d it in their rivers for food;
the fact that an individual wears a robe made from the filaments of a
worm, can no more deteriorate his spiritual or physical fibre, than
were it made of sheep's wool; an entire race, housed in marble palaces,
faring delicately, and clad in silks, and surrounded by the noblest
products of literature and plastic art, so those palaces, viands,
garments, and products of art were the result of their own labours,
could never be enervated by them. The debilitating effect of wealth
sets in at that point exactly (and never before) at which the supply of
material necessaries and comforts, and of aesthetic enjoyments, clogs
the individuality, causing it to rest satisfied in the mere passive
possession of the results of the labour of others, without feeling any
necessity or desire for further productive activity of its own. (Of the
other deleterious effects of unearned wealth on the individual or class
possessing it, such as its power of lessening human sympathy, &c., &c.,
we do not now speak, as while ultimately and indirectly, undoubtedly,
tending to disintegrate a society, they do not necessarily and
immediately enervate it, which enervation is the point we are here
considering.)

The exact material condition at which this point will be reached will
vary, not only with the race and the age, but with the individual. A
Marcus Aurelius in a palace of gold and marble was able to retain
his simplicity and virility as completely as though he had lived in a
cow-herd's hut; while on the other hand, it is quite possible for the
wife of a savage chief who has but four slaves to bring her her corn
and milk and spread her skins in the sun, to become almost as purely
parasitic as the most delicately pampered female of fashion in ancient
Rome, or modern Paris, London, or New York; while the exact amount of
unearned material wealth which will emasculate individuals in the same
society, will vary exactly as their intellectual and moral fibre and
natural activity are strong or weak. (It is not uncommon in modern
societies to find women of a class relatively very moderately wealthy,
the wives and daughters of shopkeepers or professional men, who if their
male relations will supply them with a very limited amount of money
without exertion on their part, will become as completely parasitic and
useless as women with untold wealth at their command.)

The debilitating effect of unlaboured-for wealth lies, then, not in