Poverty really a great obstacle—Difference between a thousand rich men and a thousand poor men taken from persons of average natural gifts—The Houses of Parliament—The English recognize the natural connection between wealth and culture—Connection between ignorance and parsimony in expenditure—What may be honestly said for the encouragement of a very poor student.
As it seems to me that to make light of the difficulties which lie in the path of another is not to show true sympathy for him, even though it is done sometimes out of a sort of awkward kindness and for his encouragement, I will not begin by pretending that poverty is not a great obstacle to the perfection of the intellectual life. It is a great obstacle; it is one of the very greatest of all obstacles. Only observe how riches and poverty operate upon mankind in the mass. Here and there no doubt a very poor man attains intellectual distinction when he has exceptional strength of will, and health enough to bear a great strain of extra labor that he imposes upon himself, and natural gifts so brilliant that he can learn in an hour what common men learn in a day. But consider mankind in the mass. Look, for instance, at our two Houses of Parliament. They are composed of men taken from the average run of Englishmen with very little reference to ability, but almost all of them are rich men; not one of them is poor, as you are poor; not one of them has to contend against the stern realities of poverty. Then consider the very high general level of intellectual attainment which distinguishes those two assemblies, and ask yourself candidly whether a thousand men taken from the beggars in the streets, or even from the far superior class of our manufacturing operatives, would be likely to understand, as the two Houses of Parliament understand, the many complicated questions of legislation and of policy which are continually brought before them. We all know that the poor are too limited in knowledge and experience, from the want of the necessary opportunities, and too little accustomed to exercise their minds in the tranquil investigations of great questions, to be competent for the work of Parliament. It is scarcely necessary to insist upon this fact to an Englishman, because the English have always recognized the natural connection between wealth and culture, and have preferred to be governed by the rich from the belief that they are likely to be better informed, and better situated for intellectual activity of a disinterested kind, than those members of the community whose time and thoughts are almost entirely occupied in winning their daily bread by the incessant labor of their hands. And if you go out into the world, if you mix with men of very different classes, you will find that in a broad average way (I am not speaking just now of the exceptions) the richer classes are much more capable of entering into the sort of thinking which may be called intellectual than those whose money is less plentiful, and whose opportunities have therefore been less abundant. Indeed it may be asserted, roughly and generally, that the narrowness of men’s ideas is in direct proportion to their parsimony in expenditure. I do not mean to affirm that all who spend largely attain large intellectual results, for of course we know that a man may spend vast sums on pursuits which do not educate him in anything worth knowing, but the advantage is that with habits of free expenditure the germs of thought are well tilled and watered, whereas parsimony denies them every external help. The most spending class in Europe is the English gentry, it is also the class most strikingly characterized by a high general average of information;[5] the most parsimonious class in Europe is the French peasantry; it is also the class most strikingly characterized by ignorance and intellectual apathy. The English gentleman has cultivated himself by various reading and extensive travel, but the French peasant will not go anywhere except to the market-town, and could not pardon the extravagance of buying a book, or a candle to read it by in the evening. Between these extremes we have various grades of the middle classes in which culture usually increases very much in proportion to the expenditure. The rule is not without its exceptions; there are rich vulgar people who spend a great deal without improving themselves at all—who only, by unlimited self-indulgence, succeed in making themselves so uncomfortably sensitive to every bodily inconvenience that they have no leisure, even in the midst of an unoccupied life, to think of anything but their own bellies and their own skins—people whose power of attention is so feeble that the smallest external incident distracts it, and who remember nothing of their travels but a catalogue of trivial annoyances. But people of this kind do not generally belong to families on whom wealth has had time to produce its best effects. What I mean is, that a family which has been for generations in the habit of spending four thousand a year will usually be found to have a more cultivated one than one that has only spent four hundred.
I have come to the recognition of this truth very reluctantly indeed, not because I dislike rich people, but merely because they are necessarily a very small minority, and I should like every human being to have the best benefits of culture if it were only possible. The plain living and high thinking that Wordsworth so much valued is a cheering ideal, for most men have to live plainly, and if they could only think with a certain elevation we might hope to solve the great problem of human life, the reconciliation of poverty and the soul. There certainly is a slow movement in that direction, and the shortening of the hours of labor may afford some margin of leisure; but we who work for culture every day and all day long, and still feel that we know very little, and have hardly skill enough to make any effective use of the little that we know, can scarcely indulge in very enthusiastic anticipations of the future culture of the poor.
Still, there are some things that may be rationally and truly said to a poor man who desires culture, and which are not without a sort of Spartan encouragement. You are restricted by your poverty, but it is not always a bad thing to be restricted, even from the intellectual point of view. The intellectual powers of well-to-do people are very commonly made ineffective by the enormous multiplicity of objects that are presented to their attention, and which claim from them a sort of polite notice like the greeting of a great lady to each of her thousand guests. It requires the very rarest strength of mind, in a rich man, to concentrate his attention on anything there are so many things that he is expected to make a pretence of knowing; but nobody expects you to know anything, and this is an incalculable advantage. I think that all poor men who have risen to subsequent distinction have been greatly indebted to this independence of public opinion as to what they ought to know. In trying to satisfy that public opinion by getting up a pretence of various sorts of knowledge, which is only a sham, we sacrifice not only much precious time, but we blunt our natural interest in things. That interest you preserve in all its virgin force, and this force carries a man far. Then, again, although the opportunities of rich people are very superior to yours, they are not altogether so superior as they seem. There exists a great equalizing power, the limitation of human energy. A rich man may sit down to an enormous banquet, but he can only make a good use of the little that he is able to digest. So it is with the splendid intellectual banquet that is spread before the rich man’s eyes. He can only possess what he has energy to master, and too frequently the manifest impossibility of mastering everything produces a feeling of discouragement that ends in his mastering nothing. A poor student, especially if he lives in an out-of-the-way place where there are no big libraries to bewilder him, may apply his energy with effect in the study of a few authors.
I used to believe a great deal more in opportunities and less in application than I do now. Time and health are needed, but with these there are always opportunities. Rich people have a fancy for spending money very uselessly on their culture because it seems to them more valuable when it has been costly; but the truth is, that by the blessing of good and cheap literature, intellectual light has become almost as accessible as daylight. I have a rich friend who travels more, and buys more costly things, than I do, but he does not really learn more or advance farther in the twelvemonth. If my days are fully occupied, what has he to set against them? only other well-occupied days, no more. If he is getting benefit at St. Petersburg he is missing the benefit I am getting round my house, and in it. The sum of the year’s benefit seems to be surprisingly alike in both cases. So if you are reading a piece of thoroughly good literature, Baron Rothschild may possibly be as well occupied as you—he is certainly not better occupied. When I open a noble volume I say to myself, “Now the only Crœsus that I envy is he who is reading a better book than this.”
[4] This sounds like a poetical exaggeration, but it is less than the bare truth. There were fifteen hundred slaves on two West Indian estates that Beckford lost in a lawsuit. It is quite certain, considering his lavish expenditure, that fully a thousand men must have worked for the maintenance of his luxury in Europe. So much for his command of labor.
[5] The reader will please to bear in mind that I am speaking here of broad effects on great numbers. I do not think that aristocracy, in its spirit, is quite favorable to the exceptionally highest intellectual life.