364 ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book iv stimulated to such a degree, that all would find 

 faapter 4 themselves craving for the possible prize equally. 

 The desire for In converting, then, a mere notional assent to 

 !s !n proportion the proposition that wealth is desirable into an 

 actua l hunger for it, which is painful if not 



him personally satisfied, the essential cause is a belief that the 



it is attainable. 



desired wealth is attainable ; and the intensity of 

 the hunger is in proportion to the vitality of the 

 belief. This important psychological truth is very 

 easily demonstrable by a kind of experience 

 sufficiently familiar to most people. If a man who 

 has perfect taste, and a few thousands a year, is 

 buying furniture for his house, and is anxious that 

 every room shall be as beautiful as it is in his power 

 to make it, we all of us know with what eagerness 

 day after day he will stare into the windows of the 

 dealers in old furniture and bric-a-brac, and how 

 quickly he will take note of any object that his taste 

 approves. Now if such a man, having admired a 

 cabinet or a piece of tapestry, finds that the price 

 of it is a hundred or a hundred and fifty pounds, he 

 will feel perhaps that it is a little beyond his 

 means ; but he will dream of it, long for it, and 

 will never know a moment's peace till he has so 

 arranged his expenditure as to enable him to com- 

 plete the purchase. But if the price of the cabinet 

 or the tapestry, instead of being a hundred or a 

 hundred and fifty pounds, had been a thousand or 

 fifteen hundred, he would have recognised that the 

 objects were totally beyond his reach, and though 

 they still excited admiration in him, they would 



