The reason of this is as follows: Amongst the great masses of mankind the desire for wealth is a speculative desire only. They give, if we may borrow an expression from Cardinal Newman, only a “_notional assent_” to the fact that it is desirable. Wealth means for them no special pleasure which they have experienced, or can represent to themselves, and the repetition of which they crave for; nor does it mean the satisfaction of any importunate wants. It does not mean for them what a shilling would mean for a starving man. For him the shilling would mean the food for which his stomach clamoured; and he would feel the want of it as keenly as he would value its possession. So, too, a poor youth separated from his family may crave for a five-pound note, and be miserable at not possessing it, because this will represent the {362} possibility of spending Christmas with them. But no ordinary man, unless he has lived amongst the very rich, and his entire view of life has been practically identified with theirs, has any similar craving for a hundred thousand pounds, or for a million; for he has no personal experience and no detailed knowledge of the peculiar conditions of life which require such sums to purchase them. Wealth is to him little more than a name for a power which would secure for him, if he possessed it, an indefinite number of indefinite things, if he wanted them; but he is under ordinary circumstances no more troubled by its absence than he is by the fact that he has not a fairy for his godmother, or that he does not happen to be the owner of Aladdin’s lamp. How, then, does it come to be the object of that keen hunger which is the strongest motive to activity amongst the men who are the chief producers of it? What are the exceptional circumstances which convert it from a remote something, held in a passionless and speculative way to be desirable, into a near something, craved for, and eagerly struggled for with the painful industry of a lifetime?