The Crown of Wild Olive
evil,--as mostly, books, and works of art,--out of which one person Will
get the good, and another the evil; so that it seems as if there were
no fixed good or evil in the things themselves, but only in the view
taken, and use made of them.
But that is not so. The evil and good are fixed; in essence, and in
proportion. And in things in which evil depends upon excess, the point
of excess, though indefinable, is fixed; and the power of the thing is
on the hither side for good, and on the farther side for evil. And in
all cases this power is inherent, not dependent on opinion or choice.
Our thoughts of things neither make, nor mar their eternal force;
nor--which is the most serious point for future consideration--can they
prevent the effect of it (within certain limits) upon ourselves.
33. Therefore, the object of any special analysis of wealth will be not
so much to enumerate what is serviceable, as to distinguish what is
destructive; and to show that it is inevitably destructive; that to
receive pleasure from an evil thing is not to escape from, or alter the
evil of it, but to be _altered by_ it; that is, to suffer from it to the
utmost, having our own nature, in that degree, made evil also. And it
may be shown farther, that, through whatever length of time or
subtleties of connexion the harm is accomplished, (being also less or
more according to the fineness and worth of the humanity on which it is
wrought), still, nothing _but_ harm ever comes of a bad thing.
34. So that, in sum, the term wealth is never to be attached to the
_accidental object of a morbid_ desire, but only to the _constant object
of a legitimate one_.[14] By the fury of ignorance, and fitfulness of
caprice, large interests may be continually attached to things
unserviceable or hurtful; if their nature could be altered by our
passions, the science of Political Economy would remain, what it has
been hitherto among us, the weighing of clouds, and the portioning out
of shadows. But of ignorance there is no science; and of caprice no law.
Their disturbing forces interfere with the operations of faithful
Economy, but have nothing in common with them: she, the calm arbiter of
national destiny, regards only essential power for good in all that she
accumulates, and alike disdains the wanderings[15] of imagination, and
the thirsts of disease.
35. II. Secondly. The assertion that wealth is not _only_ intrinsic, but
dependent, in order to become effectual, on a given degree of vital
power in its possessor, is opposed to another popular view of
wealth;--namely, that though it may always be constituted by caprice, it
is, when so constituted, a substantial thing, of which given quantities
may be counted as existing here, or there, and exchangeable at rated
prices.
In this view there are three errors. The first and chief is the
overlooking the fact that all exchangeableness of commodity, or
effective demand for it, depends on the sum of capacity for its use
existing, here or elsewhere. The book we cannot read, or picture we take
no delight in, may indeed be called part of our wealth, in so far as we
have power of exchanging either for something we like better. But our
power of effecting such exchange, and yet more, of effecting it to
advantage, depends absolutely on the number of accessible persons who
can understand the book, or enjoy the painting, and who will dispute the
possession of them. Thus the actual worth of either, even to us, depends
no more on their essential goodness than on the capacity existing
somewhere for the perception of it; and it is vain in any completed
system of production to think of obtaining one without the other. So
that, though the true political economist knows that co-existence of
capacity for use with temporary possession cannot be always secured, the
final fact, on which he bases all action and administration, is that, in
the whole nation, or group of nations, he has to deal with, for every
atom of intrinsic value produced he must with exactest chemistry produce
its twin atom of acceptant digestion, or understanding capacity; or, in
the degree of his failure, he has no wealth. Nature's challenge to us
is, in earnest, as the Assyrians mock; "I will give thee two thousand
horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them." Bavieca's
paces are brave, if the Cid backs him; but woe to us, if we take the
dust of capacity, wearing the armour of it, for capacity itself, for so
all procession, however goodly in the show of it, is to the tomb.
36. The second error in this popular view of wealth is, that in giving
the name of wealth to things which we cannot use, we in reality confuse
wealth with money. The land we have no skill to cultivate, the book
which is sealed to us, or dress which is superfluous, may indeed be
exchangeable, but as such are nothing more than a cumbrous form of
bank-note, of doubtful or slow convertibility. As long as we retain
possession of them, we merely keep our bank-notes in the shape of gravel
or clay, of book-leaves, or of embroidered tissue. Circumstances may,
perhaps, render such forms the safest, or a certain complacency may
attach to the exhibition of them; into both these advantages we shall
inquire afterwards; I wish the reader only to observe here, that
exchangeable property which we cannot use is, to us personally, merely
one of the forms of money, not of wealth.
37. The third error in the popular view is the confusion of Guardianship
with Possession; the real state of men of property being, too commonly,
that of curators, not possessors, of wealth.
