Personal and social development must, in general, be sought through
rational organization having a far wider scope than the market, though
co-operating with that in every helpful way, and including, perhaps,
radical reforms in the pecuniary system itself. It would be hard to
formulate a principle more fallacious and harmful than the doctrine that
the latter is an adequate regulator of human life, or that its own
processes are superior to regulation. We are beginning to see that the
prevalence of such ideas has given us over to an unhuman commercialism.
What I have been saying of persons and personal development applies also
to natural resources and public improvements, to arts, sciences, and the
finer human values in general. All these have a pecuniary aspect, of
more or less importance, but a money demand alone cannot beget or
control them. Love, beauty, and righteousness may come on the market
under certain conditions, but they are not, in the full sense, market
commodities. Our faith in money is exemplified in these days by the
offer of money prizes for poetry, invention, the promotion of peace, and
for heroic deeds. I would not deprecate such offers, whose aim is
excellent and sometimes attains the mark. They are creditable to their
authors and diffuse a good spirit even though the method is too naïve to
be very effectual. If money is greatly to increase products of this kind
it must be applied, fundamentally and with all possible wisdom, to the
conditions that mould character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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