KING MAMMON. CHAPTER I. KING MAMMON AND HIS REALM. "For all human things do require to have an Ideal in them; to have some Soul in them, as we said, were it only to keep the Body unputrefied. And wonderful it is to see how the Ideal or Soul, place it in what ugliest Body you may, will irradiate said Body with its own nobleness; will gradually, incessantly, mould, modify, new-form or reform said ugliest Body and make it at last beautiful, and to a certain degree divine! Oh, if you could dethrone that Brute-god Mammon, and put a Spirit-God in his place! One way or other, he must and will have to be dethroned." -THOMAS CARLYLE. In the closing decade of the nineteenth century, reckoned from the earth-visit of a forgotten Christ, Mammon is King of the civilized world. You, my reader, need no presentation to the King. You have faithfully served him; so have I. Neither of us two may have achieved high rank in the King's service; possibly neither has bent the knee in that servile adulation which is the surest means of securing the royal favor: yet we have both honored Mammon. Out of that continued reverence will come servility, and out of servility degradation. Let me whisper to you before it is too late: King Mammon is a tyrant! Tyranny in this free land of America, did you say? Tyranny under our Declaration of Independence, our 9 venerated Constitution, our starry flag, our privileges of the ballot, of free speech, of assemblage? These are forms, Reader, -baubles, trinkets, playthings, with which infantile humanity has been amused under other names since men left records of their life-work. There is no freedom, except the freedom of the human heart and mind from the service of Mammon; for wealth is naught but power, and power unlimited has ever been the tyrant's conception of heaven for him on earth. When all men, Reader, seek to own and dominate this little fragment of universe named earth, think you that freedom can exist among them? Mammon laughs at such conception of his power. Mammon is a tyrant, Reader; so are you and I tyrants. For we are loyal subjects of the King; and found you ever a courtier under kingly tyranny who was not as great a tyrant when he possessed the power? In Mammon's realm, some are courtiers and many serfs. If you be one of Mammon's princes, consider not that by your rank you may escape his tyranny. Do not his favored courtiers perish every day in faithful allegiance to their lord? Yet what real profit and reward have these honored subjects secured at last from their King? They have toiled in his service during a feverish existence, slavishly obedient to his commands; they have collected with infinite trouble into great storehouses many scraps of earth that Mammon prizes; they have guarded these stores by day and dreamed of them by night in servile devotion; they have worn out body and brain and life in protecting the treasures yet what reward did they receive at the end of this life service? Did they get more for their faithful labor than the paltry food and clothing that conferred a beggar's comfort upon their slavish existence? Having enslaved other men by the commands of the tyrant, were they not themselves enslaved by his power? Think you |