Are the clever workmen content with a plan that ranks
them with the indifferent?«
    »We leave no possible ground for any complaint of injustice,« replied Dr.
Leete, »by requiring precisely the same measure of service from all.«
    »How can you do that, I should like to know, when no two men's powers are
the same?«
    »Nothing could be simpler,« was Dr. Leete's reply. »We require of each that
he shall make the same effort; that is, we demand of him the best service it is
in his power to give.«
    »And supposing all do the best they can,« I answered, »the amount of the
product resulting is twice greater from one man than from another.«
    »Very true,« replied Dr. Leete; »but the amount of the resulting product has
nothing whatever to do with the question, which is one of desert. Desert is a
moral question, and the amount of the product a material quantity. It would be
an extraordinary sort of logic which should try to determine a moral question by
a material standard. The amount of the effort alone is pertinent to the question
of desert. All men who do their best, do the same. A man's endowments, however
godlike, merely fix the measure of his duty. The man of great endowments who
does not do all he might, though he may do more than a man of small endowments
who does his best, is deemed a less deserving worker than the latter, and dies a
debtor to his fellows. The Creator sets men's tasks for them by the faculties he
gives them; we simply exact their fulfillment.«
    »No doubt that is very fine philosophy,« I said; »nevertheless it seems hard
that the man who produces twice as much as another, even if both do their best,
should have only the same share.«
    »Does it, indeed, seem so to you?« responded Dr. Leete. »Now, do you know,
that seems very curious to me? The way it strikes people nowadays is, that a man
who can produce twice as much as another with the same effort, instead of being
rewarded for doing so, ought to be punished if he does not do so. In the
nineteenth century, when a horse pulled a heavier load than a goat, I suppose
you rewarded him. Now, we should have whipped him soundly if he had not, on the
ground that, being much stronger, he ought to. It
