The Growth of Thought | Page 7

man's hold on a future, and his relations to his Maker. What would such an one pursue; as life's chief ends--covet, as life's best goods?
We still suppose self-love to be as really as ever the main-spring to human conduct; but that self-love enlightened, regulated, refine-- choosing first the goods which satisfy the nobler parts of man's nature, and on a liberal estimate of the ties which bind society together; in virtue of which, if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it.
The items, claiming to constitute life's happiness, may be divided into two classes, distinguished by this important difference: one class essentially such, that only a limited number of mankind can obtain them;--if some succeed in the pursuit, their success involves the failure of others: The other class are such, as to involve no contradiction in the supposition of their becoming the common property of all. The success of a part, far from obstructing, rather facilitates the success of others; they constitute a store of wealth, from which each may take his fill; and the more he takes, the more he leaves, to satisfy the desires of all who come after.
Now, in view of the case, Philosophy inquiring for life's chief goods, cannot make them to be fortune's prizes, scattered to tempt the cupidity of all; but which a few only can catch, while their luck proves the disappointment and vexation of the many. The supposition were monstrous. We so instinctively recoil from supposing such to be the appointment of nature's Author, and so consciously grasp it for a truth clear by its own light--the conviction of a provision fully made in nature for all, whenever nature's wants are truly consulted--that we may safely reject, by this test, every notion of temporal good, which makes it consist preeminently in whatever, by the nature of the case, can be the lot of but a limited number.
Eminent above all other conceptions of temporal good, is that which makes it to consist emphatically in the possession of money, or the ability to command it by its equivalents. And because the capacities of enjoyment have never been measured, nor material wealth rationally estimated as a means of meeting those capacities, riches are prized, not as a means, but an end; and becoming themselves the end, no amount of possession lessens the desire to accumulate.
A just philosophy argues on the case, that all cannot be rich, in the common acceptation of the term, whether be considered the limits to earth's productiveness, and the possibility of increasing material wealth; or whether, rich being more a relative than an absolute term, that the supposition of all rich is self-contradictory: therefore, in a juster sense, the supposition of all rich must be admissible;--the sense, namely, that whenever riches shall be reasonably estimated simply as the means of meeting capacities of enjoyment surveyed and known, then it will be found that the earth's productiveness, and the stock of material wealth, admit each to take to the fullness of his wants, leaving enough for all who come after.
It is further the office of Philosophy to show in detail, what is thus wrought out as a conclusion from general principles; to show how much is consumed by artificial wants, and subjection to the tyranny of fashion; to show how the correction of factitious desires would leave natural and rational desires for better enjoyment than is now found, so that self-love would find not occasion for envy, or repining at a brother's prosperity.
The unceasing desire to become richer would be, however, but a mitigated evil, if men sought only wealth by production. The aggravation of the case is, that they whom the desire most impels, seek the increase of their own store, not by producing, but by contriving to turn to their own stock the avails of the industry of others. Our young men, in deplorable numbers, slide into the persuasion, that any means of living and thriving are better than productive industry. Hence the rush into trade, the professions, into speculations, where the hazards are such, that the cool calculations of pure avarice would rather incline a man to prefer the prospect of growing rich by digging the earth. So much the preference of contrivance to labor overmaster the mastering desire to become rich.
But there is a strange hankering after whatever is of the nature of a lottery. So the prizes are but splendid, no matter, if they are but few compared with the blanks. We are given to presuming each on his own good fortune. "Nothing venture, nothing have," has become a proverb. So agriculture is treated as if it had no rewards, because one ventures so little by engaging therein. And one might almost think that the conscious earth resented the indignity.
Aided by Philosophy, we shall argue on