Everyone is familiar with the varying strength and weakness of the
instincts of getting and hoarding as shown by his neighbors and
acquaintances. Some seem to have no ambition or thought for getting or
keeping money. Some can get it but cannot keep it. Some have in them
from childhood the instinct for getting the better of every trade; for
hoarding what they get, and accumulating property all their lives. In
this, as in all other respects, no two individuals are alike. History is
filled with examples of men who had the instinctive power of getting
money combined with the instinct for keeping it. Their names are
familiar, all the way from Midas and Croesus down to the prominent
captains of industry today. It is common for them and their adherents
who criticise new schemes of social organization to remark with the
greatest assurance that before wealth can be equal, brains must be
equal. The truth is that brains have little to do with either the making
or accumulating of money. This depends mainly, like all other
activities, on the strength or weakness of the instincts involved. One's
brain capacity cannot be measured by his bank account, any more than by
the strength of his body or the color of his hair. His bank account
simply shows his innate tendencies. There is no doubt that brain
capacity as well as physical perfection adds to power, but it is the
instinct that determines the tendency and strength of the activity.
To say that the one who gets money the most easily and keeps it the most
safely has the best brain is no more reasonable than to say that the
foxhound is more intelligent than the bull-dog because it can run
faster. Nature formed one for running and the other for holding on. The
brain power is not involved.
There are manifold ways of gratifying all these instincts. The desire
for property calls simply for getting it and keeping it. It does not
involve the method to be used. The way is determined by other faculties,
by education, by opportunities, by the strength and weakness of
inhibitions. It does not follow that all legal ways are morally right
and all illegal ones morally wrong. Society in its development has
established certain ways in which it may be done. These ways are easy
for some, they are hard for others, and for many quite impossible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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