Page:Cicero (Collins 1871).djvu/192

180 tained their ground amongst us moderns. Tax-gatherers and usurers are as unpopular now as ever—the latter very deservedly so. Retail trade is despicable, we are told, and "all mechanics are by their profession mean." Especially such trades as minister to mere appetite or luxury—butchers, fishmongers, and cooks; perfumers, dancers, and suchlike. But medicine, architecture, education, farming, and even wholesale business, especially importation and exportation, are the professions of a gentleman. "But if the merchant, satisfied with his profits, shall leave the seas and from the harbour step into a landed estate, such a man seems justly deserving of praise." We seem to be reading the verdict of modern English society delivered by anticipation two thousand years ago.

The section ends with earnest advice to all, that they should put their principles into practice. "The deepest knowledge of nature is but a poor and imperfect business, unless it proceeds into action. As justice consists in no abstract theory, but in upholding society among men,—"as greatness of soul itself, if it be isolated from the duties of social life, is but a kind of uncouth churlishness,"—so it is each citizen's duty to leave his philosophic seclusion of a cloister, and take his place in public life, if the times demand it, "though he be able to number the stars and measure out the world."

The same practical vein is continued in the next book. What, after all, are a man's real interests? what line of conduct will best advance the main end of his life? Generally, men make the fatal mistake of assuming that honour must always clash with their interests;