COMMERCIALISM 73 



oil. That city at the time of her greatest intellectual splendor can be 

 compared in modern times only with cities such as London and New- 

 York. Long centuries hence there will be men who too will grieve 

 over decadence of the race and the love of pelf. They will hark back 

 to the days when London, Boston and New York produced such mar- 

 velous intellects. 



That commerce brings wealth and that wealth brings luxury with 

 eventually moral and physical decadence are propositions which, sepa- 

 rately, admit of no dispute; but they must not be united, for wealth, 

 not commerce, is responsible for the luxury and in part for the decad- 

 ence. Babylon, Tyre, Athens, Corinth and Alexandria were commer- 

 cial cities; each, after reaching the zenith of prosperity, showed that 

 decay which so delights some students. But the morality of Persia 

 sank to wretched depths in the time of Xerxes, when the vast wealth 

 of many lands had been gathered by conquest; Nineveh, alike com- 

 mercial and warlike, was enervated by luxury in the time of Assur- 

 banipal and soon sank into obscurity; while commerce-despising Eome, 

 enriched by the spoils of war, became, even before the Christian era, 

 a veritable sink of moral pollution. At the same time one must note 

 the all-important fact that though luxury eventually brings about de- 

 cadence, still its first fruits among commercial peoples have always 

 been intellectual and esthetic growth. The grandeur of Egypt attained 

 its maxima under luxurious Amenemhat, Thothmes III. and Rameses 

 II.; luxurious, unwarlike Assurbanipal gathered the literature of an- 

 cient Babylonia and of Assyria into his vast library at Nineveh; 

 luxury-loving Athens and Corinth, not luxury-hating Sparta, produced 

 the Grecian sculpture and architecture; luxury-loving Bagdad and 

 Cordova encouraged literature and science and, in Spain, built the 

 Alhambra. 



Commerce brings wealth ; the possession of wealth leads to luxury ; 

 a luxurious community is corrupt. This, according to moralists, is 

 the sequence, and the belief in its truth is of such hoary antiquity 

 that to contest it is as though one doubted the law of gravitation. But 

 the belief only proves poor human nature's readiness to shift the blame 

 for its inherent weaknesses. The corruption of a wealthy community 

 differs from that of a savage community not so much in kind as in 

 degree. The clerk who pilfers from a cross-roads shop is in the same 

 class with a bank officer who " appropriates " several millions of dol- 

 lars. The difference is only in opportunity. Dishonesty in one form 

 or another is so much part of human nature that its spores, so to speak, 

 are breathed out into the atmosphere. A reformer, aggrieved by its 

 constant reappearance, is as unreasonable as the amateur gardener who 

 is perplexed by reappearance of weeds in his carefully tended garden. 

 There will always be enough to give occasion for the philosopher's 



