<SPAN name="XV"></SPAN>
<h2>XV</h2>
<h2>L.S.D.</h2>
<br/>
<p>Anybody who really wishes to talk simple
truth about money at the present time
is confronted by a very serious practical
difficulty. He must put himself in
opposition to the overwhelming body of
public opinion, and resign himself to being
regarded either as a <i>poseur</i>, a crank, or a
fool. The public is in search of happiness
now, as it was a million years ago. Money
is not the principal factor in happiness.
It may be argued whether, as a factor
in happiness, money is of twentieth-rate
importance or fiftieth-rate importance.
But it cannot be argued whether money,
in point of fact, does or does not of itself
bring happiness. There can be no doubt
whatever that money does not bring
happiness. Yet, in face of this incontrovertible
and universal truth, the whole
public behaves exactly as if money were
the sole or the principal preliminary to
happiness. The public does not reason,
and it will not listen to reason; its blood
is up in the money-hunt, and the philosopher
might as well expostulate with an
earthquake as try to take that public by
the button-hole and explain. If a man
sacrifices his interest under the will of
some dead social tyrant in order to marry
whom he wishes, if an English minister
of religion declines twenty-five thousand
dollars a year to go into exile and preach
to New York millionaires, the phenomenon
is genuinely held to be so astounding that
it at once flies right round the world in the
form of exclamatory newspaper articles!
In an age when such an attitude towards
money is sincere, it is positively dangerous—I
doubt if it may not be harmful—to
persist with loud obstinacy that money,
instead of being the greatest, is the least
thing in the world. In times of high
military excitement a man may be
ostracised if not lynched for uttering
opinions which everybody will accept as
truisms a couple of years later, and thus
the wise philosopher holds his tongue—lest
it should be cut out. So at the
zenith of a period when the possession of
money in absurd masses is an infallible
means to the general respect, I have no
intention either of preaching or of practising
quite all that I privately
in the matter of riches.</p>
<p>It was not always thus. Though there
have been previous ages as lustful for
wealth and ostentation as our own, there
have also been ages when money-getting
and millionaire-envying were not the
sole preoccupations of the average man.
And such an age will undoubtedly succeed
to ours. Few things would surprise me
less, in social life, than the upspringing of
some anti-luxury movement, the formation
of some league or guild among the
middling classes (where alone intellect is
to be found in quantity), the members of
which would bind themselves to stand aloof
from all the great, silly, banal, ugly, and
tedious <i>luxe</i>-activities of the time and
not to spend more than a certain sum
per annum on eating, drinking, covering
their bodies, and being moved about like
parcels from one spot of the earth's surface
to another. Such a movement would, and
will, help towards the formation of an
opinion which would condemn lavish
expenditure on personal satisfactions as
bad form. However, the shareholders
of grand hotels, restaurants, and race-courses
of all sorts, together with popular
singers and barristers, etc., need feel no
immediate alarm. The movement is not
yet.</p>
<p>As touching the effect of money on the
efficient ordering of the human machine,
there is happily no necessity to inform
those who have begun to interest themselves
in the conduct of their own brains
that money counts for very little in that
paramount affair. Nothing that really
helps towards perfection costs more than
is within the means of every person who
reads these pages. The expenses connected
with daily meditation, with the
building-up of mental habits, with the
practice of self-control and of cheerfulness,
with the enthronement of reason
over the rabble of primeval instincts—these
expenses are really, you know,
trifling. And whether you get that well-deserved
rise of a pound a week or whether
you don't, you may anyhow go ahead
with the machine; it isn't a motor-car,
though I started by comparing it to one.
And even when, having to a certain
extent mastered, through sensible management
of the machine, the art of achieving
a daily content and dignity, you come to
the embroidery of life—even the best
embroidery of life is not absolutely
ruinous. Meat may go up in price—it
has done—but books won't. Admission
to picture galleries and concerts and so
forth will remain quite low. The views
from Richmond Hill or Hindhead, or
along Pall Mall at sunset, the smell of
the earth, the taste of fruit and of kisses—these
things are unaffected by the
machinations of trusts and the hysteria
of stock exchanges. Travel, which after
books is the finest of all embroideries
(and which is not to be valued by the
mile but by the quality), is decidedly
cheaper than ever it was. All that is
required is ingenuity in one's expenditure.
And much ingenuity with a little money
is vastly more profitable and amusing
than much money without ingenuity.</p>
<p>And all the while as you read this you
are saying, with your impatient sneer:
'It's all very well; it's all very fine
talking, <i>but</i> ...' In brief, you are not
convinced. You cannot deracinate that
wide-rooted dogma within your soul that
more money means more joy. I regret
it. But let me put one question, and
let me ask you to answer it honestly.
Your financial means are greater now
than they used to be. Are you happier or
less discontented than you used to be?
Taking your existence day by day, hour
by hour, judging it by the mysterious
<i>feel</i> (in the chest) of responsibilities,
worries, positive joys and satisfactions,
are you genuinely happier than you used
to be?</p>
<p>I do not wish to be misunderstood.
The financial question cannot be ignored.
If it is true that money does not bring
happiness, it is no less true that the
lack of money induces a state of affairs
in which efficient living becomes doubly
difficult. These two propositions, superficially
perhaps self-contradictory, are not
really so. A modest income suffices for
the fullest realisation of the Ego in terms
of content and dignity; but you must live
within it. You cannot righteously ignore
money. A man, for instance, who cultivates
himself and instructs a family of
daughters in everything except the ability
to earn their own livelihood, and then has
the impudence to die suddenly without
leaving a penny—that man is a scoundrel.
Ninety—or should I say ninety-nine?—per
cent. of all those anxieties which
render proper living almost impossible
are caused by the habit of walking on the
edge of one's income as one might walk
on the edge of a precipice. The majority
of Englishmen have some financial worry
or other continually, everlastingly at the
back of their minds. The sacrifice necessary
to abolish this condition of things
is more apparent than real. All spending
is a matter of habit.</p>
<p>Speaking generally, a man can contrive,
out of an extremely modest income, to
have all that he needs—unless he needs
the esteem of snobs. Habit may, and
habit usually does, make it just as difficult
to keep a family on two thousand a
year as on two hundred. I suppose that
for the majority of men the suspension
of income for a single month would mean
either bankruptcy, the usurer, or acute
inconvenience. Impossible, under such
circumstances, to be in full and independent
possession of one's immortal
soul! Hence I should be inclined to say
that the first preliminary to a proper
control of the machine is the habit of
spending decidedly less than one earns
or receives. The veriest automaton of a
clerk ought to have the wherewithal of a
whole year as a shield against the caprices
of his employer. It would be as reasonable
to expect the inhabitants of an unfortified
city in the midst of a plain
occupied by a hostile army to apply
themselves successfully to the study of
logarithms or metaphysics, as to expect
a man without a year's income in his safe
to apply himself successfully to the true
art of living.</p>
<p>And the whole secret of relative freedom
from financial anxiety lies not in income,
but in expenditure. I am ashamed to
utter this antique platitude. But, like
most aphorisms of unassailable wisdom,
it is completely ignored. You say, of
course, that it is not easy to leave a
margin between your expenditure and your
present income. I know it. I fraternally
shake your hand. Still it is, in most
cases, far easier to lessen one's expenditure
than to increase one's income without
increasing one's expenditure. The alternative
is before you. However you
decide, be assured that the foundation of
philosophy is a margin, and that the
margin can always be had.</p>
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