To this really important question there are two answers.
The first is, that the conclusion now before us—the conclusion that certain of the most coveted prizes of life will always be for the few only—is, whatever may be its consequences, true; and that its truth is nowhere more clearly evidenced than in the ideal State, as presented to us by the extremest socialists. For we shall find that whatever in the way of equalised incomes these statesmen of cloud-land promise to their imaginary citizens, they do not even suggest that the most coveted social prizes shall be distributed more equally than they are at {355} the present moment. They, as has been said already, though they consider themselves the apostles of equality, recognise that the prosperity, and, above all, the wealth of the community, will depend on their securing the very ablest of their citizens as members of the bureaucracy by whom all labour will be directed; and they recognise that these able men, like the present race of employers, will not develop their ability without some special inducement. They accordingly propose to reward them, not by allowing them to retain any exceptional portion of the wealth which they are instrumental in producing, but by investing them with exceptional honour; and the desire for such honour, say the socialists, as a motive to exceptional effort, “will be incalculably more efficacious” than the desire for wealth. Now if those who make this assertion attribute to it any serious meaning, they must mean that men like honour much better than they like wealth—that they covet it more keenly, that they will struggle more desperately to win it, and are more exasperated at not possessing it. If, however, great wealth is possible for the few only, and if the majority of mankind are for ever destined to be without it, such, with regard to honour, is the case even more evidently. For honour is more essentially confined to the few than wealth is. We can, at all events, conceive a community composed wholly of millionaires, supported in luxury by battalions of labouring automata; but it is impossible to conceive a community wholly composed of men on whom {356} honour is conferred as the choicest prize of life, and all of whom—the exceptional and the ordinary—enjoy it to the same degree. The essence of honour is distinction or differentiation; and it forms a motive for the exceptional actions of the few only because it is withheld from the many whose action is not exceptional. Either, then, in the socialistic State the honour that is to form the reward of exceptionally able men will fail to stimulate their abilities and attract them into the ranks of the bureaucracy because it is not of itself so keenly desired as wealth is; or if, as the socialists say, it is desired even more keenly, and if it consequently does stimulate exceptional men to struggle for it, the socialistic bureaucracy, with its honours, will excite amongst the mass of the citizens incalculably more envy than the rich excite amongst the poor; and the millions of average men will be rendered by the want of honour incalculably more miserable than they could be by want of wealth. If, therefore, inequality in the possession of external goods, for which many men struggle, and which only a minority can secure, necessarily means unhappiness for the larger part of the community, this evil at all events is not due to the existing structure of society, but is, on the contrary, so rooted in the constitution of human nature, that even the wildest and completest schemes of social reform are unable to offer us so much as a mitigation of it.
The second answer to the objection, however, is of quite a different, and of a far more reassuring {357} character. It is that the entire supposition on which the objection rests is untrue. The external prizes of life, of which exceptional wealth is the type, though struggled for by many with every faculty they possess, though valued by those who achieve them, and though recognised by men in general as something of which everybody would choose to be the possessor if he could be, do nevertheless amongst average human beings not cause any unhappiness by their absence at all corresponding to the satisfaction which they cause notoriously by their presence. Such an assertion will to many people probably seem self-contradictory. But if it does so, this will simply be owing to the fact that the whole science of the subjective conditions of happiness has been utterly neglected by sociological writers hitherto. The assertion here made, however paradoxical it may sound, embodies one of the most important truths which can claim the sociologist’s attention; and though it cannot be called self-evident, every student of social science should be familiar with it. It forms, indeed, the pons asinorum of all social psychology. A brief elucidation of it will be enough for our present purpose.
There is a certain minimum of external goods, the desire for which has a physiological basis, and causes, when unsatisfied, misery, disease, or death. Chief amongst such goods are food and, in most climates, clothes and shelter. So far as this minimum is concerned, the desires of all are practically equal; and they are equal because they arise out of that physical {358} constitution which we cannot alter, and in respect of which we are all similar. But for external goods that are beyond this minimum men’s desires vary indefinitely; and they vary because they depend on the action of the imagination and the intellect, which varies in different men, and in the same men under different circumstances.
