It was not to be so.  History is coarse; it gets on by gross feeding and fevers, not by delicacy of temperance and wisdom of regimen.  Our debt was to be paid, not in a pure form, but mixed with the costs of unbelief, cowardice, avarice.  Yet primarily it is the cost, not of meanness, but of magnanimity, that we are now paying,—­not of a base skepticism, but of a noble faith.  For, in truth, normal qualities and actions involve costs no less than vicious and abnormal.  Such is the law of the world; and it is this law of the costs of worthiness, of knowledge and nobility, of all memorable being and doing, that I now desire to set forth.  Having obtained the scope and power of the law, having considered it also as applying to individuals, we may proceed to exhibit its bearing upon the present struggle of our Republic.

The general statement is this,—­that whatever has a worth has also a cost.  “The law of the universe,” says a wise thinker, “is, Pay and take.”  If you desire silks of the mercer or supplies at the grocery, you, of course, pay money.  Is it a harvest from the field that you seek?  Tillage must be paid.  Would you have the river toil in production of cloths for your raiment?  Only pay the due modicum of knowledge, labor, and skill, and you shall bind its hand to your water-wheels, and turn all its prone strength into pliant service.  Or perhaps you wish the comforts of a household.  By payment of the due bearing of its burdens, you may hope to obtain it,—­surely not otherwise.  Do you ask that this house may be a true home, a treasury for wealth of the heart, a little heaven?  Once more the word is pay,—­pay your own heart’s unselfish love, pay a generous trustfulness, a pure sympathy, a tender consideration, and a sweet firm-heartedness withal.  And so, wherever there is a gaining, there is a warning,—­wherever a well-being, a well-doing,—­wherever a preciousness, a price of possession; and he who scants the payment stints the purchase; and he that will proffer nothing shall profit nothing; but he that freely and wisely gives shall receive as freely.

But these desiderata which I have named are all prices either of ordinary use, of comfort, or felicity; and it is generally understood that happiness is costly:  but virtue?  Virtue, so far from costing anything, is often supposed to be itself a price that you pay for happiness.  It is told us that we shall be rewarded for our virtue; what moralistic commonplace is more common than this?  But rewarded for your virtue you are not to be; you are to pay for it; at least, payment made, rather than received, is the principal fact.  He who is honest for reward is a knave without reward.  He who asks pay for telling truth has truth only on his tongue and a double lie in his heart.  Do you think that the true artist strives to paint well that he may get money for his work?  Or rather, is not his desire to pay money, to pay anything in reason, for the sake of excellence in his art?