the ideal towards which the world is looking, wisely or unwisely, and which it is trying ever and ever to attain.

And what does this mean? It means that neither work nor play is to be regarded as the end of life. What is the end of life? Simply living; life first as continued existence, and then, philosophically speaking, as content; life as holding

what? Satisfaction, joys, pleasures, the things that we desire. Life, then, is the end and aim, the ideal,— long life, full life. And both work and play are to be judged only as they contribute to this.

WEALTH AND POVERTY.

WHAT is wealth? The accumulated product of labor, a great many people would reply; and this is a part of the truth; or they would say the accumulated joint product of labor and capital; and, again, this is a part of the truth, but not all. A man, for example, in California might stumble on to a gold mine, not as yet worked or owned by anybody, and suddenly find himself worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. In his case, that may be neither the result of labor nor of applied capital; but purely by the result of accident he has come into possession of something that is looked upon as very valuable, and which he can exchange for whatsoever he may desire.

The application of labor does not always produce wealth, nor does the application of capital. It might take as much labor and as much capital to raise worthless rock to the surface of the earth as it would to lift out the most valuable quartz from a gold mine. Or a certain quantity of capital is used, a certain quantity of labor is expended, and the production is wealth. Or sometimes, as I have already intimated, the wealth comes into the possession of the man or the community without the expenditure of either labor or capital in any commensurate degree to the amount of wealth. A man might come into possession of a lot of land, he might take it, as in a case that I happened to

know of, because he had lent money to a friend and had received a mortgage as the only thing the friend had in the way of security, while neither he nor his friend regarded the mortgage as of any adequate value. And yet the rise of property in the town after a few years made the person who was obliged to take the land on this mortgage exceedingly wealthy. One might hold a piece of land where. a new city is springing up; he might have taken it up while it was still wild land, and have expended no labor on it, have applied no capital, or very little, at any rate, after its coming into his possession, and yet after a course of years find himself immensely wealthy. Labor and capital must indeed indirectly enter into this result, the labor and capital of other people, but not necessarily very much of either labor or capital on his part.

Wealth, then, what is it? Here is a simpler definition: it is an accumulation of objects of human desire. For the measure of value is nothing else than the fact that the thing possessed is looked on as having the quality of being what a great many people desire. No matter whether the desire is wise or unwise: the simple fact that a great number of people desire to possess a certain thing determines the fact that it shall be regarded as wealth. It is wealth, because it can be exchanged for anything that a man may wish in return for it.

If, for example, all men should suddenly lose all desire. to possess gold, if nobody wanted gold any more, it would be worth no more than pebble stones.

Again, you will see, as resulting from this definition, that the most valuable things are those which the largest numbers of people desire, and which are the least in quantity. Take as an extreme illustration Raphael's Sistine Madonna, which is probably as valuable a painting as there is in the world,

perhaps the most valuable painting. So valuable is it that it becomes a question of national contest, not personal, as to who shall possess it. Probably to-day there is not money enough that any nation would be induced to offer for it that could procure its removal from its present position. Great paintings have possessed such value that they have become matters of diplomatic intercourse between nations. The first Napoleon, for example, seized by force certain works of art from the great nations; and after his fall, by the general consent of the nations involved, they were returned to their owners, as indicating that they were so valuable that no man had a right, even by conquest, to take them away. If nobody wanted the Sistine Madonna, if nobody appreciated its beauty or the genius expended on its production, it would suddenly lose all value, and any one could have it who chose to carry it away.

The underlying principle, then, that determines the worth. of anything is this fact of human desire. If you analyze this, it is only a modification of the great fundamental fact of hunger. A man desires food for the life of his body. He desires, or hungers, for clothing, either to protect himself from the cold or as a matter of taste and beauty. He desires shelter, to satisfy this hunger for protection, from the weather in the first instance, and then to satisfy the higher æsthetic hunger, taste for beauty of form and of decoration. And so you may run the analysis from the lowest physical hunger up to the highest spiritual aspiration; and that which people hunger for, for the supply of any want of any range or degree of intensity, becomes a matter of value as worth, as wealth. We do not call those things wealth which are consumed as we go along. We use the term rather of those objects of human desire which are accumulated beyond the immediate necessity of the owner.

We are now ready to raise the next questions. Is wealth desirable? Is poverty a blessed condition? Would it be better if the world were neither rich nor poor, if there were no poor people, if there were no rich people, if everybody possessed, as Tolstoï seems to desire, just enough to supply the ordinary wants of the human animal? Would that be a desirable condition for human society?

It. seems to me most certainly not. For wealth, some accumulated value beyond that which is needed for the immediate necessities of the community, is the very condition of all higher growth. Picture to yourselves, if you please, a world in which there is neither poverty nor riches; in which every man, woman and child has shelter from the cold, clothing enough for decency, food enough to supply the ordinary calls of hunger, and so is comfortable; a world in which no one is harassed by any anxiety as to what he is going to eat or drink or wear to-morrow or next year. Would this be a desirable condition of the world? So far, yes. But if there were not more than that, if there were only enough wealth in the world to give all people physical shelter, physical clothing, physical food, then we might be for the next dozen centuries comfortable, well-fed animals; but we could be nothing more than that.

I said a few minutes ago that this analogy with hunger might be run all the way from the lowest physical desire for food clear up to the highest spiritual aspiration. Now, if these higher hungers are, in the first place, going to exist, and if they are going to be fed, so that men can grow above the level of comfortable animals, then there must be in the hands of somebody sufficient accumulation of wealth to provide food for these higher hungers. If men are to think, if they are to read books, if they are to study, if they are to travel, so as to learn something about other parts of the world,