John Stuart Mill begins his chapter defining wealth by remarking that everyone has a notion sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what is meant by wealth. This is not his definition; he reaches that later: it is a reasonable introductory remark. But Ruskin assumes that this is his definition, and assails him for his lack of scientific precision and his looseness of thought, as though an astronomer were to begin by saying that everyone has a notion, sufficient for common purposes, of what is meant by a star. The criticism is the more unreasonable, when we find the critic himself doing the very same thing in his famous chapter on “The Nature of Gothic” in _The Stones of Venice_, in which, at the opening, the remark occurs: “We all have some notion, most of us a very determined one, of the meaning of the term Gothic.” Ruskin goes on to play with the etymology of value;[62] from _valor_ and _valere_, meaning that which avails towards life and health; and says true wealth is what tends to life and the increase of its powers, not pearls nor topaz, but air and light and cleanliness. “To be wealthy is to have a large stock of useful articles,” say the economists. What, he asks, is to “have"--has the embalmed body of Carlo Borromeo the golden crosier and the cross of emeralds on its breast? Has a gold-filled belt the man whom it drowns, or has he it? Does not “having” depend on the vital power to use? What, nextly, is “useful”? Persons called wealthy may be inherently incapable of wealth, mere reservoirs in the stream of national produce, if not impediments in its course, and so causing “illth” rather than “wealth.” Therefore the aim and end of Political Economy is to develop moral character and capacity for valiantly using valuables, and the great difficulty is that manly character is apt to suffer from possessing material wealth and also apt to cast it away. Wealth of character and wealth of goods tend to undermine one another. “In a community regulated by laws of supply and demand but protected from open violence, the persons who become rich are, generally speaking, industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, sensible, unimaginative, insensitive and ignorant. The persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the improvident, the irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clumsy knave, the open thief, and the entirely merciful, just and godly person.”[63] With one further piece of Ruskin’s teaching on the nature of wealth, I think that the subject will be clear.