;
nor--which is the most serious point for future consideration--can they
prevent the effect of it (within certain limits) upon ourselves.

33. Therefore, the object of any special analysis of wealth will be not
so much to enumerate what is serviceable, as to distinguish what is
destructive; and to show that it is inevitably destructive; that to
receive pleasure from an evil thing is not to escape from, or alter the
evil of it, but to be _altered by_ it; that is, to suffer from it to the
utmost, having our own nature, in that degree, made evil also. And it
may be shown farther, that, through whatever length of time or
subtleties of connexion the harm is accomplished, (being also less or
more according to the fineness and worth of the humanity on which it is
wrought), still, nothing _but_ harm ever comes of a bad thing.

34. So that, in sum, the term wealth is never to be attached to the
_accidental object of a morbid_ desire, but only to the _constant object
of a legitimate one_.[14] By the fury of ignorance, and fitfulness of
caprice, large interests may be continually attached to things
unserviceable or hurtful; if their nature could be altered by our
passions, the science of Political Economy would remain, what it has
been hitherto among us, the weighing of clouds, and the portioning out
of shadows. But of ignorance there is no science; and of caprice no law.
Their disturbing forces interfere with the operations of faithful
Economy, but have nothing in common with them: she, the calm arbiter of
national destiny, regards only essential power for good in all that she
accumulates, and alike disdains the wanderings[15] of imagination, and
the thirsts of disease.

35. II. Secondly. The assertion that wealth is not _only_ intrinsic, but
dependent, in order to become effectual, on a given degree of vital
power in its possessor, is opposed to another popular view of
wealth;--namely, that though it may always be constituted by caprice, it
is, when so constituted, a substantial thing, of which given quantities
may be counted as existing here, or there, and exchangeable at rated
prices.

In this view there are three errors. The first and chief is the
overlooking the fact that all exchangeableness of commodity, or
effective demand for it, depends on the sum of capacity for its use
existing, here or elsewhere. The book we cannot read, or picture we take
no delight in, may indeed be called part of our wealth, in so far as we