Anybody who really wishes to talk simple truth about money at the present time is confronted by a very serious practical difficulty. He must put himself in opposition¹ to the overwhelming body of public opinion, and resign himself to being regarded either as a poseur², a crank, or a fool. The public is in search of happiness now, as it was a million years ago. Money is not the principal factor in happiness. It may be argued whether, as a factor in happiness, money is of twentieth-rate importance or fiftieth-rate importance. But it cannot be argued whether money, in point of fact, does or does not of itself bring happiness. There can be no doubt whatever that money does not bring happiness. Yet, in face of this incontrovertible and universal truth, the whole public behaves exactly as if money were the sole or the principal preliminary to happiness. The public does not reason, and it will not listen to reason; its blood is up in the money-hunt, and the philosopher might as well expostulate with an earthquake as try to take that public by the button-hole and explain. If a man sacrifices his interest under the will of some dead social tyrant³ in order to marry whom he wishes, if an English minister of religion declines twenty-five thousand dollars a year to go into exile and preach to New York millionaires, the phenomenon is genuinely held to be so astounding⁴ that it at once flies right round the world in the form of exclamatory newspaper articles! In an age when such an attitude towards money is sincere, it is positively⁵ dangerous—I doubt if it may not be harmful—to persist with loud obstinacy⁶ that money, instead of being the greatest, is the least thing in the world. In times of high military excitement a man may be ostracised if not lynched for uttering opinions which everybody will accept as truisms a couple of years later, and thus the wise philosopher holds his tongue—lest it should 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 privately⁷ in the matter of riches.  
It was not always thus. Though there have been previous ages as lustful⁸ for wealth and ostentation⁹ 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 undoubtedly¹⁰ 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 guild¹¹ among the middling classes (where alone intellect is to be found in quantity), the members of which would bind¹² themselves to stand aloof¹³ from all the great, silly, banal¹⁴, 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 condemn¹⁵ lavish¹⁶ expenditure¹⁷ on personal satisfactions as bad form. However, the shareholders¹⁸ of grand hotels, restaurants, and race-courses of all sorts, together with popular singers and barristers, etc., need feel no immediate¹⁹ alarm. The movement is not yet.
 
As touching²⁰ 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 paramount²¹ 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 meditation²², with the building-up of mental habits, with the practice of self-control and of cheerfulness, with the enthronement of reason over the rabble²³ of primeval instincts—these expenses are really, you know, trifling²⁴. 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 mach............