sensibilities for the actual enjoyment of wealth? If he acquires the
tastes which imply greater intellectual cultivation, a power, therefore,
of taking into account sources of pleasure more complex and more distant
in time and space, does it then become true that his power of using
wealth will be indefinite? I should reply, in the first place, that we
must still admit the same psychological truth. Any desire whatever,
that is, is capable of yielding only a strictly finite amount of
enjoyment; the pleasure which we can derive from it must be limited both
by the necessity of gratifying other desires and by the fact that no
desire whatever is capable of an indefinite increase by increased
stimulation. After a certain point of excitement is reached, we cannot
get more pleasure by any accumulation of internal conditions. We assume
for the present that our aim is simply to extract the greatest possible
amount of gratification out of life. We must then take for our data our
actual constitution, capacities, sensibilities, and so forth, and
calculate how much wealth could be actually applied in order to keep us
moving always along the line of maximum enjoyment. This would be to
study the art of life on purely hedonistic principles. We should ask,
what career will on the whole be fullest of enjoyment? and then, what
material conditions can enable us to follow that career? I imagine that
the amount requisite would vary indefinitely according to our
characters. Suppose, for example, that a man has strong intellectual
tastes, a love of art or science or literature. He will require, of
course, enough wealth to enable him to devote himself without anxiety to
his favourite pursuits, and enough, moreover, to train himself in all
requisite knowledge. But granting this, the material conditions of
happiness will be sufficiently fulfilled. I think it was Agassiz who
observed when he was devoting himself to science that he had not time to
get rich. Wealth to him would have been rather an impediment than an
advantage. A man like Faraday, who placed his whole happiness in the
extension of scientific knowledge, and who was not less honoured because
he lived upon a modest income, would not have had a greater amount of
that kind of happiness had he possessed the wealth of a Rothschild. A
man whose pleasure is in reading books, or contemplating works of art,
or listening to music, can obtain the highest enjoyment at a very
moderate price, and could get very little more if he had the most
unbounded wealth at his disposal. If we inquired what men possessing
such tastes had derived from them the greatest happiness, we should, I
fancy, find ourselves mentioning men comparatively poor, whose
enjoyments were even comparatively keen, because they had to devote a
certain amount of care and contrivance to obtaining full play for their
capacities. Charles Lamb, plotting and contriving to get an old volume
from a bookstall, possibly got more pleasure from his taste than if he
had been the possessor of a gigantic library. The sociable man, again,
the man whose pleasure in society is the genuine delight in a real
interchange of thought and sympathy, who does not desire magnificent
entertainment, but the stimulus of intimate association with congenial
friends, would probably find the highest pleasure in comparatively
simple social strata, where the display of wealth was no object, and men
met, as Johnson met his friends at the club, to put mind fairly to mind,
and to stimulate intellectual activity, instead of consuming the maximum
of luxury. Milton's sonnet to Lawrence gives perhaps a rather severe but
a very fascinating ideal of refined luxury:--
What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste with wine, whence we may rise
To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?
He who of these delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise.
Nor need we be accused of inordinate boasting if we should say that we
would rather have made a third at such a feast than have joined a dozen
rowdy courtiers at the table of Charles II.
There are, however, pleasures which undoubtedly suppose an indefinite
capacity for using wealth. There is, for example, such a thing as the
pure love of splendour, which is represented so curiously in some of
Disraeli's novels. One of his heroes, if I remember rightly, proposed to
follow the precedent actually set by Beckford, who built at Fonthill a
tower 300 feet high--not because it was wanted for any other purpose,
but simply for the sake of building a tower. Of course, if one has a
taste for towers 300 feet high, there is no particular limit to the
quantity of wealth which may be found convenient. One of the gentlest
and most delicate satirists of modern society, Mr. Du Maurier, has given
us admirable illustrations of a more vulgar form of the same tendency in
his portraits of Sir Gorgius Midas. When that worthy denounces his
servants because there are only three footmen sitting up till two
o'clock to save him the trouble of using a latch-key, we may admit that
his pleasures, such as they were, were capable of finding gratification
in any quantity of expenditure. It might be a question, indeed, if we
had time to ask it, whether the pleasure derived from such expenses by
the millionaire be really so great as the pleasure which he had when he
first turned the proverbial half-crown, with which he must have come to
London, into his first five shillings; and it is certainly also a
question whether his expenditure was ethically right. But at present we
are only considering facts, and we may admit that there would be no
filling such a gulf of desire by any dribble of bullion; and, further,
that there are pleasures--not, on the face of them, immoral--in
procuring which any quantity of money may be spent. If a man is simply
desirous of obtaining influence, or, in some cases, political power; or
if he decides to muddle away his money upon charity, there are no limits
to the sums he may spend, especially if he has no objection to
corrupting his neighbours.
