If we consider the first and chief wrong which consists in the fact that private property at the present day frequently elevates to power people who are totally unfitted to wield any power at all, while it as frequently condemns to impotence, obscurity and ignominy, people who would be eminently fitted to wield power, we realise at once that the fault does not lie in the amount of property held by these people, but upon the significance which current opinion and the prevailing estimate of wealth attaches to the accident of great or small possessions in either case. It is well known, everybody indeed has heard of it, that in certain cultures that have existed and still exist, the significance of great possessions has not been the same as that which Western civilisation has chosen to attach to them. The Brahmin of India, for instance, although he is doomed to poverty in the most literal sense, is the most highly respected among rich and poor alike. He rules and directs opinion, neither because he is rich, nor because he is poor, but because he is profoundly wise, and because power does not happen to be connected, in the enlightened Hindu mind, [p41] with great possessions. It can be shown, and has been shown often enough, that the famous mendicant monks of the Middle Ages did not increase their power, but actually forfeited it, when they acquired riches and became as the other holy orders. Evidently, then, the equation Wealth = Importance = Power, is not an inevitable one. It does not depend upon mathematical necessity. It is a perfectly arbitrary association of ideas, which is the result of a singular and quite gratuitous valuation. The fact that it is deeply seated in the prejudices and prepossessions of all Western peoples, appears to give it the sanction almost of a social law. It would, however, constitute the acme of imprudence and superficiality to allow oneself to be led by this apparent unanimity into the belief that it either denotes or implies an ordinance of Fate. The unanimity with which reverence is now felt for wealth alone, is only one of the many instances which it would be possible to give, of the stubborn and determined manner in which an arbitrary valuation strikes root in the heart of whole nations, when once it has been systematically and painstakingly inculcated upon them. It is one of those cases which inspire with hope all those who may be confronted with the apparently thankless task of altering the prejudices and prepossessions of a people. For, if it has been possible erroneously to raise wealth to the highest among our valuations, without a trace of social law to help us, it is clear that it must be possible to alter that valuation, to “transvalue” it, [p42] as the technical phrase has it, and to bring mankind back to a more rational understanding of the proper equipment of power, which consists chiefly of wisdom, virtue, character and resolution.