There are some prayers which belong to the universal Religion of Humanity, and none more so than this, which is found in the oldest prayer-book of the Aryan race, the Rig Veda,—“O Lord, prosper us in the getting and the keeping!” “To make money” is certainly the “soul’s sincere desire” of most citizens of the world at the present day, and nowhere is it more fervently uttered than in this country.
This is no discredit. So far as we can trace the history of man from the Old Stone Age upward, the one efficient motive to his progress has been the acquisition and preservation of property. This has been the immediate aim of all his arts and institutions and the chief incentive to individual exertion. The time may come—indeed, there are signs of its approach—when nations will consciously aim at some other than a property career, and individuals will perceive that the purpose of riches is something else than to offer facilities for their further increase or for inglorious ease.
In this devotion to the accumulation of property men have not been led astray by what Shakespeare so magnificently calls—
Material resources are the indispensable requisites to progress. The miseries of poverty are manifest, and there are none greater. The utterly poor man is condemned to servitude and suffering, the woman to degradation. The imperative demands of the animal wants quench the finer elements of character, and the brutal stamps out the human in the desperate struggle for existence.
What wonder that the pauper turns in bestial fury against the rich, who flaunt before him a superfluous luxury? But his passion springs from his ignorance.
Wealth is no longer “spoils,” the product of robbery; rather may it be called the reward paid by society for services rendered humanity. It is frequently the booty won in some victory over the elements of nature or of self, and by the practice of those maxims which make men stronger and more useful to those around them. To the possessor it supplies the leisure necessary to the cultivation of his nobler faculties and to the highest of duties—self-development.
The terms “wealth” and “riches” are vague, and to understand the relation of property to personal happiness, which is my present theme, we must define them closer.
The time has gone by when either love is satisfied to live in “a cot beside the hill,” or a philosopher in a tub. Both prefer to possess a house in a city street and a cottage by the sea; which is a sign that both the philosophy of love and the love of philosophy have improved. The affectation of despising riches—which never was anything but an affectation—is no longer good form, even among sages.
Let us count what riches give.
The list is short and it is pleasant reading. Riches supply us with the food and drink we like, clothing, shelter, and surroundings to our taste, means of warmth and light, the services and to some extent the companionship of those we choose, and especially leisure and means to pursue our “occupations of choice.”
These are the immediate benefits we derive from riches, and practically there are none others. Political economists have therefore called these “real” or “effective” riches, to distinguish them from “potential” or “productive” riches, by which latter they mean property or capital invested with the object of supplying “effective” riches, without personal effort on the part of the owner.
In looking over the list of “effective” riches, one sees that they are all very desirable, and perhaps, I may as well say, essential to personal happiness. I am sure nine-tenths of the civilized world will agree with me. About that, the discussion will be short; but about how to obtain them, that inquiry is not to be disposed of so quickly.
We are now talking business. Let us be practical. Les affaires avant tout. Just how much a year do I need to be rich? Here I make an extraordinary discovery, comparable only to that of the Fortunate Isles, where apple trees bore fruits of gold; or the valley of Sinbad the Sailor, where the common pebbles were rubies and diamonds. On turning to that list of “effective” riches, I perceive that very little of it has to do with things, and very much of it with me. It is based on what I like, prefer, choose. If, like the Emperor Nero, I cannot be satisfied with less than peacocks’ brains and nightingales’ tongues for dinner, I must have the revenues of an empire; but if I am content with bread and beans, with a shanty to keep out the wind and a slop-shop suit for warmth, then a few fifty-cent fees a day—I happen to be a doctor—will make me rich as a Rothschild.
Marvelous discovery! beatific vision! only, at the moment of utmost complacency, calm reflection, like a chill wind, “disencharms the late enchantment.” My tastes are not my own. They belong to my parents and my race. I cannot help it that I was born with a thin skin, which requires fine silk next it to be comfortable; with a queasy stomach, that demands delicate dishes; with a thirst for remote and useless learning, which must have expensive books. So from this time forth I flout at and deride that solemn prig of antiquity, whose name I am glad to have forgotten, who taught that there are two ways of getting rich, each equally satisfactory, but one much easier than the other—the one to diminish our wants, the other to increase our incomes. I have no better opinion of his teaching than had Malvolio of the doctrine of Pythagoras, that “the soul of his grandam might haply inhabit a partridge;” and, really, which of the two the antiquated mentor thought the easier I cannot imagine. To me, it has been the latter.
Money, therefore, we must have.
Her physician said of Cleopatra that she had “pursued conclusions infinite, of easy ways to die.” The expression might be used of many a modern schemer with reference to getting wealth. But alas! I am afraid, of the thousands of schemes, that of the dry, unimaginative, political economists is the only one worth mentioning; and that is summed up in the hateful word—Economize! or, as they put it in their stiff dialect,—“Diminish the consumption of your 'effective’ riches, in order that you may add the surplus to your 'productive’ riches, or invested capital.”
