MR. RUSSELL AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SOCIETY 489
once served as a basic philosophy of life, probably with justification. The economic life and the philosophic outlook of a society are more intimately connected than is commonly supposed [11] and chipped off its exaggerations, the Economical Interpretation of History holds true. This time-honoured complaint of the moralists against “love of money” is only a part of their general complaint against the goods of the world and finds its justification in the economic circumstances which gave rise to this particular belief. Bearing this in mind, it becomes easy to understand why the philosophy of sour grapes, of the have-nots, is the most human of all beliefs and why it so largely pervades our values about things which we can and things which we cannot possess in spite of our efforts to have them. When we cannot have a thing we argue that it is not worth having. There is thus a genuine difference between the outlooks of the “haves” and the “havenots” towards worldly goods as there is between the religions of the downcast and the successful. Each one in obedience to its profoundly moral nature—moral even in its immorality in that it seeks justification for everything it does—idealises its own attitude. At a time when the whole world was living in “pain economy” as did the ancient world and when the productivity of human labour was extremely low and when no efforts could augment its return, in short, when the whole world was living in poverty it is but natural that moralists should have preached the gospel of poverty and renunciation of worldly pleasures only because they were not to be had. The belief of a society of “pain economy” is that a thing must be bad if it cannot be had just as a society of “pleasure economy” addicted to “ conspicuous consumption “ believes that a thing must be nasty if it is cheap. Neither does the re-statement of the evils of “love of money” by Mr. Russell add any philosophic weight to its historic value. The misconception arises from the fact that he criticises the love of money without inquiring into the purpose of it. In a healthy mind, it may be urged, there is no such thing as a love of money in the abstract. Love of money is always for something and it is the purpose embodied in that “for something” that will endow it with credit or cover it with shame. Having regard to this, there can be no “dead uniformity of character” among the individual for, though actuated by love of money, their purposes on different occasions are likely to be different. Thus even love of money as a pursuit may result in a variety of character.
If Mr. Russell’s thesis is shaky when looked at from the production side of our life, it entirely falls to the ground when looked at from the consumption side. Really to prove that human nature mutilates itself by feeding, exclusively, some one appetite we shall have to find our support by scrutinizing not the production but the consumption side of life. Now
- Cf James Bonar “Philosophy in its Relation to Political Economy”, more particularly, Achille Lorla, “Economic Foundations of Society”.