‹Effective Wealth›, real, and realizing satisfactions, or the aggregate of utilities which human labour, aided by the co-operation of natural agents, places within the reach of Society. ‹Relative Wealth›,—that is to say, the proportional share of each in the general Riches, a share which is determined by Value. This Economic Harmony, then, may be thus stated: By labour the action of man is combined with the action of nature. Utility results from that co-operation. Each man receives a share of the general utility proportioned to the value he has created,—that is to say, to the services he has rendered; in other words, to the utility he has himself produced.[50] [p193] ‹Morality of Wealth.›—We have just been engaged in studying wealth in an economical point of view; it may not perhaps be useless to say something here of its Moral effects. In all ages, wealth, in a moral point of view, has been the subject of controversy. Certain philosophers and certain religionists have commanded us to despise it; others have greatly prided themselves on the golden mean, ‹aurea mediocritas›. Few, if any, have admitted as moral an ardent longing after the goods of fortune. Which are right? Which are wrong? It does not belong to Political Economy to treat of individual morality. I shall make only one remark: I am always inclined to think that in matters which lie within the domain of everyday practice, theorists, savants, philosophers, are much less likely to be right than this universal practice itself, when we include in the meaning of the word practice, not only the actions of the generality of men, but their sentiments and ideas. Now, what does universal practice demonstrate in this case? It shows us all men endeavouring to emerge from their original state of poverty,—all preferring the sensation of satisfaction to the sensation of want, riches to poverty; all, I should say, or almost all, without excepting even those who declaim against wealth. The desire for wealth is ardent, incessant, universal, irrepressible. In almost every part of the globe it has triumphed over our natural aversion to toil. Whatever may be said to the contrary, it displays a character of avidity still baser among savage than among civilized nations. All our navigators who left Europe in the eighteenth century, imbued with the fashionable ideas of Rousseau, and expecting to find the men of nature at the antipodes disinterested, generous, hospitable, were struck with the devouring rapacity of these primitive barbarians. Our military men can tell us, in our own day, what we are to think of the boasted disinterestedness of the Arab tribes.