Before saying anything upon this, however, I must pause to deduce a
conclusion. Keeping still to the purely hedonistic point of view, I ask,
At what point does expenditure become luxurious in a culpable sense?
meaning by "culpable" not morally culpable, but simply injudicious from
the point of view of enlightened self-interest. To this I think that one
answer is already suggested, that is to say, that since, on the one
hand, a certain finite quantity of wealth will enable us to keep to the
happiest or most philosophic career; and since, on the other hand, a man
may possess a quantity of superfluous wealth which he can only use on
penalty of deviating from that career, he becomes foolish, if not
immoral--upon which I say nothing--when he tries to use more. That
people frequently commit this folly is undeniable. Wealth ought to be (I
mean would be by a judiciously selfish person) regarded as a means of
enjoyment. Therefore the superfluous wealth should be left in the
potential stage--as a balance at his banker's or accumulating in the
funds. But though the possession does not imply a necessity of using,
it does generally imply a sort of tacit feeling of
responsibility--responsibility, that is, to a man's self. I have got so
much money; surely it is a duty to myself to use it for my pleasure. So
far as a man yields to such an argument, he becomes the slave instead of
the master of his wealth. What ought to be machinery for furthering an
end, becomes an end in itself: and, at that point of conduct, I think
that we are disposed to call a man's life luxurious in a distinctly bad
sense. The error, as I have suggested, is perhaps at bottom much the
same as that which leads a poor man to spend an increase of wages at a
gin-shop. But we do not call the gin-drinker luxurious, but simply
vicious. For luxury seems to apply less to conduct which we can
distinctly call bad in itself, than to conduct which only becomes bad or
foolish as implying a disproportion between the end attained and the
expense of attaining it. It applies when a man has, as we say, so much
money that he does not know what to do with it. We speak of luxuries in
the case of Sir Gorgius, where the prominent fact is that the man has
been gorged with excessive wealth, and is yet too dull to use it in any
manner which would increase the happiness of a reasonable or refined
being. So it is generally regarded as characteristic rather of the
upstart or newly-made millionaire than of the man born to higher
position, whose life is perhaps as selfish and hardly superior morally.
But the nobleman by birth has inherited a certain art of life; he has
acquired traditional modes of arranging his pleasures, which give him
the appearance, at least, of possessing more judicious and refined
tastes; and we are less shocked than by the man who has obviously wealth
which he knows not how to use, and which he, therefore, deliberately
devotes to coarse and vulgar ostentation. The upstart may not be more
selfish at bottom; but he dashes in your face the evidence of his
selfishness, and appeals for admiration on the simple ground that he has
a larger income than his neighbours. Luxury means, on this showing, all
such expenditure as is objectionable, not because the pleasure obtained
is intrinsically bad, but because we are spending for the sake of
spending, and could get more real enjoyment at a lower sum. I need not
dwell upon the fact that men of moderate means may fall into the same
error. The fault of exaggerating the importance of machinery is not
confined to those whom we call rich. Thackeray's discourses upon Snobs
are full expositions of the same weakness in the middle classes. When we
read, for example, of Colonel Ponto being miserable because he tries to
make an income of a thousand a year support the pomp accessible to
persons with ten thousand, we see that he has as false a view as Sir
Gorgius of the true ends of life. And I refer to the same great satirist
for abundant illustrations of the weaknesses which too often make
society a machinery for wasting money on display, and entirely oblivious
that it should be a machinery for the promotion of intellectual and
refined pleasures.
