hould 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.

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 _luxe_-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.

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