Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/328

318 thing. More of it, more satisfaction; less of it, less satisfaction. Though we could not live at all without air, yet we do not ordinarily desire more than we have. There is enough to go around and satisfy everybody. We should not notice the difference if there were a little less. If special conditions should arise in any time and place where there was not enough air for everybody, so that people should desire more than they had, air would then and there be wealth.

Wealth may also be defined, tentatively, as the name of those goods upon which weal or well-being depends, in this immediate and practical sense. If our weal is increased by having more of a certain class of things, and decreased by having less of them, those things therefore constitute wealth. They become the objects of conscious and active human desire and therefore of conscious and active human endeavor. More bread, more weal; less bread, less weal. Because we can say that, bread is wealth. Broadly speaking, everything to which we can apply that formula in any time and place is then and there wealth. Nothing is wealth which cannot be brought under that formula.

This statement calls for one qualification, namely, that men may not know upon what their weal or well-being depends. That upon which they think that their well-being depends they will regard as wealth. In other words, if they desire a thing, and desire more of it than they have, that indicates that they think their weal, or state of satisfaction, would be increased by having more of it. The fact that they want more, and try to get it, either by producing or purchasing it, indicates that they regard it as wealth, or as the means to well-being. Therefore it sometimes happens that the student is compelled to include some things under wealth which he regards as not only useless but deleterious and immoral—the means of satisfying vicious appetites, such as opium, tobacco, and alcohol. If one were to make much of this qualification, he would probably choose to divorce the word wealth from well-being, and define it as scarce means of satisfying desires.

Any of these definitions will be found to harmonize perfectly with another that has had some currency, namely, that wealth is the collective name for all goods which have value or power in exchange; for only those things which are desirable and scarce will have power