inventiveness. Progress depends, in a large measure, upon their encouragement. Idealism does not imply poverty or inefficiency or stagnation. It is when material prosperity becomes an obsession that ambition assumes a dangerous phase, and when " things " get into the saddle and ride mankind. Success bought at the price of character, wealth made by chicanery or by ruthless exploitation of human lives, property gained by anti-social methods are intrinsically evil. Their yield is bitter fruit-they do not make a life; they mar it. In making money a man may unmake himself, and add immeasurably to the sum of human misery.

"It is not," says Dr. G. H. Morrison, "the rare gifts, the possession of the few; it is not great wealth, great learning, great genius, or great power-it is not these things that make the possessors happy; it is health, it is friendship, it is love at home, it is the voices of children, it is sunshine-it is the blessings that are commonest, not these that are rarest."

As long ago as Ancient Rome men said to their sons: "Make money honestly if you can; but if not, by any means and every means make money." This devil's doctrine has persisted through the centuries, and has nourished distorted ambition in every age and land. The idea that wealth is a sure avenue to happiness has lured men like a syren's song to the ruin of all that is worth cherishing in life.

The truest sources of happiness are to be found in what Paley calls "the prudent constitution of the habits," and in what a sage described as "the limitation of aspirations." There is a common maxim"If you have to do anything for nothing, do it for

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yourself," embodying a philosophy of sheer selfishness which has perhaps made many millionaires. Few great fortunes have been made without the hardening of hearts and the stultifying of generous emotions. Mr. B. Paul Neuman, in one of his character novels, presents a highly-finished study of the processes of fortune-making. His hero, Paul Dominy, a young foreign Jew, left an orphan in New York, and brought up by a Polish family, is given the choice of being educated as a musician-music is his chiefest joy-or being trained for business. He selects business, and a passion to be wealthy soon devours his soul, and overwhelms it. By one coup after another, Dominy amasses riches beyond dreams of avarice. His millions become a burden to him; but the zeal for dollarmaking has him enslaved. A girl he loves will not marry him to divide his love between her and his money, and in this great alternative he thrusts aside. love in his quest for gold. A child-lover, he is childless, and children who were once attracted to him are repelled by a mysterious repugnancy. Illness assails him, and loneliness depresses him. The end is tragedy-depression, drugs, desperation, suicide. The profitlessness of a man gaining the whole world and losing his own soul is driven home by Mr. Neuman's novel. It ranks with George Eliot's Silas Marner as an indictment of money-worship.

While gold can be bought too dearly, there are many things gold cannot buy. The real treasures of life are beyond money and beyond price. God seems to have decreed that those things which make life worth living-love, friendship, sympathy, peace of mind, joy of soul-shall not be trafficked for gold

in the market-place. Gold can pay for pleasure; but it cannot buy happiness.

The motives that move great men were discussed in a suggestive way by Lord Haldane in the evidence he gave before the Coal Commission. To the suggestion that monetary reward alone made men energetic, resourceful, and industrious, Lord Haldane gave a strong denial. "Money," he said, "is not the all-compelling motive, or even the most powerful incentive. The great dynamics of success in life are honor and respect. The glory of a popular preacher is very great: the glory of a successful politician is very great. He is sometimes as poor as a rat; but he does not mind. He has got much more than money, and he can dine with a millionaire every night if he pleases."

Again, it is necessary perhaps to repeat that I am not depreciating success in life-even financial success. But a young man has seriously to consider what success really is, and to make sure that he is not setting out in life to chase phantoms. When Dr. Samuel Smiles preached "Self-Help" he did not mean "Help Yourself"; but that fatal twist was given, in practice, to his teaching. Quite unwittingly Dr. Smiles paved the way for an even more selfish doctrine-"Get on or get out," which went one stage further towards the hellishness of "Fire out the fools." These are modern variants of the ancient barbarism: "Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindermost." The end of the Victorian age found that doctrine again regnant, with expositors even in the camp of organized Christianity.

A more sensitive social conscience is making us

realize that some of Dr. Samuel Smiles's heroes profited by cut-throat competition, and "made their piles" by unblushingly sweating their employees. They gathered fortunes-as fortunes were gathered in the Victorian age-with little concern for the social or moral conditions of their workpeople. They found the human machine cheaper than the machinery it manipulated; and, as long as there was a margin of labor in the market, it was far easier to replace labor than machinery. By comparatively inexpensive philanthropy they salved their consciences-supporting enterprises for the victims immolated by the very system which gave them affluence.

Nowadays, we are less concerned as to how a wealthy man spends his money; but we are very much concerned as to how he makes it. We hear less of the stewardship of wealth than of the stewardship of life, which embodies the root principle that wealth made by the exploitation of human beings is wealth that no stewardship can make an honorable possession.

At the beginning of his career a young man has to face up to this fundamental question. Upon his attitude to the ethics of money-making depends his attitude to a thousand subsidiary things. It sets his moral compass. The dividing line between the man determined to make money, honestly or dishonestly, and the man who, while eager enough to make money, wants to make something else as well-a life—is a frontier of conscience. "There is," says President Wilson, "a great wind of moral force moving through the world, and every man who opposes himself to that wind will go down in disgrace."

In almost every profession and business there are tricks of the trade and customs of the profession that are equivocal, and even worse than dubious. Some of them are so ingrained in the fibre of business life that to fight single-handedly against them is to court ruin. A scrupulous young man may find himself compelled to compromise with his conscience, for we live in an imperfect world in which compromises are inevitable. Unless he makes the compromise, and accepts the trade customs, he may be squeezed out of his business without having shaken the custom against which his conscience revolts. Wisdom suggests another course of action. While the unscrupulous business man makes every possible use of trade tricks and customs to get rich quickly, the scrupulous man acts on the principle of making the least possible use of the dubious trade tricks and customs, and holds himself ready whenever occasion arises to repudiate them altogether. This attitude is the one which in the long run will rid trade of trickery and double-dealing.

The cynic may say that conscience in business is a dead weight; but there are honorable men by the thousand who carry their consciences into their offices, and their religious principles into their trading. Possibly they may fall a little behind in the fierce competitive race; but men of this type never live to regret paying heed to the scruples of a sensitive conscience.

Civilization is molten at the moment, and the recasting moulds have yet to set. Possibly the twentieth century will be as noteworthy for the development of coöperation in industry (even in in