Now, if I have given a fair account of luxury as considered simply from
the point of view of an enlightened selfishness, I may proceed to the
ethical question. So far, I have only asked, in substance, at what point
our expenditure upon pickles becomes foolish. But, of course, the more
important question arises, at what point it becomes selfish. A man may
be silly for spending money upon erecting towers; but if he does no harm
to his neighbours we hardly call him wicked. We cannot say that it is
unconditionally wrong to build a tower. We must inquire, therefore, how
far luxury necessarily involves a wrong to others. Here we must begin by
listening to all the philosophers and divines of whom I spoke at
starting. Any number of wise and good men will tell us, in various
dialects, that pleasure is in itself bad, or, at least, that all the
pleasures obtainable by wealth are bad, or, at any rate, beneath the
notice of the higher spirits. There are the thorough-going ascetics, who
strive, not to regulate, but to suppress all except the absolutely
necessary physical instincts, and think that even those desires savour
of evil; who consider the best man to be the man who lives upon bread
and water, and, if possible, upon mouldy bread and ditch-water. There
are, again, spiritually-minded people, who consider all happiness to be
worthless, except such happiness as results from aspirations to another
world; who regard all riches as chains binding the soul to earth; who
take the words "Blessed are the poor" in the most literal sense, as
defining the true aim of life. We should seek, they say, for happiness
elsewhere than in this transitory stage of existence, remember that the
world is a mere screen hiding the awful realities of heaven and hell;
and despise even such pleasures as are generally called intellectual
pleasures, the pleasures, for example, of art or science, for they, too,
belong really to the sphere of illusion, and are simply more subtle
temptations than those of the flesh. And, besides these, we have the
philosophers, who would have us live in the world of pure intellect, and
tell us that the true moral of life is to make ourselves independent of
external circumstances by suppressing all the corresponding desires.
Renunciation, therefore, is the first lesson to be learned by the wise
man; and the practical rule, as has been said, is that we should
endeavour not to increase our numerator but to lessen our denominator. I
cannot now discuss such doctrines. I am content to say that I regard
them not as simply false, but as distorted views of truth. For my part,
I am content to say that, even as a moralist, I wish to see people as
happy as possible; that being, after all, a poor utilitarian after my
own fashion, I desire--however erroneously--the greatest happiness of
the greatest number; and, in particular, that I should like to see, not
a feebler, but a much keener appreciation of all the pleasures derivable
from art, or science, or literature, or rational society, even, if I may
say so, from good cookery and athletic sports. Briefly, the ideal
society seems to me to be one in which even our lower instincts should
not be suppressed, but regulated; and the typical man of the future to
be one whose whole faculties and their corresponding sensibilities
should be cultivated to the utmost possible degree. What is the
application of this to our special question? I do not know that I can do
better than refer to the writings of Bernard Mandeville, who in his
_Fable of the Bees_--one of the cleverest books in the
language--succeeded by the help of much paradox, and under a cloak of
cynicism, in stating the problem with singular vivacity. Private vices,
that was his way of putting it, are public benefits. His meaning, put
less paradoxically, was this: accept, on the one hand, the ascetic
doctrine that pursuit of pleasure is intrinsically vicious, and you
condemn all the impulses by which the structure of society, especially
the industrial structure, has been built up. Accept, on the other hand,
the doctrine that civilisation is, on the whole, a good thing, and you
admit that the instincts, which, upon this hypothesis, correspond to
private vices, are the only means of producing a public benefit. In
other words, if we took the language of theologians in its natural
sense, and really regarded the world as worthless, we should have no
industry, no trade or commerce, and be still living in swamps and
forests, digging up roots with our nails, living upon acorns and
shell-fish, and scarcely even painting ourselves blue, for to the savage
blue paint was a luxury. Now, apart from any question as to the fairness
of this version of theological doctrine, we may ask, What is the real
underlying difficulty--or that aspect of it which is still worth
considering? We may grant, in the first place, to Mandeville, that, in
point of fact, the construction of a civilised society presupposes the
development of numerous desires, many of which are more or less
condemned by severe moralists. If the savage comes to value blue paint,
he may take to planting something to exchange for it, instead of simply
lying on his back to digest his last handful of acorns; and, in so
doing, he makes the first step towards the development of an industrial
system. The desire for wealth is, of course, implied in all stages of
progress if men are to create wealth; and we can partly answer
Mandeville's paradox by throwing over the ascetic and declaring that a
desire for good meat, and fire, and clothes, even for pictures, and
books, and music, or for such comforts as most of us enjoy, is not in
itself immoral; and that, on the contrary, the more there is of such
enjoyment the better for men's bodies and minds, and therefore, on the
whole, the better for their morality. But the moral difficulty returns
in a new shape. The desire for wealth, let us say, is not in itself bad;
it is simply natural--it is a desire for one essential condition of a
tolerably happy life. But is it not bad, in so far as it is selfish? Do
not the desires which have been the mainspring of all modern development
imply a desire of each man to get rich at the expense of others? Have
they not been the source of all that division between rich and poor
which makes one side luxurious and the other miserable? Has not Dives
become rich and bloated by force of the very same process which has made
Lazarus a mass of sores and misery? Suppress the desire for wealth, and
we should still be savages "running wild in woods". But was not even the
noble savage better than the pauper who now hangs on to the fringes of
society? and is his existence compensated by the existence of other
classes who have more wealth than they can use? And so the old problem
comes back; and we have, as of old, the most contradictory answers to
the problem.
