The Camel and the Needle's Eye

by Baron Arthur Ponsonby Ponsonby

However far we may travel, the problem will be continually resolving itself into some variation of the question as to how these impulses had best be regulated, and to what extent they have broken out beyond their legitimate bounds. But although the causes of the faith in money may be reduced to moral and psychological terms, there are economic as well as moral results, and it is not the metaphysical origins, but the practical results which must be looked into.

At the outset we must acknowledge that our capacities of all kinds are strictly limited, whether moral, intellectual, or physical. An occasional saint, an occasional genius, or an occasional giant stretches the limit beyond its normal point, but the limit still remains. And yet we are foolish enough to believe that in regard to the possession, expenditure, and administering of riches there is no sum of money, however large, which we are not competent to deal with, and we are convinced that it is quite easy and unquestionably within the capacity of almost anyone to spend with benefit to himself and to others sums of money greatly in excess of what can cover in the widest sense his personal requirements. Whereas not only is it not easy, but as inquiry will show, it is purely and positively impossible, as impossible as it is to acquire vast knowledge with a limited brain capacity, or to endure more than a certain amount of physical strain with a limited muscular capacity. We are inclined also to think that men who have money and men who make money are ipso facto easily capable of spending the money properly, though we generally make the mental reservation that if we had it ourselves we should spend it a great deal better. But the inheritance or accumulation of money does not imply by any means a special ability for spending it wisely. To put it plainly, such men have not, nor have we, nor has anyone this ability except in a very limited degree, far more limited than is generally supposed or ever admitted.

The case against riches has been argued again and again on religious and moral grounds for over two thousand years, from Confucius to Tolstoy. But we are less impressed by the truth of it now than ever we were; and we still hear it stated by high authorities that it is a benefit to the community to contain men of great wealth. The whole delusion arises from the indestructible confidence in what money can do. And yet all of us see clearly enough by the roughest and most general observation that happiness does not increase with riches, that money indeed has very little to do with happiness, though it has a good deal to do with misery. But many of us are inclined to believe that our own individual case is rather different, and that more money added to our ample competence, and a consequent further enjoyment of material possessions, must undoubtedly make us happier. And when we have got the more and the desired result is not attained, we never pause in hesitation to consider whether perhaps the more has interfered with rather than augmented our happiness, but we are persuaded that the reason we find ourselves still discontented is simply that the more is not enough. Enough never comes to those who have encouraged the longing for more. Nothing short of actual experience can help to eradicate this belief, but there are few who would care to embark on an experiment in the direction of less. And yet it could quite well be demonstrated that a reduction of income, provided always that the loss does not reduce the income below a competence can lead to an increase in happiness—happiness being, of course, distinguished from pleasure.

It may require a very rare philosophic resignation and an equally rare breadth of view to refuse to be deluded into regarding the possession of money as an absolute essential. Moreover, there are a great many qualifications to be taken into account arising from natural characteristics, habit, temperament, and tastes. But broadly speaking, if a man has the courage to regard a reduction of income not as a loss but a gain, if he can use the opportunity to kill the instinctive but disturbing craving for more which unfortunately seems engrained in us all, in fact, if he can eradicate the germ of the disease, the limitation of his desire to satisfy transient and what are really artificial needs will certainly increase his power of enjoyment and his happiness. On the other hand, if he treats the lowering of his means as a calamity, which is the usual case, lamenting his fate, railing against fortune and encouraging the longing for gain—an attitude of mind which is only the outcome of his unlimited faith in the power of money—the result, naturally enough, will be despair.

But it might be shown as well that a type of man does exist, exceptional no doubt, who, being capable of spending without hurt to himself or to others more money than he has actually got, can enrich his life in the broadest sense by an increase of fortune, and may therefore become the happier for it. He is a man who is indifferent to the enjoyment of material possessions and probably would be regarded in the eyes of the world as the last man who was competent to use money properly. But even he would be entirely overwhelmed by anything like a large increase of fortune, and would be as incapable as any one else of disposing of it without inflicting injury.

“Could not riches be used well?” asks Jean Marie in Stevenson’s Treasure of Franchard.

“In theory, yes,” replied the doctor. “But it is found in experience that no one does so. All the world imagine they will be exceptional when they grow wealthy; but possession is debasing, new desires spring up, and the silly taste for ostentation eats out the heart of pleasure.”

Money is, after all, responsibility and nothing else. We are all of us capable of undertaking a certain amount. Some of us are capable of undertaking a good deal. No one is capable of undertaking more than a relatively limited amount. But the trouble is that most of us think ourselves capable of undertaking far more than we properly can. Autocrats are ceasing to exist not so much because certain monarchs proved themselves dangerously incapable, but because the world has learned that no conceivable human being has the capacity to rule a country single-handed. We do not yet admit this incapacity with regard to the autocrats over capital, although it is equally true, and when we do so we shall find considerable difficulty in dethroning them.

Another important inference to be deduced from the argument here set forth is that the surplus money which no individual does or can spend beneficially remains in his hands in stagnant unproductivity, is deflected from other remunerative channels, and is therefore the chief cause of the existence of some of the gravest economic ills which we have to face in our social life. Money cannot rest, it is an active instrument for producing good or for producing evil. Its presence in one quarter may not produce visible evil, but its consequent absence in another quarter will produce very visible and very positive evil. The word consequent must be emphasised because wealth is like water—to pump it up artificially on one side is to lower it automatically on the other.

Money in its character of potential wealth seems also to have this peculiar characteristic. It has no positive value in itself. The greater part of its value is given to it by its possessor, and in proportion as it accumulates in the hands of an individual its value is rapidly depreciated. An electric current of a certain power will perform certain specified functions. Decrease the power and it ceases to produce the required effect. Increase the power tenfold or a hundredfold and you will be no nearer achieving the desired result. That is to say, in addition to the change in value effected by the change in individual ownership, there is actual deterioration, produced by accumulation, whoever the individual may be who is responsible for that accumulation.