deteriorate his spiritual or physical fibre, than were it made of sheep's
wool; an entire race, housed in marble palaces, faring delicately, and clad
in silks, and surrounded by the noblest products of literature and plastic
art, so those palaces, viands, garments, and products of art were the
result of their own labours, could never be enervated by them. The
debilitating effect of wealth sets in at that point exactly (and never
before) at which the supply of material necessaries and comforts, and of
aesthetic enjoyments, clogs the individuality, causing it to rest satisfied
in the mere passive possession of the results of the labour of others,
without feeling any necessity or desire for further productive activity of
its own. (Of the other deleterious effects of unearned wealth on the
individual or class possessing it, such as its power of lessening human
sympathy, &c., &c., we do not now speak, as while ultimately and
indirectly, undoubtedly, tending to disintegrate a society, they do not
necessarily and immediately enervate it, which enervation is the point we
are here considering.)

The exact material condition at which this point will be reached will vary,
not only with the race and the age, but with the individual. A Marcus
Aurelius in a palace of gold and marble was able to retain his simplicity
and virility as completely as though he had lived in a cow-herd's hut;
while on the other hand, it is quite possible for the wife of a savage
chief who has but four slaves to bring her her corn and milk and spread her
skins in the sun, to become almost as purely parasitic as the most
delicately pampered female of fashion in ancient Rome, or modern Paris,
London, or New York; while the exact amount of unearned material wealth
which will emasculate individuals in the same society, will vary exactly as
their intellectual and moral fibre and natural activity are strong or weak.
(It is not uncommon in modern societies to find women of a class relatively
very moderately wealthy, the wives and daughters of shopkeepers or