Consider all the vain pride and barbaric pomp of wealth and fashion, and all the mean envy of the weakly snobs who revere them, and would sell their withered souls to possess them. Is this decorative tomfoolery, are this apish swagger and blazoned snobbery worthy of _men_ and _women?_
The powdered flunkeys, the gingerbread coaches, the pantomime processions, the trumpery orders and fatuous titles: are they any nobler or more sensible than the paint, the tom-toms, and the Brummagen jewels of darkest Africa?
And the cost! We are too prone to reckon cost in cash. We are too prone to forget that cash is but a symbol of things more precious. We bear too tamely all the bowing and kow-towing; all the fiddling and fifing, all the starring and gartering, and be-feathering and begemming, all the gambling and racing, the saluting and fanfaring, the marching and counter-marching, all the raking in of dividends, and building up of mansions, all the sweating and rackrenting, all the heartless vanity, and brainless luxury, and gilded vice: we should think of them more sternly did we count up what they cost in men and women and children, what they cost in brawn and brain, and honour and love, what they cost in human souls--what they cost in Bottom Dogs.
Happiness cannot be stolen; nor won by cheating, as though life were a game of cards. The man who would be happy must find his duty, and do it. In no other way can man or woman find real happiness, under the sun. But the world, so far has quite a different creed. And the common experience, on which the Christians so much depend, is not on the side of the angels. And that is why the Bottom Dogs are so numerous, and why so many of us lead "such mean and sneaking lives."
Descendants of barbarians and beasts, we have not yet conquered the greed and folly of our bestial and barbarous inheritance. Our nature is an unweeded garden. Our hereditary soil is rank. Talk about the trouble of bringing up children: what is that to the trouble of educating one's ancestors? O, the difficulty I have had with mine.
My friends: you have read my statement of the case for the Bottom Dog; you have read the arguments I have used in support of that statement: you have read the evidence, and you have read my answers to the arguments of the other side.