ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book IV 

 Chapter 2 



nor would 

 wealth give 

 pleasure to 

 those who 

 might at any 

 moment be 

 beggars. 



however, depends for its effects on those who enjoy 

 it, not merely on its present enjoyment, but on the 

 prospect of its continued possession ; and unless the 

 man who is making a fortune by his ability may 

 bequeath to one of his children, at all events, a 

 position similar to his own, and something excep- 

 tional in the way of wealth to all, the money which 

 he spends on them during his own lifetime will 

 be wasted. The whole social importance which 

 wealth might have given them would be gone. The 

 tastes and the peculiar cultivation which wealth is 

 capable of securing for those who are from their 

 earliest years surrounded with it, they would under 

 such circumstances neglect to acquire at all ; or, if 

 they did acquire them, they would be living in a fool's 

 paradise, for when their father died, and their wealth 

 consequently vanished, they would be infinitely worse 

 off than those who had never possessed it. They 

 would resemble nothing so much as plants that had 

 been grown in a conservatory, merely that, when on 

 the point of flowering, they might be bedded out in 

 the frost. 



If, then, for the selfish, or even the heartless 

 parent, wealth would in most cases lose the larger 

 part of its attractions unless it could be accumu- 

 lated and bequeathed to others in the shape of in- 

 come-yielding property, for the normally affectionate 

 parent its attractions would be reduced yet further. 



But the full part which heritable incomes play, in 

 rendering wealth desirable in the eyes of exceptional 

 men, is not to be understood by considering such a 



