Volume 1

Encyclopædia of religion and ethics / edited by James Hastings ; with the assistance of John A. Selbie ... and other scholars.

Date:
1908-1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Encyclopædia of religion and ethics / edited by James Hastings ; with the assistance of John A. Selbie ... and other scholars. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    social and other advantages attendant on the possession of wealth. The strength of this desire may be weak from intellectual deficiency. The wants of the present are vividly realized, those of the future are but dimly imagined. There is frequent lack of the power of imagination neces- sary to the proper appreciation of tiie importance of future benefits, as in the case, mentioned by Dr. Rae, of the Indians on the banks of the St. Lawrence, who, when a speedy result was to be obtained, would toil even more assiduously than the white man, but would undertake no work for which the return was at all remote (see Rae, The, Sociological Theory of Capital [ed. Mixter, pp. 71- 73]; also Mill, Principles, Bk. I. ch. xi. § 3). As we go lower in the scale, this weakness becomes more pronounced. The Australian native, in respect of foresight in providing for the future, is inferior to many of the lower animals (see Letourneau, Property, Eng. tr. p. 30). Often, however, the effective desire of accumula- tion is weak, not so much from intellectual as from moral deficiency. Even in the most highly civilized nations, there are too many instances of men of the most vivid imagination—men who are in no way defective in the telescopic faculty—who yet, through lack of will power, interest in others, family affection or sense of independence, are un- able to resist the temptations of the present suffi- ciently to provide for the clearly foreseen needs of the future, or unwOling to make any provision for the welfare of wife and children or for their own independence in old age or disablement. Amongst the unskilled labour class in this country the average degree of providence and self-restraint is not much above that of uncivilized man. It is this that constitutes the chief difficulty of the Eroblem of unemployment. But amongst the pro- jssional, manufacturing, trading, and skilled artizan classes, on the other hand, the effective desire of accumulation is strong. The vastness of the sums yearly paid as premiums to life insurance companies—only one form of saving—affords suffi- cient proof of this. The movement of progressive societies from status to contract, emphasized by Sir Henry Maine (Ancient Law, p. 170), accompanied and promoted, as it has been, by the extension of money payments in place of services and payments in kind, has greatly contributed to the accumulation of capital. The introduction of a money economy made it pos- sible for a person to store up capital which would yield him an income in money, and was therefore capable of being turned to the satisfaction of any want whatever. At the same time, the displacement of a state of things in which a man’s position in society is fixed at his birth according to the rigid rule of caste, by a state in which he makes his own Eosition in society by contract with his fellow-men, as enormously increased the inducement to save, by affording full scope for that hope of raising oneself and one’s family in the social scale, than which there are few stronger incentives to energy, enter- prise, and the accumulation of wealth. ‘ The principle which prompts to save,’ says Adam Smith, ‘ is the desire of bettering our condition, a desire which, though generally calm and dis- passionate, comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us till we go into the grave’ (W. of N. Bk. II. ch. iii.). Mill asserts that to get out of one rank in society into the next above it is the great aim of English middle-class life, and that to this end it is necessary to save enough to admit of retiring from business, and living on the interest of capital (Principles, Bk. I. ch. xi. § 4). In America, on the other hand, success in business itself is often the dominant idea. Many of the most successful business men in the United States seem to be wholly absorbed in the acquisition and accumulation of capital, simply and solely as a necessary condition of pre-eminence in the world of business. They know no other goal. In some cases, indeed, the means is mistaken for the end, and the mere accumulation of wealth becomes the mainspring of life; or it may be that the habit of accumulating, acquired in time of need, maintains its sway when the need has passed. But though the effective desire of accumulation is thus sometimes in excess of what reason would justify, there is much more danger in the other extreme. Nations may be ruined by extravagance, never by parsimony. The popular idea of the social effects of ex- travagant expenditure is based on reasoning the fallacious nature of which has often been exposed. Saving is identified with selfish hoarding, whue the spendthrift is regarded as benefiting all around him. It is admitted that he may be ruining him- self and his famOy, but it is not generally recog- nized that he is almost equally the enemy of society. The lavish outlay of the spendthrift makes money circulate, and increases the profits and wages of wine-merchants, tailors, domestic servants, and others. That is what we see. What we do not so readily see is that, had the money not been thus squandered, the capital which it represents would not have lain idle, nut would have found its way, through the medium of our banking organization, into the hands of some manufacturer or ship- builder, say, to be employed by him in productive industry. The spendtnrift, then, does not benefit trade, or give employment to labour; he simply alters the direction of the employment of capital, and he renders the nation poorer by the amount of the wealth he thus wastefully consumes. The saving person, on the other hand, creates a fund which, m its consumption, affords an equal employ- ment for labour, and yet is continually renewed (see Mill, Principles, Bk. I. ch. v. §§ 3, 5). Economy, in short, enriches, while extravagance impoverishes, the individual and the nation. And in this, as in most other cases, good econ- omy is good morality. The accumulation of wealth implies, in the normal case, forethought, self-restraint, energy, and enterprise on the part of the individual, and it is an essential condi- tion of his economic freedom. For the nation, it is an essential prerequisite of the highest civili- zation. It means increased scope for Dmsion of Labour. ‘ As the accumulation of stock must, in the nature of things, be previous to the division of labour, so labour can be more and more sub- divided in proportion only as stock is prevdously more and more accumulated ’ (Adam Smith, IK. of N., Bk. II. Introd.). It thus means increase in man’s power over nature, with consequent economy of human effort in the satisfaction of the primary needs, and increased leisure for the culture of Art and Science and Literature. Nations, like men, may grow rich udthout culture, but the highest civilization is impossible in the absence of a sound economic basis of accumulated capital. Arch. B. Clark. ACHiEMENIANS.—A dynasty which ruled in Persia from B.C. 558 to 330, and whose religion is important for the study of the development of Zoroastrianism. The monarchs of the line were as follows: Cyrus the Great (558-530), Cambyses (530-522), Darius i. (522-486), Xerxes I. (486-465), Artaxerxes I. (465-424), Xerxes ii. (424), Sogdianus (424), Darius II. (424-404), Artaxerxes II. (404-358), Artaxerxes Hi. (358-337), and Darius III. (337-330). The scanty data concerning their religion are con- tained in classical iiTitings, in inscriptions in Babylonian, Egyptian, and Greek, and above all