118.  And this is also a fact we have to know about our national life, that it is ended as soon as it has lost the power of noble Anger.  When it paints over, and apologizes for its pitiful criminalities; and endures its false weights, and its adulterated food; dares not to decide practically between good and evil, and can neither honor the one, nor smite the other, but sneers at the good, as if it were hidden evil, and consoles the evil with pious sympathy, and conserves it in the sugar of its leaden heart,—­the end is come.

119.  The first sign, then, of Athena’s presence with any people is that they become warriors, and that the chief thought of every man of them is to stand rightly in his rank, and not fail from his brother’s side in battle.  Wealth, and pleasure, and even love, are all, under Athena’s orders, sacrificed to this duty of standing fast in the rank of war.

But further:  Athena presides over industry, as well as battle; typically, over women’s industry; that brings comfort with pleasantness.  Her word to us all is:  “Be well exercised, and rightly clothed.  Clothed, and in your right minds; not insane and in rags, nor in soiled fine clothes clutched from each other’s shoulders.  Fight and weave.  Then I myself will answer for the course of the lance, and the colors of the loom.”

And now I will ask the reader to look with some care through these following passages respecting modern multitudes and their occupations, written long ago, but left in fragmentary form, in which they must now stay, and be of what use they can.

120.  It is not political economy to put a number of strong men down on an acre of ground, with no lodging, and nothing to eat.  Nor is it political economy to build a city on good ground, and fill it with store of corn and treasure, and put a score of lepers to live in it.  Political economy creates together the means of life, and the living persons who are to use them; and of both, the best and the most that it can, but imperatively the best, not the most.  A few good and healthy men, rather than a multitude of diseased rogues; and a little real milk and wine rather than much chalk and petroleum; but the gist of the whole business is that the men and their property must both be produced together—­not one to the loss of the other.  Property must not be created in lands desolate by exile of their people, nor multiplied and depraved humanity, in lands barren of bread.

121.  Nevertheless, though the men and their possessions are to be increased at the same time, the first object of thought is always to be the multiplication of a worthy people.  The strength of the nation is in its multitude, not in its territory; but only in its sound multitude.  It is one thing, both in a man and a nation, to gain flesh, and another to be swollen with putrid humors.  Not that multitude ever ought to be inconsistent with virtue.  Two men should be wiser than one, and two thousand than