I am, I confess it, one of those old-fashioned people who believe in
progress, and hold that their own century is distinctly better than any
which preceded it; who would on no account go back, if they could, to
the days of the noble savages or even to the brutalities and
superstitions of the ages of faith. But I do not think that I need argue
that question for our present purpose. We have got to this century
somehow, and we can only get out of it by living till the twentieth.
Meanwhile, we should make the best of the interval. I will, therefore,
only permit myself one remark. If we suppose, with Mandeville, that the
instincts which have developed modern society have been, to a great
extent, selfish desires, that is, for the personal comfort of the agent,
irrespectively of consequences to others, it does not follow that the
corresponding development has been mischievous. Good commonplace
moralists have been much in the habit of condemning the selfish passions
of kings and conquerors. What can be an easier mark for denunciation
than such a man, for example, as Louis XI. of France, and the wily and
cruel rulers of past ages, whose only aim was to enlarge their own
powers and wealth? And yet, if we consider the matter historically, we
must admit that such men have rendered enormous services to mankind. A
ruler, let us say, had for his only object the extension and
concentration of his own authority. Still, it was by the conflicts of
rulers that the great nations have been formed out of a chaos of
struggling clans; that peace and order, therefore, have been substituted
for violence, throughout broad territories; that law has taken the place
of private war; moreover, that the privileges of selfish orders have
been suppressed through the development of a larger and more civilised
national organisation; and that, although the immediate victory was won
by the selfish ruler, the ultimate benefit has accrued to the people
upon whom he was forced to rely for support against the oppressive
subordinate powers. The ruler, perhaps, did not look beyond his own
interests; but his own interest forced him to find allies among the mass
of the population, and so gradually led to the formation of central
organs, representing not the personal interest of the king, but the
interest of the whole nation in which they had arisen. We may make a
similar remark upon industrial development. The great merchant and
capitalist and inventor of new methods and machinery has not looked, it
may be, beyond his own interest; but, intentionally or not, he was
helping to construct a vast organisation, which, whether it has, on the
whole, improved the world or not, has, at least, made it enormously
richer. Perhaps Watt, when he was improving the steam-engine, thought
only of the profits to be derived from his invention. But the profit
which he gained after a laborious life was but an infinitesimal fraction
of the enormous increase of efficiency which resulted to the national
industry. We cannot doubt that the whole gigantic system which at least
maintains a population several times multiplied, which maintains part of
it in wealth and a large proportion in reasonable comfort, has been due
to the labours of many men, each working for his own interest and
animated chiefly by the desire of wealth. So much remains true of the
economist's doctrine of the natural harmony between individual and
public interest. In this case, as in the case of governments, we may,
perhaps, say that men acted from motives which must be called selfish,
in this sense at least, that they thought of little but their own
interests; but that, at the same time, their own interests compelled
them to work in a direction which promoted, more or less, the interests
of others. I add, briefly, that these are only instances of what we may
call the general rule: namely, that morality begins from an external or
unrecognised conformity of interests, and ends by recognising and
adopting, as motives, the consequences which, in the earlier stage,
seemed to be internal or accidental consequences. I begin by helping a
man because circumstances make it useful to myself, and I end--and only
become truly moral when I end--by doing what is useful to him, because
it is useful to him. When, indeed, I have reached that point, my end
itself is profoundly modified; it becomes much wider, and yet only
regulates and directs to new channels a great deal of the corresponding
conduct.
The consideration of this modification--of the change which should take
place when a man not only pursues such conduct as is beneficial on the
whole to a country, but pursues it with a view to the beneficial
consequences--brings us back to the question of luxury. The bare pursuit
of wealth as the end of existence implies, of course, indifference to
the means by which it is produced; an equal readiness, for example, to
grow rich by cheating my neighbour, or by actually producing a greater
quantity of useful produce. It is consistent with a simple desire to
enlarge my business without reference to the effect upon the persons I
employ, as when manufacturers enriched themselves by cruel exploitation
of the labour of infants. But if we hope for a state of things in which
an employer should consider himself as essentially part of the national
organism, as increasing his own wealth only by such means as would be
also advantageous to the comfort of the nation generally, the pursuit of
wealth would become moralised.