A man's power over his property is at the widest range of it, fivefold;
it is power of Use, for himself, Administration, to others, Ostentation,
Destruction, or Bequest: and possession is in use only, which for each
man is sternly limited; so that such things, and so much of them as he
can use, are, indeed, well for him, or Wealth; and more of them, or any
other things, are ill for him, or Illth.[16] Plunged to the lips in
Orinoco, he shall drink to his thirst measure; more, at his peril: with
a thousand oxen on his lands, he shall eat to his hunger measure; more,
at his peril. He cannot live in two houses at once; a few bales of silk
or wool will suffice for the fabric of all the clothes he can ever wear,
and a few books will probably hold all the furniture good for his brain.
Beyond these, in the best of us but narrow, capacities, we have but the
power of administering, or _mal_-administering, wealth: (that is to say,
distributing, lending, or increasing it);--of exhibiting it (as in
magnificence of retinue or furniture),--of destroying, or, finally, of
bequeathing it. And with multitudes of rich men, administration
degenerates into curatorship; they merely hold their property in charge,
as Trustees, for the benefit of some person or persons to whom it is to
be delivered upon their death; and the position, explained in clear
terms, would hardly seem a covetable one. What would be the probable
feelings of a youth, on his entrance into life, to whom the career hoped
for him was proposed in terms such as these: "You must work
unremittingly, and with your utmost intelligence, during all your
available years, you will thus accumulate wealth to a large amount; but
you must touch none of it, beyond what is needful for your support.
Whatever sums you gain, beyond those required for your decent and
moderate maintenance, and whatever beautiful things you may obtain
possession of, shall be properly taken care of by servants, for whose
maintenance you will be charged, and whom you will have the trouble of
superintending, and on your deathbed you shall have the power of
determining to whom the accumulated property shall belong, or to what
purposes be applied."
38. The labour of life, under such conditions, would probably be neither
zealous nor cheerful; yet the only difference between this position and
that of the ordinary capitalist is the power which the latter supposes
himself to possess, and which is attributed to him by others, of
spending his money at any moment. This pleasure, taken _in the
imagination of power to part with that with which we have no intention
of parting_, is one of the most curious, though commonest forms of the
Eidolon, or Phantasm of Wealth. But the political economist has nothing
to do with this idealism, and looks only to the practical issue of
it--namely, that the holder of wealth, in such temper, may be regarded
simply as a mechanical means of collection; or as a money-chest with a
slit in it, not only receptant but suctional, set in the public
thoroughfare;--chest of which only Death has the key, and evil Chance
the distribution of the contents. In his function of Lender (which,
however, is one of administration, not use, as far as he is himself
concerned), the capitalist takes, indeed, a more interesting aspect; but
even in that function, his relations with the state are apt to
degenerate into a mechanism for the convenient contraction of debt;--a
function the more mischievous, because a nation invariably appeases its
conscience with respect to an unjustifiable expense, by meeting it with
borrowed funds, expresses its repentance of a foolish piece of business,
by letting its tradesmen wait for their money, and always leaves its
descendants to pay for the work which will be of the least advantage to
them.[17]
39. Quit of these three sources of misconception, the reader will have
little farther difficulty in apprehending the real nature of Effectual
value. He may, however, at first not without surprise, perceive the
consequences involved in his acceptance of the definition. For if the
actual existence of wealth be dependent on the power of its possessor,
it follows that the sum of wealth held by the nation, instead of being
constant, or calculable, varies hourly, nay, momentarily, with the
number and character of its holders! and that in changing hands, it
changes in quantity. And farther, since the worth of the currency is
proportioned to the sum of material wealth which it represents, if the
sum of the wealth changes, the worth of the currency changes. And thus
both the sum of the property, and power of the currency, of the state,
vary momentarily as the character and number of the holders. And not
only so, but different rates and kinds of variation are caused by the
character of the holders of different kinds of wealth. The transitions
of value caused by the character of the holders of land differ in mode
from those caused by character in holders of works of art; and these
again from those caused by character in holders of machinery or other
working capital. But we cannot examine these special phenomena of any
kind of wealth until we have a clear idea of the way in which true
currency expresses them; and of the resulting modes in which the cost
and price of any article are related to its value. To obtain this we
must approach the subject in its first elements.
40. Let us suppose a national store of wealth, composed of material
things either useful, or believed to be so, taken charge of by the
Government,[18] and that every workman, having produced any article
involving labour in its production, and for which he has no immediate
use, brings it to add to this store, receiving from the Government, in
exchange, an order either for the return of the thing itself, or of its
equivalent in other things, such as he may choose out of the store, at
any time when he needs them. The question of equivalence itself (how
much wine a man is to receive in return for so much corn, or how much
coal in return for so much iron) is a quite separate one, which we will
examine presently. For the time, let it be assumed that this equivalence
has been determined, and that the Government order, in exchange for a