5.  And is it not wonderful, that while we should be utterly ashamed to use a superiority of body in order to thrust our weaker companions aside from some place of advantage, we unhesitatingly use our superiorities of mind to thrust them back from whatever good that strength of mind can attain?  You would be indignant if you saw a strong man walk into a theatre or lecture-room, and, calmly choosing the best place, take his feeble neighbor by the shoulder, and turn him out of it into the back seats or the street.  You would be equally indignant if you saw a stout fellow thrust himself up to a table where some hungry children are being fed, and reach his arm over their heads and take their bread from them.

6.  But you are not the least indignant, if, when a man has stoutness of thought and swiftness of capacity, and, instead of being long-armed only, has the much greater gift of being long-headed—­you think it perfectly just that he should use his intellect to take the bread out of the mouths of all the other men in the town who are in the same trade with him; or use his breadth and sweep of sight to gather some branch of the commerce of the country into one great cobweb, of which he is himself the central spider, making every thread vibrate with the points of his claws, and commanding every avenue with the facets of his eyes.  You see no injustice in this.

7.  But there is injustice; and, let us trust, one of which honorable men will at no very distant period disdain to be guilty.  In some degree, however, it is indeed not unjust; in some degree it is necessary and intended.  It is assuredly just that idleness should be surpassed by energy; that the widest influence should be possessed by those who are best able to wield it; and that a wise man at the end of his career, should be better off than a fool.  But for that reason, is the fool to be wretched, utterly crashed down, and left in all the suffering which his conduct and capacity naturally inflict?  Not so.

8.  What do you suppose fools were made for?  That you might tread upon them, and starve them, and get the better of them in every possible way?  By no means.  They were made that wise people might take care of them.  That is the true and plain fact concerning the relations of every strong and wise man to the world about him.  He has his strength given him, not that he may crush the weak, but that he may support and guide them.  In his own household he is to be the guide and the support of his children; out of his household he is still to be the father, that is, the guide and support, of the weak and the poor; not merely of the meritoriously weak and the innocently poor, but of the guilty and punishably poor; of the men who ought to have known better—­of the poor who ought to be ashamed of themselves.

9.  It is nothing to give pension and cottage to the widow who has lost her son; it is nothing to give food and medicine to the workman who has broken his arm, or the decrepit woman wasting in sickness.  But it is something to use your time and strength in war with the waywardness and thoughtlessness of mankind to keep the erring workman in your service till you have made him an unerring one; and to direct your fellow-merchant to the opportunity which his dullness would have lost.