While economists have dimly predicated an inward
as well as an outward wealth, they have preferred to
treat it diredlly as that which has an exchange value
and to class it as a species of utility, but of a base
order, having reference only to the material welfare
of man. And herein lies the fallacy of the worldly
concept of life, that it would deal with material
issues as separate from spiritual, whereas in fa6t the
material is but the reflex of the spiritual, and can no
more be rightly considered as a separate entity than
a corpse may be regarded as a man; and though
political economy may admit that man has a soul,
it nevertheless does not recognize it as an asset.
It is a shallow sophism that money will buy

[98]



WEALTH

everything; it will buy everji;hing but happiness,
eveiything but peace, everji;hing but truth, wisdom,
love. It will buy servile allegiance but not respedl; it
will buy a book but not the ability to read it; it will
buy a coronet but not nobility of charadler. In short,
it will buy the symbols but not the substance of things.
To inherit money may or may not prove beneficial;
but to inherit the convicSlion that money constitutes
wealth is always a calamity. There is this diflFerence,
moreover, between earning money and acquiring it,
that the one contributes to charadler and the other
requires charadler to withstand it. Two payments
are made for all honest work; the first is in money
and is counted, the second is in patience, in dex-
terity, in tadl, experience and courage, and is not
counted.
