Now, inasmuch as a rise of even one step in the scale of thought elevates the man who has taken it above the vast host of men who have never taken even that one step, the number of people who (at least in matters of any moment) arrive at the Secondary Vulgar Error is much less than the number of the people who stop at the Primary Vulgar Error.  Very great multitudes of human beings think it a very fine thing, the very finest of all human things, to be very rich.  A much smaller number, either from the exercise of their own reflective powers, or from the indoctrination of romantic novels and overdrawn religious books, run to the opposite extreme:  undervalue wealth, deny that it adds anything to human comfort and enjoyment, declare that it is an unmixed evil, profess to despise it.  I dare say that many readers of the Idylls of the King will so misunderstand that exquisite song of ‘Fortune and her Wheel,’ as to see in it only the charming and sublime embodiment of a secondary vulgar error,—­the error, to wit, that wealth and outward circumstances are of no consequence at all.  To me that song appears rather to take the further step, and to reach the conclusion in which is embodied the deliberate wisdom of humankind upon this matter:  the conclusion which shakes from itself on either hand either vulgar error:  the idolization of wealth on the one side, the contempt of it on the other:  and to convey the sobered judgment that while the advantages and refinements of fortune are so great that no thoughtful man can long despise it, the responsibilities and temptations of it are so great that no thoughtful man will much repine if he fail to reach it; and thus that we may genially acquiesce in that which it pleases God to send.  Midway between two vulgar errors:  steering a sure track between Scylla and Charybdis:  the grovelling multitude to the left, the romantic few to the right; stand the words of inspired wisdom.  The pendulum had probably oscillated many times between the two errors, before it settled at the central truth; ’Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me:  Lest I be full and deny Thee, and say, Who is the Lord?  Or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.’

But although these errors of reaction are less common than the primary vulgar errors, they are better worth noticing:  inasmuch as in many cases they are the errors of the well-intentioned.  People fall into the primary vulgar errors without ever thinking of right or wrong:  merely feeling an impulse to go there, or to think thus.  But worthy folk, for the most part, fall into the secondary vulgar errors, while honestly endeavouring to escape what they have discerned to be wrong.  Not indeed that it is always in good faith that men run to the opposite extreme.  Sometimes they do it in pet and perversity, being well aware that they are doing wrong.  You hint to some young friend, to whom you are nearly enough related to be justified in doing so, that the