If, then, for the selfish, or even the heartless parent, wealth would in most cases lose the larger part of its attractions unless it could be accumulated and bequeathed to others in the shape of income-yielding property, for the normally affectionate parent its attractions would be reduced yet further. But the full part which heritable incomes play, in rendering wealth desirable in the eyes of exceptional men, is not to be understood by considering such a {319} man and his family singly. For the life and the ambitions of a family are not self-contained. They imply and depend upon relations with other families; and these other families will be valued, and intercourse with them will be rendered possible, not by the bare fact that they are the possessors of so much money, but by the fact that they have the habits and interests which result, and result only, in the social atmosphere created by a number of assured incomes, wholly independent of any daily struggle to make them. It is easy to see that no rich society would be endurable if the only men in it were men who had just made their fortunes, and if, on their deaths, their families disappeared from it in the gulfs of destitution. Anything more exquisitely ludicrous than the socialistic proposal that great wealth-producers should be allowed large incomes to spend, but that they must not on any account be allowed to invest any part of them, or use it in a way by which more income may result from it—anything more ludicrous than this it is not possible to conceive. It is—to recur to an illustration used already—like proposing that a peasant who is more industrious than his neighbours shall be allowed all the money which the sale of his extra produce brings him, provided only that he spends it on brandy, or beer, or absinthe; but that if he save it up and buys a useful horse with it, his purchase shall be confiscated by the State, because a horse is productive capital. This proposal, however, is not only ludicrous in theory, but it would, if put into practice, result in a sort of {320} society more vile and bestial than anything which the world has ever known. For the sole advantage which in that case wealth would bring to its producer would consist in the meat and drink and other means of physical pleasure which he and his family could consume or enjoy during his lifetime—before he retired to the grave, and his wife and children to the workhouse.