Talent is the coward's weapon. You may be born a king. You may be born a genius. It's as bad to use a crown of brains as to use a crown of gold to exploit the humble. Using what you were born with to such an end is the final cowardice. We use laws. We use forms. We use social position. Anything within reach. It's the blow in the dark. It's the lie on the lip. It's the giant taking advantage of the pigmy. You see a little farther. That is your dirt. Your arm is a little longer. You hear a little more. You move a little quicker. That is your dirt. All the inequities come by such a route. All the gloating palaces and the snarling huts. All the laughing luxuries and the weeping wants. They come by that route. My best suit of clothes. It comes that way. Less and more comes by that process. Do you pride yourself on your faculty? Rather do anything else. Even your faculty may be a tyrant toll-gatherer. Down every mountain steep tumble your horrified inferiors. Time and space recognize no large and small, no above and below, no served and servant. A man has a little better or a little worse thinking machine. But better or worse are not to time and space what they are to words. Evil begins when man begins. Tyranny begins when one man has more heartbeats than another man. When dirt gets on top. Brains are a whip. You use that whip over others. You make that whip into statutes, mandates, wage-scales. You make everything else second to it. You may have got so far that you are horrified when a man makes a dollar an agent of oppression. You have still to go on till you are horrified when a man makes his talent an agent of oppression. The king sits on a throne. The picture hangs in the gallery. The book is on the shelf of the library. The music is sung in the great hall. The play goes on in the theater. The game is won or lost in the vast stadium. Do they circumscribe us? Or do they free us? Are they burdens to carry? Or are they wings to fly with? Are they for the pleasure of a few? Or are they for the joy of all? Money may free. Brains may enslave. Money may be the gentle savior. Brains may be the brutal damner of bodies and souls. You have sold your soul for dirt if you have used it for the production of anything but soul. Whether in the market or in the academy. Whether in play or work. Whether in the midst of your family or abroad in the crowd. You have sold your soul for dirt. Whether in making money or staying poor. Whether in the most exquisite beauty of an art or the most hideous ugliness of a brothel. You have sold your soul for dirt. Babies at the breasts of mothers are sold for dirt. Fathers who have cared for children are sold for dirt. Poems, laces, anything, may be sold for dirt. Anything that gets in the way of life. That is sold for dirt. Religion, churches, policies of states and industries, are sold for dirt. Sex. Idealism. The marriage bed. Dreams. They are sold for dirt. Souls are the dearest things in a cheap world. The house you live in.