AVARICE.
THE story of the Birmingham miser, reported in the papers of yesterday week,—a story which is, in substance, repeated once or twice every year from one part of the King- dom or another,—bas recalled attention to what we may in some sense treat as the most spiritual, and in another sense perhaps as the most unspiritual, of sins. Why do we call avarice in any sense whatever "spiritual "P Simply because the miser endures hardness in all its most repulsive forms, —forms which mortify the flesh as it was hardly ever mortified yet, except by the early or the mediteval ascetics,—for the sake of a mere symbol of power which is never actually put to use. It is said that avarice begins in fear,—that it is the imperious fear of being left destitute which makes men scrape and save as this unfortunate man,—who was found in horrible squalor and bitter cold, and almost without food enough to keep body and soul together,—scraped and saved to ensure himself against absolute starvation. Yet he had achieved a small fortune, on the interest of which be could have lived in decency and comfort if he had invested it all in <)onsols. And, rather than use even the interest of this small fortune for the very purpose for which, on the hypothesis of fear, it was hoarded, he faced the very destitution be is supposed to have so much dreaded, and went through all the physical horrors which,—if fear were the impelling motive,— he had promised himself effectually to avoid. He lived on a few crusts of bread and bits of cake which he 'begged from the neighbours, while possessing 261 in gold, a £5 note, a deposit at the bank of over 2400, and a life-interest in 21,000 Railway stock. Yet, through all the
pitiless cold of last December, he was frequently without fire, in order that he might not waste fuel ; he lived in the utmost misery and want rather than expend any fraction of the security he had made for himself against misery and want. Surely this is hardly compatible with the hypothesis that fear of misery and want was the chief impelling motive by which he was driven into a kind of self-denial which even St. Simeon Stylites on his pillar did not greatly sur- pass. It can hardly be dread of destitution which makes a man brave all the pangs of destitution. It can hardly be horror of hunger, and thirst, and cold, and raggedness which makes a man, who has the means to feed and warm and clothe himself well, suffer the utmost pangs of hunger, and thirst, and cold, and raggedness. Yet we shall hardly find avarice easier to explain, if we suppose the main motive of all this willingness to suffer to have been the love of pure power, stored in the form of money, but money treated as a mere spell which the owner had not the heart to utter lest be should diminish his chance of accumulating more. Who ever heard of an electrician who could not desist from the storage of batteries that he could never persuade himself to discharge P Who ever beard of a passion for storing gunpowder or nitro- glycerine or dynamite in masses regarded as so intrinsically sacred, that the proud owner could never risk its use to blast a rock, or blow up an enemy, or terrify a Government, lest he should break into the stock of potency he had laid by P WI o ever heard of an unjust steward who, when he had bribed men right and left to gain access to their houses or their favour, would not use the influence be had so unscrupulously achieved, lest he should diminish his claims on their future services ? Take avarice as you will, it is truly a unique spiritual sin. It is either a dread which willingly undergoes the very pangs it dreads, or a passion for potency that never realises itself as power,—just as if a man should be found with such an enjoyment in obtaining the means of measuring time, that he bought clocks in numbers and wound them up, though he would never set them going lest their wheelworks should be worn out in the using. Say what we will of avarice, there is something singularly spiritual in a kind of vice which defies all sorts of suffering rather than draw upon the resources by which suffering might be so easily averted. It is impossible to deny a stern sort of idealism, however mean and perverted, to a passion that accumulates a treasure so sacred that it is never used, even under the stimulus of a sort of torture, for the very purpose for which, to all appearances, it was originally piled up by the utmost expenditure of care and toil, On the other hand, nothing, of course, can be more un- spiritual than to lose sight of all the worthier ends of life in the dull and dreary cumulation of painful efforts that could be justified only by the attaining of those worthier ends. A man who labours, not to produce something he needs, but only for the sake of labour ; a man who runs, not to hasten to a goal, but only for the sake of running ; a man who wills, not for the purpose of making his nature better than it was, but simply that be may be great in willing ; a man who desires, no what is desirable, but that he may exert his full power of pas- sionate desiring, is wasting life and not living. It would not be a bad way of defining the spiritual man, to say that it is he who knows the comparative value of the various ends for which he lives ; while the unspiritual man either cares more for the lower end than for the higher, or more for the means of obtaining his ends than he does for the ends themselves. The spiritual man, says St. Paul, 'judges all things, even the deep things of God." The natural man confounds ends and means like a groper in the dark, and cannot discriminate between the various ends of life, " became they are spiritually discerned," while he has no spiritual discernment. What can be more thoroughly unspiritual than to let the habit of saving extinguish all the distinctions between the various purposes for which we save, like the magpie, which steals not even for the sake of possessing, but merely for the satisfaction of secrecy, for the sake of accomplishing the act of theft and nothing else ? Yet it is the very essence of avarice to ignore use in acquisition; to acquire for the sake of acquiring, not for the sake of satisfying need ; to beg not to satiate hunger, but to have the means of satisfying hunger without satisfying it ; to secure the means of happiness without being happy ; to have the command of resources which are never turned to account ; to make cleanliness and health, and beauty and generosity, and
intellectual truth all accessible, without gaining access to them ; to get the key to gates which are never opened; the command of visions which are never seen; the right to treasures never enjoyed. No passion can compare with avarice in the success with which it sacrifices the ends of life for the means of living, —propter viten vivendi perdere causas ; in other words, in the success with which it suffocates the spiritual aims in the mechanical processes subordinate to those aims. Avarice is a habit of stooping to pick up, so inveterate that the stoop itself becomes more of a necessity than the purpose for which the stoop was originally made. It is a kind of writer's cramp in which the mere necessity of contracting the muscles, itself becomes more tyrannical than the necessity of seizing the pen, which is the only object of that contraction.
Avarice is, then, in one sense, a spiritual vice, for it makes so much of the symbol that it conquers every passion for mere pride in the symbol of victory. Money is its talisman, its spell, and it suffers willingly all the tortures which want can inflict in order that it may accumulate the "open sesame" by which in an instant all these wants and tortures might be relieved. But it is a most unspiritual vice in this, that in order to secure the power of conjuring away the ills of life, it never uses but always hoards that power, preparing for emergencies which are never met, and struck with a voluntary paralysis at the very instant when the spell should be wielded and not suppressed. To work like a slave in order that you may purchase your eman- cipation, and then to hug slavery instead of purchasing freedom, is the very frenzy of unspiritual life.
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