mines would pay no dividends, and the rents in Park Lane would go down.
The prices of paintings by old masters would decline if millionaires
preferred to collect another kind of scalps to decorate their wigwams.
Bookmakers and company-promoters live on the widespread passion for
acquiring money without working for it. It is hardly possible to
estimate the increase of real wealth, and the stoppage of waste, which
would result from the adoption of a rational, still more of a Christian,
valuation of the good things of life. I have dealt with this subject in
the essay on _The Indictment against Christianity_, and have emphasised
the importance of taking into consideration, in all economic questions,
the _human costs_ of production, the factors which make work pleasant or
irksome, and especially the moral condition of the worker. Good-will
diminishes the toll which labour takes of the labourer; envy and hatred
vastly increase it while they diminish its product. It is, of course,
impossible that the worker should not resent having to devote his life
to making what is useless or mischievous, and to ministering to the
irrational wastefulness of luxury. Christianity, in condemning the
selfish and irresponsible use of money, seeks to remove one of the chief
causes of social bitterness. Senseless extravagance is the best friend
of revolution.

The abuse poured upon 'the old political economy,' as it is called, is
only half deserved. As compared with the insane doctrines now in favour
with the working-man, the old political economy was sound and sensible.
Hard work, thrift, and economy in production are, in truth, as we used
to be told, the only ways to increase the national wealth, and the
contrary practices can only lead to economic ruin. There is not much
fault to find with the old economists so long as they recognised that
their science was an abstract science, which for its own purposes dealt
with an unreal abstraction--the 'economic man.' Every science is obliged