RELATIONS OF MONEY TO HAPPINESS 253 Except in the daily regulation of ordinary life, it enables them to put aside cares which are to them both harassing and distasteful, and to concentrate their thoughts and energies on other objects. An assured competence also, however moderate, gives men the priceless blessing of independence. There are walks of life, there are fields of ambition, there are classes of employments in which. between inadequate remuneration and the pressure of want on the one side, and the facilities and temptations to illicit gain on the other, it is extremely difficult for a poor man to walk straight. Illicit gain does not merely mean gain that brings a man within the range of the criminal law. Many of its forms escape legal and perhaps social censure, and may be even sanctioned by custom. A competence, whether small or large, is no sure preservative against that appetite for gain which becomes one of the most powerful and insatiable of passions. But it at least diminishes temptation. It takes away the pressure of want under which so many natures that were once substantially honest have broken down. In the expenditure of money there is usually a great deal of the conventional, the factitious, the purely ostentatious, but we are here dealing with the most serious realities of life. There are few or no elements of happiness and character more important than those I have indicated, and a small competence conduces powerfully to them. Let no man therefore despise it, for if wisely used, it is one of the most real blessings of life. It is of course only within the reach of a small minority, but the number might easily be much larger than it is. Often when it is inherited in early youth, it is scattered in one or two years of gambling and dissipation, followed by a lifetime of regret. In other cases it crumbles away in a generation, for it is made an excuse for a life of idleness, and when children multiply or misfortunes arrive, what was once a competence becomes nothing more than bare necessity. In a still larger number of cases, many of its advantages are lost because men at once adopt a scale of living fully equal to their income. A man who with one house would be a wealthy man, finds life with two houses a constant struggle. A set of habits is acquired, a scale or standard of luxury is adopted, which at once sweeps away the margin of superfluity. Riches or poverty depend not merely on the amount of our possessions, but quite as much on the regulation of our desires, and the full advantages of competence are only felt when men begin by settling their scheme of life on a scale materially within their income. When the great lines of expenditure are thus wisely and frugally established, they can command a wide latitude and much ease in dealing with the smaller ones. It is of course true that the power of a man thus to regulate his expenditure is by no means absolute. The position in society in which a man is born brings with it certain conventionalities and obligations that cannot be discarded. A great nobleman who has inherited a vast estate and a conspicuous social position will, through no fault of his own, find himself involved in constant difficulties and struggles, on an income a tenth part of which would suffice to give a simple private gentleman every reasonable enjoyment in life. A poor clergyman who is obliged to keep up the position of a gentleman is in reality a much poorer man than a prosperous artizan, even though his actual income may be somewhat larger. But within the bounds which the conventionalities of society imperatively prescribe many scales of expenditure RELATIONS OF MONEY TO HAPPINESS 255 are possible, and the wise regulation of these is one of the chief forms of practical wisdom. It may be observed, however, that not only men but nations differ widely in this respect, and the difference is not merely that between prudence and folly, between forethought and passion, but is also in a large degree a difference of tastes and ideals. In general, it will be found that in Continental nations, a man of independent fortune will place his expenditure more below his means than in England, and a man who has pursued some lucrative employment will sooner be satisfied with the competence he has acquired, and will gladly exchange his work for a life of leisure. The English character prefers a higher rate of expenditure, and work continued to the end. It is probable that, as far as happiness depends on money, the happiest lot-though it is certainly not that which is most envied-is that of a man who possesses a realised fortune sufficient to save him from serious money cares about the present and the future, but who at the same time can only keep up the position in society he has chosen for himself, and provide as he desires for his children, by adding to it a professional income. Work is necessary both to happiness and to character, and experience shows that it most frequently attains its full concentration and continuity when it is professional, or, in other words, money-making. Men work in traces as they will seldom work at liberty. The compulsory character, the steady habits, the constant emulation of professional life moulds and strengthens the will, and probably the happiest lot is when this kind of work exists, but without the anxiety of those who depend solely on it. It is also a good thing when wealth tends to increase with age. 'Old age,' it has been said, ‘is a very expensive thing.' If the taste for pleasure diminishes, the necessity for comfort increases. Men become more dependent and more fastidious, and hardships that are indifferent to youth become acutely painful. Beside this, money cares are apt to weigh with an especial heaviness upon the old. Avarice, as has been often observed, is eminently an old-age vice, and in natures that are in no degree avaricious, it will be found that real money anxieties are more felt, and have a greater haunting power in age than in youth. There is then the sense of impotence which makes men feel that their earning power has gone. On the other hand youth, and especially early married life spent under the pressure of narrow circumstances, will often be looked back upon as both the happiest and the most fruitful period of life. It is the best discipline of character. It is under such circumstances that men acquire habits of hard and steady work, frugality, order, forethought, punctuality, and simplicity of tastes. They acquire sympathies and realisations they would never have known in more prosperous circumstances. They learn to take keen pleasure in little things, and to value rightly both money and time. If wealth and luxury afterwards come in overflowing measure, these lessons will not be wholly lost. The value of money as an element of happiness diminishes rapidly in proportion to its amount. In the case of the humbler fortunes, each accession brings with it a large increase of pleasure and comfort, and probably a very considerable addition to real happiness. In the case of rich men this is not the case, and of colossal fortunes only a very small fraction can be truly said to THE COST OF PLEASURES 257 minister to the personal enjoyment of the owner. The disproportion in the world between pleasure and cost is indeed almost ludicrous. The two or three shillings that gave us our first Shakespeare would go but a small way towards providing one of the perhaps untasted dishes on the dessert table. The choicest masterpieces of the human mind-the works of human genius that through the long course of centuries have done most to ennoble, console, brighten, and direct the lives of men, might all be purchased -I do not say by the cost of a lady's necklace, but by that of one or two of the little stones of which it is composed. Compare the relish with which the tired pedestrian eats his bread and cheese with the appetites with which men sit down to some stately banquet; compare the level of spirits at the village dance with that of the great city ball whose lavish splendour fills the society papers with admiration— compare the charm of conversation in the college common room with the weary faces that may be often seen around the millionaire's dinner table, and we may gain a good lesson of the vanity of riches. The transition from want to comfort brings with it keen enjoyment and much lasting happiness. The transition from mere comfort to luxury brings incomparably less and costs incomparably more. Let a man of enormous wealth analyse his life from day to day and try to estimate what are the things or hours that have afforded him real and vivid pleasure. In many cases he will probably say that he has found it in his work-in others in the hour spent with his cigar, his newspaper, or his book, or in his game of cricket, or in the excitement of the hunting-field, or in his conversation with an old friend, or in hearing his daughters sing, or in welcoming his son on his return from school. Let him look round the splendid adornments of his home S |