Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural LawRickaby, Joseph
Philosophy
Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural Law
Rickaby, Joseph
Ethics
7. There were two pillars put at the entrance of Solomon's temple, one
on the right hand and the other on the left: that which was on the
right hand he called, according to the Septuagint, _Direction_,
[Greek: katorthosis], and that on the left hand, _Strength_, [Greek:
ischus]. (2 Par. iii. 17.) Further we are told that Solomon set
seventy thousand men to carry burdens on their shoulders, and eighty
thousand to hew stones in the mountains, and three thousand six
hundred to be overseers of the work of the people. (2 Par. ii. 18.)
The history is manifest. Strength and Direction build the Temple:
Strength, or Manual Labour, represented by the hodmen and quarrymen,
and the rest of the "hands:" Direction, or Mental Labour, represented
by the overseers. Yet not by them alone: surely we must count in as
doers of mental labour the designer of the Temple, or at least of its
decorations, that "most wise and skilful man, my father Hiram;" and
still more King Solomon himself and David, the two royal minds that
originated and perfected the idea; and David's generals, Joab and
Banaias, who secured the peace that was necessary as a condition of
the building; and innumerable other men of place and power in the
nation, but for whose thought and prudence the strength of the workman
would have been thrown away like a river poured out in the Libyan
desert. From this example, eked out with a little thought of his own,
the reader may estimate the wisdom and credit of those who tell
factory hands that it is their labour which produces all the wealth of
their employer, and that, in the day when every man shall receive his
due, the employer shall be made a workmen like themselves, and his
wealth shall go to the increase of their common wages.
8. Certainly, it will be said, the employer should be paid for his
mental labour, but why at so enormously higher a rate than the manual
labourers? If we say, "because his labour is more valuable," some
Socialists would join issue on the score that labour is valuable
according to the time that it takes, and the employer works shorter
hours than his men. But this taking account of _quantity_ alone in
labour is an ignoring of the distinction which we have drawn of two
_qualities_ or _orders_ of labour, mental and manual; one more
valuable than the other as being scarcer and in greater demand, so
that a short time of one may be set against a long time of another,
like a little gold against a heap of brass. Any man accustomed to both
orders of labour must have observed, that while he can work with his
hands at almost any time when he is well, the highest labour of his
intellect can be done only at rare intervals, and that in one happy
hour he will sometimes accomplish more than in a day. As the same man
differs from himself at different times, so does one man from another
in the average value of his mental efforts: this value is not measured
by time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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