The Map of Life / Conduct and Character

by William Edward Hartpole Lecky

I do not think that I can better introduce the few pages which I propose to write on the relations of money to happiness and to character than by a pregnant passage from one of the essays[67] of Sir Henry Taylor. 'So manifold are the bearings of money upon the lives and characters of mankind, that an insight which should search out the life of a man in his pecuniary relations would penetrate into almost every cranny of his nature. He who knows like St. Paul both how to spare and how to abound has a great knowledge; for if we take account of all the virtues with which money is mixed up—honesty, justice, generosity, charity, frugality, forethought, self-sacrifice, and of their correlative vices, it is a knowledge which goes near to cover the length and breadth of humanity, and a right measure in getting, saving, spending, giving, taking, lending, borrowing and bequeathing would almost argue a perfect man.'

There are few subjects on which the contrast between the professed and the real beliefs of men is greater than in the estimate of money. More than any other single thing it is the object and usually the lifelong object of human effort, and any accession of wealth is hailed by the immense majority of mankind as an unquestionable blessing. Yet if we were to take literally much of the teaching we have all heard we should conclude that money, beyond what is required for the necessaries of life, is far more a danger than a good; that it is the pre-eminent source of evil and temptation; that one of the first duties of man is to emancipate himself from the love of it, which can only mean from any strong desire for its increase.

In this, as in so many other things, the question is largely one of degree. No one who knows what is meant by the abject poverty to which a great proportion of the human race is condemned will doubt that at least such an amount of money as raises them from this condition is one of the greatest of human blessings. Extreme poverty means a lifelong struggle for the bare means of living; it means a life spent in wretched hovels, with insufficient food, clothes and firing, in enforced and absolute ignorance; an existence almost purely animal, with nearly all the higher faculties of man undeveloped. There is a far greater real difference in the material elements of happiness between the condition of such men and that of a moderately prosperous artizan in a civilised country than there is between the latter and the millionaire.

Money, again, at least to such an amount as enables men to be in some considerable degree masters of their own course in life, is also on the whole a great good. In this second degree it has less influence on happiness than health, and probably than character and domestic relations, but its influence is at least very great. Money is a good thing because it can be transformed into many other things. It gives the power of education which in itself does much to regulate the character and opens out countless tastes and spheres of enjoyment. It saves its possessor from the fear of a destitute old age and of the destitution of those he may leave behind, which is the harrowing care of multitudes who cannot be reckoned among the very poor. It enables him to intermit labour in times of sickness and sorrow and old age, and in those extremes of heat and cold during which active labour is little less than physical pain. It gives him and it gives those he loves increased chances of life and increased hope of recovery in sickness. Few of the pains of penury are more acute than those of a poor man who sees his wife or children withering away through disease, and who knows or believes that better food or medical attendance, or a surgical operation, or a change of climate, might have saved them. Money, too, even when it does not dispense with work, at least gives a choice of work and longer intervals of leisure. For the very poor this choice hardly exists, or exists only within very narrow limits, and from want of culture or want of leisure some of their most marked natural aptitudes are never called into exercise. With the comparatively rich this is not the case. Money enables them to select the course of life which is congenial to their tastes and most suited to their natural talents, or, if their strongest taste cannot become their work, money at least gives them some leisure to cultivate it. The command of leisure, when it is fruitful leisure spent in congenial work, is to many, perhaps, the greatest boon it can bestow. 'Riches,' said Charles Lamb, 'are chiefly good because they give us Time.' 'All one's time to oneself! for which alone I rankle with envy at the rich. Books are good and pictures are good, and money to buy them is therefore good—but to buy time—in other words, life!'

To some men money is chiefly valuable because it makes it possible for them not to think of money. 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 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, so 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 mould and strengthen 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.