lars--suppose that the sole desire which moves
exceptional men to devote their capacities to the augmentation of their
country's wealth is the desire to join a class which, whether idle or
active otherwise--whether devoted to mere pleasure or to philanthropy,
or an enlightened patronage of the arts, or to speculative thought and
study--is itself in an economic sense altogether unproductive. In order
to join such a class, and to work with a view of joining it, society
must be so organised that such a class can exist; and the fact of its
existence constitutes the main moral magnet which, on our present
hypotheses, is permanently essential to the development of the highest
economic activity. Such being the case, then, the following conclusion
reveals itself, which, although it may seem paradoxical, will be found
on reflection to be self-evident--the conclusion namely, that a class
which, if considered by itself, is absolutely non-productive, may, when
taken in connection with the social system as a whole, be an essential
and cardinal factor in the working machinery of production,
constituting, as it would do by the mere fact of its existence, the
charged electric accumulator by which the machinery is kept in motion;
just as the mere existence of men, seen to be secure in their possession
of the prizes of past lotteries, is the magnet which alone can make
other men buy tickets for the lotteries of the future.

I have given this case as an assumption; but it is not an assumption
only. The desire for wealth as a means of living in absolute idleness is
probably confined, as a fact, in all countries to a few. In America
especially it is a matter for surprise to strangers that men who have
made fortune beyond the possibilities of pleasurable expenditure so
rarely retire on them to cultivate the pursuits of leisure. But even in
America, if they do not value leisure for themselves, they value it for
their women, to whom, there as in all countries, four-fifths of the
charm and excitement of private life are due; and the sustained
possibility of leisure, even if not the enjoyment of it--a possibility
which can rest only on a basis of sustained fortunes--is the main
advantage which, in all civilised countries, gives wealth its meaning
for those who already possess it, and its charm for those who are, in
order to possess it, exerting at any given moment their energies and
their intellect in producing it.

The source of such sustained