913. To the consequence of hereditary noblemen hereditary wealth is essential, having vastly more influence than titles. In those countries where titles exist without associated wealth, they have scarcely any weight. However incompetent money may be to give importance to an uneducated commoner, a cotton-spinner, by educating his son and giving him his fortune, may prepare him to sway an empire; when, had his father been a pauper, the premier might have lived among those so eloquently described by Shakspeare’s Henry the Fourth, as upon “uneasy pallets stretching them.” How different from those perfumed chambers and canopies of costly state, to which this spinner’s boy was actually enabled to climb through the education and position resulting from paternal affluence!
914. Civilization elevates those who have the advantages of education, and who are either professionally employed in intellectual pursuits, or have leisure to cultivate science and literature from taste. But the same division of human labour and enterprise which gives intellectual pursuits to a few as a profession, gives to the mass occupations inconsistent with the cultivation of their intellectual powers. Those who are engaged in the humblest species of industry, living from hand to mouth, have little or no time to spare from that which their necessities imperatively require; and the bodily fatigue incurred during working hours, makes repose from all exertion the primary object.
915. But the situation of the poor, ignorant, and uneducated labourer in civilized society, is rendered worse than that of an equally ignorant and uneducated barbarian, by contrast with his educated neighbours. The lowest savage has as much scholastic education as his chief, while the civilized labourer may be in the rear of an educated child of five years of age. Thus the absolute evil is made relatively still greater. When any man reflects on these facts, can he be otherwise than anxious for those means which are necessary to put his offspring upon a par in learning with those of others in the same community?
916. Early in life, it is manifest to every one who does not enjoy pecuniary affluence, that any species of indulgence which he may desire requires money for its attainment. Even the command of leisure for any enjoyment requires money, since, if obliged to work to earn his bread, a man may not have leisure for any other object.
917. Among the most rational motives for the pursuit of wealth is the love of independence. “Thy spirit, Independence, let me share—lord of the lion heart and eagle eye!” In this sentiment every noble soul must participate. How many have had, like the apothecary in Shakspeare’s tragedy, to allow their poverty to rule, instead of honest will! How many have been induced to “earn their daily bread by their daily shame!”
918. Prudent, thoughtful, honest men, who do not choose to live houseless, without clothes, nor upon the sweat of other men’s brows, turn from the paths of amusement, of sensual enjoyment, from the love of literature or science, or from the observation and investigation of nature’s beauties and miracles, in order to get, through wealth, the power, and honest right to indulge. But while pursuing this great object, in the first instance only as the means of attaining other objects, good or bad, they grow old in the chase; their passions burn out, while avarice originates as it were from their ashes, not, phœnix-like, to replace one parental being, but a horrid monster, having nothing in common with a plurality of progenitors, but the selfish, ardent love of money, unmitigated by any redeeming aspiration. A being so actuated—or, in other words, a miser—would certainly find it as difficult to reach a higher sphere in the spirit world, as it were for a camel to get through the needle’s eye.
919. As swine accumulate fat to bequeath to those to whom they leave their carcasses, so the avaricious accumulate wealth, to hoard until it can no longer be retained. They die with an immense amount of negative sin; since all their omissions to do good, which is within their power, is carried to their debit in the spirit world. Their poverty in the spirit world will be proportioned to their ill-used wealth in this temporal abode.
920. When this is well brought home to mankind, there will be less avarice, and fewer of those crimes which arise from selfish cupidity, or ambition.