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Page 8
"Once," I answered.
"And did you get left?"
"Portsmouth," I said, "is a beautiful old town. I had always wanted to
see it. You can see a good deal of Portsmouth in an afternoon."
* * * * *
The predicament in which my friend Bagster finds himself is a very
common one. It is no longer true that the good die young; they become
prematurely middle-aged. In these days conscience doth make
neurasthenics of us all. Now it will not do to flout conscience, and by
shutting our eyes to the urgencies and complexities of life purchase for
ourselves a selfish calm. Neither do we like the idea of neurasthenia.
My notion is that the twentieth-century man is morally solvent, though
he is temporarily embarrassed. He will find himself if he is given
sufficient time. In the mean time it is well for him to consider the
nature of his embarrassment. He has discovered that the world is "so
full of a number of things," and he is disappointed that he is not as
"happy as kings"--that is, as kings in the fairy books. Perhaps "sure
enough" kings are not as happy as the fairy-book royalties, and perhaps
the modern man is only experiencing the anxieties that belong to his new
sovereignty over the world.
There are tribes which become confused when they try to keep in mind
more than three or four numbers. It is the same kind of confusion which
comes when we try to look out for more than Number One. We mean well,
but we have not the facilities for doing it easily. In fact, we are not
so civilized as we sometimes think.
For example, we have never carried out to its full extent the most
important invention that mankind has ever made--money. Money is a device
for simplifying life by providing a means of measuring our desires, and
gratifying a number of them without confusion.
Money is a measure, not of commodities, but of states of mind. The man
in the street expresses a profound philosophy when he says, "I feel like
thirty cents." That is all that "thirty cents" means. It is a certain
amount of feeling.
You see an article marked "$1.50." You pass by unmoved. The next day you
see it on the bargain counter marked "98 cents," and you say, "Come to
my arms," and carry it home. You did not feel like a dollar and a half
toward it, but you did feel exactly like ninety-eight cents.
It is because of this wonderful measure of value that we are able to
deal with a multitude of diverse articles without mental confusion.
I am asked to stop at the department store and discover in that vast
aggregation of goods a skein of silk of a specified shade, and having
found it bring it safely home. Now, I am not fitted for such an
adventure. Left to my own devices I should be helpless.
But the way is made easy for me. The floorwalker meets me graciously,
and without chiding me for not buying the things I do not want, directs
me to the one thing which would gratify my modest desire. I find myself
in a little place devoted to silk thread, and with no other articles to
molest me or make me afraid. The world of commodities is simplified to
fit my understanding. I feel all the gratitude of the shorn lamb for the
tempered wind.
At the silken shrine stands a Minerva who imparts her wisdom and guides
my choice. The silk thread she tells me is equivalent to five cents.
Now, I have not five cents, but only a five-dollar bill. She does not
act on the principle of taking all that the traffic will bear. She sends
the five-dollar bill through space, and in a minute or two she gives me
the skein and four dollars and ninety-five cents, and I go out of the
store a free man. I have no misgivings and no remorse because I did not
buy all the things I might have bought. No one reproached me because I
did not buy a four-hundred-dollar pianola. Thanks to the great
invention, the transaction was complete in itself. Five cents
represented one choice, and I had in my pocket ninety-nine choices which
I might reserve for other occasions.
But there are some things which, as we say, money cannot buy. In all
these things of the higher life we have no recognized medium of
exchange. We are still in the stage of primitive barter. We must bring
all our moral goods with us, and every transaction involves endless
dickering. If we express an appreciation for one good thing, we are at
once reproached by all the traffickers in similar articles for not
taking over bodily their whole stock in trade.
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