Some of them are even meddlesome enough to lay down exact rules as to how much one should put aside from an annual income and securely invest, in order to meet the demands of what they call “an enlightened prudence.” This, they say, should be one-fourth of such income, and they add that if this with its increment is continued for about five-and-twenty years, the return from your “productive” riches will then be sufficient to supply you with the amount of “effective” riches to which you have been accustomed, without further labor on your part; and you can quietly sit in the chimney corner and live in bliss all the rest of your days, like the prince in the fairy story. This is a page, therefore, good for young married people to read who are starting out in life and have their fortunes to make, and want to “retire” at their silver wedding.
Such slow work will not suit the energetic young man whose determination is to get rich quick and have a good time while he is about it. He has no occasion to go back to antiquity for his two ways of succeeding, and he proposes to use them both as strings to his bow, so that by one or the other he will drive his arrow into the bull’s eye of fortune’s target. Speculation! Advertising! These are the words of power with which he will enslave the spirits which guard the hidden pots of gold. He is well aware that a bit of red flannel is bait enough for many fishes, and that in angling false flies catch more trout than real ones. The value of knowledge to him is measured by the ability it gives to detect the ignorance of others and to take advantage of it. His plans, like those of Cardinal de Retz, are so laid that, though they fail, they will bring in some return. He will manage to secure a commission even on the expenditures he makes for his pleasures. Such a character, and there are many such in our country, often enough succeeds in his ambitions.
I was in active business for twenty years, and I made the discovery that the excellent precepts which all are taught in infancy and continue to praise in after years undergo certain modifications when it comes to practical life “in the street.” Once I amused myself by writing them out as I found them really observed, and I am inclined to insert a few specimens, which I will call
Not how business should be done, but how others do business, is the proper study.
The brighter your virtues shine, the more fish will be attracted within reach of your gig.
Always praise veracity and honesty; they are useful qualities in others.
The louder you condemn dissimulation, the less you will be suspected of it.
Be virtuous; nothing so enables you to appear superior to those around you.
If you are stingy, do not pretend to be generous; the effort will betray you.
When people express surprise at your meanness, it shows that you must have established a reputation for liberality.
Punctuality is excellent; but the man who comes last to an engagement is the only one who is not kept waiting.
The value of time is its value to yourself.
The simplest device to capture other people’s money is to let them think that they can capture yours.
Truth is bright and strong; too bright for most eyes, and too strong to be administered without dilution.
The man who attends the funeral of his own reputation often has a jolly wake.
Marry for love, work for your living; marry for money, work for your liberty.
But enough of these. It will ever hold true that competitive business breeds deception and selfish greed. The business man who pretends otherwise is either a hypocrite or of dull moral sense.
In this race for riches, whether along the peaceful avenue of economy or jostling in the streets of speculation, where comes in the Pursuit of Happiness? Riches, as I have shown, are and can be nothing more than means to this end, and those who, through avarice, greed, or rapacity, make them the end and aim of their aspirations, trade gold for dross. Scarcely less is the error of those who are ever postponing the hour of enjoyment until a certain sum is reached, and their fortune can be rounded off with additional thousands. It is a general tendency in human nature to live in the past or the future, although the present alone is man’s. What to him is now, and here, is all that he can ever possess or enjoy; and if you ask him, he will grant it; but he is driven ever by what seems an irrational and demonic power to seek his joy in what is somewhere else, far off, out of reach, impossible of attainment, beyond his capacities.
The illusive pictures drawn by memory, by hope, and by imagination have their proper place in the palace of Human Happiness; but the majority fix their gaze steadily on these alone, and wander through halls and chambers filled with rich stuffs and costly ware, through corridors looking out on entrancing views and courts opening to the starry heavens, their eyes fixed vacantly on the far distance, and noting nothing of the beauties by which they are surrounded. To waken them by some whisper of what they are missing, and to persuade them to turn their eyes on what is around them, will be my purpose in the chapters immediately to follow.
Bishop Berkeley declared that he was the richest man in England, because he had trained himself to the habit of mind of regarding everything which gave him pleasure as his own. In our days, most philosophers of that school reside in penitentiaries.
The disappointments of the nouveau riche are, that what he would like to buy is not on sale, and what he expected to get for nothing, he finds can only be had by paying for it.
That you are rich, is nothing to me; but only whether you are willing to spend your money.
Many strive harder to appear happy than to be so. Ostentation is wealth shamming happiness. Envy is the fool who does not see through the sham.
The rich have less advantage over the poor than the latter suppose.
Not the inventory of your property, but that of your unsatisfied wants, measures your fortune; not your annual income, but your annual deficit or surplus, makes you rich or poor.
After all, the worst of poverty is that it leaves us so little money to give away.
In Grecian legend, the apple of discord was made of gold.
If you teach your son to love money well, you will have such success that he will soon love it better than he does you.
A miser has merry mourners.
Youth saves for age, age for its heirs, and these for nobody.
Do not starve your horse to save your hay.
When you deliver a eulogy on a plutocrat, you had better dwell on his millions than on his methods of getting them.