They
may cast a gloom over their children's lives for many years without
having to suffer anything that will hurt them. I should say, then, that
it shows no great moral obliquity on the part of parents if within
certain limits they make their children's lives a burden to them.
Granted that Mr Pontifex's was not a very exalted character, ordinary men
are not required to have very exalted characters. It is enough if we are
of the same moral and mental stature as the "main" or "mean" part of
men--that is to say as the average.
It is involved in the very essence of things that rich men who die old
shall have been mean. The greatest and wisest of mankind will be almost
always found to be the meanest--the ones who have kept the "mean" best
between excess either of virtue or vice. They hardly ever have been
prosperous if they have not done this, and, considering how many miscarry
altogether, it is no small feather in a man's cap if he has been no worse
than his neighbours. Homer tells us about some one who made it his
business [Greek text]--always to excel and to stand higher than other
people. What an uncompanionable disagreeable person he must have been!
Homer's heroes generally came to a bad end, and I doubt not that this
gentleman, whoever he was, did so sooner or later.
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