In civilised countries the minimum of goods desired is practically not limited to the bare necessaries of existence, and it is difficult to define it with anything like absolute precision. But without any formal definition of it, it is at all events sufficiently distinct to enable us to place in contrast with it those obviously unnecessary goods which make up wealth and luxury. Now luxury is very commonly supposed, in contradiction to what has just been asserted, to represent materialism in its most exaggerated form, and thus to offer a contrast to competence or modest comfort. And it does, no doubt, rest on a material basis; but competence and modest comfort do so likewise. An arm-chair which costs perhaps thirty shillings is as material as one which, on account of its artistic workmanship, costs four or five times that number of pounds. But so far as wealth and luxury transcend comfort and competence, and possess those peculiar qualities which are held to render them enviable, what they appeal to, and what they are measured by, is not their effect upon the senses, but their appeal to the imagination and the mind. We can easily see this by considering very simple examples, which will show us that the {359} same external things are luxuries or not luxuries according to the way in which the mind regards them. Thus a man will be called luxurious if his house is of palatial proportions, if he lives under lofty ceilings and treads upon shining floors. But the luxury which the owner finds in existing amongst these surroundings consists not in any physical effect which they produce upon his senses as he moves amongst them, but in a great variety of complicated relations which exist between them and his own life, past and future, and of which the senses take no account at all. Were this not so the poorest and most destitute might daily enjoy a luxury superior to that of the millionaire by strolling through the halls and corridors of our great public institutions, of which many are far finer than the most magnificent private houses. A man, again, will be thought, and will think himself, luxurious if he travels from Paris to Monte Carlo in a sleeping compartment with sheets and pillows; and passengers who have ordinary places, if they are sensitive to social contrasts, will glare through the windows enviously at the occupant of this paradise, who has probably had to pay a hundred francs to enter it. But let us only imagine that the sleeping compartment is taken off its wheels and is permanently planted by the side of some street or road. It will then form a bedroom which the owner of the pettiest villa would hardly venture to assign to a maid-of-all-work; whilst if three workmen had to sleep in it instead of three first-class passengers, the agitator {360} would point to it as an example of the horrors of overcrowding. When, therefore, the sleeping compartment is admitted—as it is admitted—to be a luxury, it is admitted to be so because it is regarded in relation to a variety of circumstances to which the senses are quite blind, and which are realised by acts of the mind and the imagination only. And with all wealth and luxury the case is just the same. Like comfort and competence, they have material things for their foundation; and the material foundation that supports them is no doubt necessarily larger. But what renders them more desirable is not the additional material in itself, but the qualities with which it is invested by the subtle craftsmanship of the mind.
Just, then, as wealth and luxury depend on the intellect and the imagination for the larger part of the pleasure which they give to those who possess them, so does the desire for them amongst men in general depend on the action of the intellect and the imagination also. Hence, though a desire for wealth is popularly supposed to be universal, and in a certain sense is so, it is a desire the non-satisfaction of which causes a sense of privation only when the imagination and the intellect work in an exceptional way. Let us take, for example, some community on the outskirts of civilisation which continues to maintain itself in rude plenty and comfort, but to which wealth and luxury are merely remote ideas. If a stranger suddenly came within its borders carrying a bag which had in it a hundred thousand pounds, and if {361} he placed this bag on the summit of a neighbouring mountain and promised to give it to the first man who should get hold of it, every member of this simple community who was not lame or bed-ridden would start for the mountain as fast as his legs could carry him, and the slopes would soon be the scene of a mad and breathless scramble. But if no such stranger came bringing the image of wealth close to them, or if instead of placing his bag on the summit of a neighbouring mountain he showed it to them through a telescope hung up in the moon, not a single heart amongst them would beat quicker at the thought of it or suffer a single pang from the knowledge that it was unattainable.
