"I don't believe a man's money should be taken away from him and distributed round for the sake of other people--but for the protection of the man himself. There's got to be a pecuniary safety valve. Every dollar over a certain amount, just like every extra pound of steam in a boiler, is a thing of danger. We want health in the individual and in the state--not disease. "Let the amount of a man's income be five, ten, fifteen or twenty thousand dollars--the exact figure doesn't matter; but there is a limit at which wealth becomes a drag and a detriment instead of a benefit! I'd base the legality of a confiscatory income tax on the constitutionality of any health regulation or police ordinance. People shouldn't be permitted to injure themselves--or have poison lying round. Certainly it's a lesson that history teaches on every page. "Besides everybody needs something to work for--to keep him fit--at least that's the way it looks to me. Nations--let alone mere individuals--have simply gone to seed, died of dry rot because they no longer had any stimulus. A fellow has got to have some idea in the back of his head as to what he's after--and the harder it is for him to get it, the better, as a rule, it is for him. Good luck is the worst enemy a heap of people have. Misfortune spurs a man on, tries him out and develops him--makes him more human." "Ever played in hard luck?" I queried. "I? Sure, I have," answered Hastings cheerfully. "And I wouldn't worry much if it came my way again. I could manage to get along pretty comfortably on less than half I've got. I like my home; but we could be happy anywhere so long as we had ourselves and our health and a few books. However, I wasn't thinking of myself. I've got a friend in the brokering business who says it's the millionaires that do most of the worrying anyhow. Naturally a man with a pile of money has to look after it; but what puzzles me is why anybody should want it in the first place." He searched along a well-filled and disordered shelf of shabby books. "Here's what William James says about it: "'We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. We have lost the power of even imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant--the liberation from material attachments; the unbribed soul; the manlier indifference; the paying our way by what we are or do, and not by what we have; the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly--the more athletic trim, in short the moral fighting shape.... It is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated class is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.'" "I guess he's about right," I agreed.