of themselves are by so much the less men of soul and understanding—not more, but less the possessors of their human birthright.
If we store up treasure materially (treasure of a kind which, if one has more of it, another must needs have less)—if we gather about us, in excess, creature comforts for the over-indulgence of our bodily appetites, we are gathering that which is liable to moth and rust and theft—liable to be a cause of envy and covetousness in others; and when we have gathered to ourselves this excess of perishable delight and have applied it, the result, more likely than not, is a cloying of those very appetites to which we seek to minister—and, eventually, deterioration and enfeeblement of the body itself.
And as with individuals so with nations; there is no greatness of possession in holding that which involves the deprivation of others, the diminution of their freedom, their happiness, their power of self-development. That is not true kingdom. It is the manufacture of slaves. But if we lay up treasure in the kingdom of the mind, in the development of our sense of beauty, our faculty for joy, we have something here on earth which neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor thieves steal. Our possessions then are things that can arouse no base covetousness, we need not hold them under lock and key, or make laws for their protection, for none can deprive us of them. And while you so hold them on such free and noble conditions, you do not fail to dispense
