The Quest of the Simple Life | Page 9

order of intelligence to acquire wealth, since
some of the meanest of mankind appear to prosper at the business. A
certain vulpine shrewdness of intelligence seems the thing most needed,
and this may coexist with a general dulness of mind which would
disgrace a savage.
The thing that is least perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in
money ends at the point where economy becomes unnecessary. The
man who can buy anything he covets, without any consultation with his
banker, values nothing that he buys. There is a subtle pleasure in the
extravagance that contests with prudence; in the anxious debates which
we hold with ourselves whether we can or cannot afford a certain thing;
in our attempts to justify our wisdom; in the risk and recklessness of
our operations; in the long deferred and final joy of our possession; but
this is a kind of pleasure which the man of boundless means never
knows. The buying of pictures affords us an excellent illustration on
this point. Men of the type of Balzac's Cousin Pons attain to rapture in
the process because they are poor. They have to walk weary miles and
wait long weeks to get upon the track of their treasure; to use all their
knowledge of art and men to circumvent the malignity of dealers; to
experience the extremes of trepidation and of hope; to deny themselves
comforts, and perhaps food, that they may pay the price which has at
last, after infinite dispute, reached an irreducible minimum; and the
pleasure of their possession is in the ratio of their pains. But the man
who enters a sale-room with the knowledge that he can have everything
he wishes by the signing of a cheque feels none of these emotions. It
seems to me that money has lost more than half its value since cheques
became common. When men kept their gold in iron coffers, lock-fast
cupboards, or a pot buried in an orchard, there was something tangible
in wealth. When it came to counting out gold pieces in a bag, men
remembered by what sweat of mind or body wealth was won, and they

had a sense of parting with something which was really theirs. But a
cheque has never yet impressed me with the least sense of its intrinsic
value. It is a thing so trivial and fragile that the mind refuses to regard it
as the equivalent of lands and houses and solid bullion. It is a thing
incredible to reason that with a stroke of the pen a man may sign away
his thousands. If cheques were prohibited by law, and all payments
made in good coin of the realm, I believe we should all be much more
careful in our expenditure, for we should have at least some true
symbol of what expenditure implies.
In an ideal state all incomes beyond 10,000 pounds per year should be
prohibited. Almost all the real luxuries of life may be enjoyed on half
that sum; and even this is an excessive estimate. Such a regulation
would be of vast advantage to the rich, simply because it would impose
some limit at which economy commenced. They would then begin to
enjoy their wealth. Avarice would decline, for obviously it would not
be worth while to accumulate a larger fortune than the State permitted.
We might also expect some improvement in manners, for there would
be no room for that vulgar ostentation in which excessive wealth
delights. If a man chose to exceed the limit which the law prescribed he
would do so as a public benefactor; for, of course, the excess of wealth
would be applied to the good of the community, in the relief of taxation,
the adornment of cities, or the establishment of libraries and
art-galleries. It would no doubt be objected that the great historic
houses of the aristocracy could not be maintained on such an income;
five thousand pounds a year would hardly pay the servants on a great
estate, and provide the upkeep of a mansion. But in this case the State
would become the custodian of such houses, which would be treated as
national palaces. It is by no means improbable that their present owners
would be glad to be rid of them on generous terms, which provided for
a nominal ownership and an occasional occupation. However this may
be, it is certain that the rich would profit by the change, for their chance
of getting the most and best out of life would be much increased by the
limit put upon cupidity and ostentation.
CHAPTER III

GETTING A LIVING, AND LIVING
Getting the best and most out of life, I take to be the most rational
object of human existence. Even religion, although it affects to scorn
the phrase, admits the