The reason of this is as follows: Amongst the great masses of mankind the desire for wealth is a speculative desire only. They give, if we may borrow an expression from Cardinal Newman, only a “notional assent” to the fact that it is desirable. Wealth means for them no special pleasure which they have experienced, or can represent to themselves, and the repetition of which they crave for; nor does it mean the satisfaction of any importunate wants. It does not mean for them what a shilling would mean for a starving man. For him the shilling would mean the food for which his stomach clamoured; and he would feel the want of it as keenly as he would value its possession. So, too, a poor youth separated from his family may crave for a five-pound note, and be miserable at not possessing it, because this will represent the {362} possibility of spending Christmas with them. But no ordinary man, unless he has lived amongst the very rich, and his entire view of life has been practically identified with theirs, has any similar craving for a hundred thousand pounds, or for a million; for he has no personal experience and no detailed knowledge of the peculiar conditions of life which require such sums to purchase them. Wealth is to him little more than a name for a power which would secure for him, if he possessed it, an indefinite number of indefinite things, if he wanted them; but he is under ordinary circumstances no more troubled by its absence than he is by the fact that he has not a fairy for his godmother, or that he does not happen to be the owner of Aladdin’s lamp.
How, then, does it come to be the object of that keen hunger which is the strongest motive to activity amongst the men who are the chief producers of it? What are the exceptional circumstances which convert it from a remote something, held in a passionless and speculative way to be desirable, into a near something, craved for, and eagerly struggled for with the painful industry of a lifetime?
The speculative desire for wealth, common to all human beings, is converted into this practical craving by two causes, which act and re-act upon each other. One of them is an exceptionally powerful imagination; the other is the belief on the part of any given individual that wealth is a thing which he actually may acquire if he will only make certain {363} efforts, of which he believes himself to be capable. In cases where the necessary efforts are recognised as long and arduous, and the coveted reward as being consequently far distant, the belief of the individual that it is really possible for him to attain it will require the aid of an exceptionally powerful imagination to rouse it into activity, and to keep it alive when roused. In cases where the necessary efforts are obviously extremely slight, and the individual believes that wealth is almost in his hands already, the belief will stimulate his imagination, however feeble it may be naturally, instead of requiring that his imagination should sustain or stimulate it. Thus the attainment of wealth being under ordinary circumstances difficult, and requiring intense, anxious, and prolonged effort, a keen desire for it is not ordinarily felt except by men whose strength of imagination amounts almost to genius, and in whom a belief, whether true or false, is developed, that they are capable of creating for themselves this prize which they see so clearly. Warren Hastings, for instance, if his imagination had not been exceptional, would never have had that vision of the past glories of his family which made the desire of restoring them the main motive of his career; and again, on the other hand, if some sudden and exceptional circumstance, such as the advent of an imaginary stranger with his bag and his hundred thousand pounds, should present every member of a community with a chance of acquiring wealth instantly, the feeblest imaginations would be {364} stimulated to such a degree, that all would find themselves craving for the possible prize equally.
In converting, then, a mere notional assent to the proposition that wealth is desirable into an actual hunger for it, which is painful if not satisfied, the essential cause is a belief that the desired wealth is attainable; and the intensity of the hunger is in proportion to the vitality of the belief. This important psychological truth is very easily demonstrable by a kind of experience sufficiently familiar to most people. If a man who has perfect taste, and a few thousands a year, is buying furniture for his house, and is anxious that every room shall be as beautiful as it is in his power to make it, we all of us know with what eagerness day after day he will stare into the windows of the dealers in old furniture and bric-à-brac, and how quickly he will take note of any object that his taste approves. Now if such a man, having admired a cabinet or a piece of tapestry, finds that the price of it is a hundred or a hundred and fifty pounds, he will feel perhaps that it is a little beyond his means; but he will dream of it, long for it, and will never know a moment’s peace till he has so arranged his expenditure as to enable him to complete the purchase. But if the price of the cabinet or the tapestry, instead of being a hundred or a hundred and fifty pounds, had been a thousand or fifteen hundred, he would have recognised that the objects were totally beyond his reach, and though they still excited admiration in him, they would {365} excite no desire. Here is the great difference between the necessaries of life and the luxuries. Men crave for the former, whether they are able to procure them or no. They crave for the latter only in proportion as they feel them to be procurable. A starving boy does not want a bun the less because he has not a penny to buy it with. A man of taste, with only a hundred pounds to spend, does not crave for a piece of tapestry at all, if he knows that the lowest price for it would be not less than a thousand.