it is a sign of sharp sickness in a society when it is actually led by some special sort of lunatic. a mild touch of madness may even keep a man sane; for it may keep him modest. so some exaggerations in the state may remind it of its own normal. but it is bad when the head is cracked; when the roof of the commonwealth has a tile loose.
the two or three cases of this that occur in history have always been gibbeted gigantically. thus nero has become a black proverb, not merely because he was an oppressor, but because he was also an aesthete—that is, an erotomaniac. he not only tortured other people's bodies; he tortured his own soul into the same red revolting shapes. though he came quite early in roman imperial history and was followed by many austere and noble emperors, yet for us the roman empire was never quite cleansed of that memory of the sexual madman. the populace or barbarians from whom we come could not forget the hour when they came to the highest place of the earth, saw the huge pedestal of the earthly omnipotence, read on it divus caesar, and looked up and saw a statue without a head.
it is the same with that ugly entanglement before the renaissance, from which, alas, most memories of the middle ages are derived. louis xi was a very patient and practical man of the world; but (like many good business men) he was mad. the morbidity of the intriguer and the torturer clung about everything he did, even when it was right. and just as the great empire of antoninus and aurelius never wiped out nero, so even the silver splendour of the latter saints, such as vincent de paul, has never painted out for the british public the crooked shadow of louis xi. whenever the unhealthy man has been on top, he has left a horrible savour that humanity finds still in its nostrils. now in our time the unhealthy man is on top; but he is not the man mad on sex, like nero; or mad on statecraft, like louis xi; he is simply the man mad on money. our tyrant is not the satyr or the torturer; but the miser.
the modern miser has changed much from the miser of legend and anecdote; but only because he has grown yet more insane. the old miser had some touch of the human artist about him in so far that he collected gold—a substance that can really be admired for itself, like ivory or old oak. an old man who picked up yellow pieces had something of the simple ardour, something of the mystical materialism, of a child who picks out yellow flowers. gold is but one kind of coloured clay, but coloured clay can be very beautiful. the modern idolater of riches is content with far less genuine things. the glitter of guineas is like the glitter of buttercups, the chink of pelf is like the chime of bells, compared with the dreary papers and dead calculations which make the hobby of the modern miser.
the modern millionaire loves nothing so lovable as a coin. he is content sometimes with the dead crackle of notes; but far more often with the mere repetition of noughts in a ledger, all as like each other as eggs to eggs. and as for comfort, the old miser could be comfortable, as many tramps and savages are, when he was once used to being unclean. a man could find some comfort in an unswept attic or an unwashed shirt. but the yankee millionaire can find no comfort with five telephones at his bed-head and ten minutes for his lunch. the round coins in the miser's stocking were safe in some sense. the round noughts in the millionaire's ledger are safe in no sense; the same fluctuation which excites him with their increase depresses him with their diminution. the miser at least collects coins; his hobby is numismatics. the man who collects noughts collects nothings.
it may be admitted that the man amassing millions is a bit of an idiot; but it may be asked in what sense does he rule the modern world. the answer to this is very important and rather curious. the evil enigma for us here is not the rich, but the very rich. the distinction is important; because this special problem is separate from the old general quarrel about rich and poor that runs through the bible and all strong books, old and new. the special problem to-day is that certain powers and privileges have grown so world-wide and unwieldy that they are out of the power of the moderately rich as well as of the moderately poor. they are out of the power of everybody except a few millionaires—that is, misers. in the old normal friction of normal wealth and poverty i am myself on the radical side. i think that a berkshire squire has too much power over his tenants; that a brompton builder has too much power over his workmen; that a west london doctor has too much power over the poor patients in the west london hospital.
but a berkshire squire has no power over cosmopolitan finance, for instance. a brompton builder has not money enough to run a newspaper trust. a west end doctor could not make a corner in quinine and freeze everybody out. the merely rich are not rich enough to rule the modern market. the things that change modern history, the big national and international loans, the big educational and philanthropic foundations, the purchase of numberless newspapers, the big prices paid for peerages, the big expenses often incurred in elections—these are getting too big for everybody except the misers; the men with the largest of earthly fortunes and the smallest of earthly aims.
there are two other odd and rather important things to be said about them. the first is this: that with this aristocracy we do not have the chance of a lucky variety in types which belongs to larger and looser aristocracies. the moderately rich include all kinds of people even good people. even priests are sometimes saints; and even soldiers are sometimes heroes. some doctors have really grown wealthy by curing their patients and not by flattering them; some brewers have been known to sell beer. but among the very rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. they may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. to be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.
lastly, the most serious point about them is this: that the new miser is flattered for his meanness and the old one never was. it was never called self-denial in the old miser that he lived on bones. it is called self-denial in the new millionaire if he lives on beans. a man like dancer was never praised as a christian saint for going in rags. a man like rockefeller is praised as a sort of pagan stoic for his early rising or his unassuming dress. his “simple” meals, his “simple” clothes, his “simple” funeral, are all extolled as if they were creditable to him. they are disgraceful to him: exactly as disgraceful as the tatters and vermin of the old miser were disgraceful to him. to be in rags for charity would be the condition of a saint; to be in rags for money was that of a filthy old fool. precisely in the same way, to be “simple” for charity is the state of a saint; to be “simple” for money is that of a filthy old fool. of the two i have more respect for the old miser, gnawing bones in an attic: if he was not nearer to god, he was at least a little nearer to men. his simple life was a little more like the life of the real poor.
