing dropped
from heaven.
    »Money,« they say, »is the symbol of duty, it is the sacrament of having
done for mankind that which mankind wanted. Mankind may not be a very good
judge, but there is no better.« This used to shock me at first, when I
remembered that it had been said on high authority that they who have riches
shall enter hardly into the kingdom of heaven; but the influence of Erewhon had
made me begin to see things in a new light, and I could not help thinking that
they who have not riches shall enter more hardly still.
    People oppose money to culture, and imply that if a man has spent his time
in making money he will not be cultivated - fallacy of fallacies! As though
there could be a greater aid to culture than the having earned an honourable
independence, and as though any amount of culture will do much for the man who
is penniless, except make him feel his position more deeply. The young man who
was told to sell all his goods and give to the poor, must have been an entirely
exceptional person if the advice was given wisely, either for him or for the
poor; how much more often does it happen that we perceive a man to have all
sorts of good qualities except money, and feel that his real duty lies in
getting every halfpenny that he can persuade others to pay him for his services,
and becoming rich. It has been said that the love of money is the root of all
evil. The want of money is so quite as
