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.

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, _but_ ...' 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 _feel_ (in the chest) of
responsibilities, worries, positive joys and satisfactions, are you
genuinely happier than you used to be?

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 m