ndred,
to bring us the same emotional excitement. A hundred dollars added to
an income of five hundred gives us just as much joy as ten thousand
added to fifty thousand dollars. The objective gain or loss does not
mean anything; the relative increase or decrease decides human
happiness.

Do we not see it everywhere in our surroundings? If we lean over the
railing and watch the steerage in the crowded ship, is there really
less gayety among the fourth-class passengers than among the
first-class? Where are the gifts of life which bring happiness to
every one? I have friends to whom a cigar, a cocktail, and a game of
cards are delightful sources of pleasure, the missing of which would
mean to them a real deprivation. I have never played cards, I have
never touched a cocktail, and have never had a cigar between my lips;
and yet I have never missed them. On the other hand, I feel extremely
uncomfortable if a day passes in which I have not gone through three
or four newspapers, while I have friends who are most happy if they do
not have a printed sheet in hand for months. The socialists claim that
the possession of one's own house ought to be the minimum external
standard, and yet the number increases of those who are not happy
until they are rid of their own house and can live in a little
apartment. Of course it might be said that the individual desires vary
from man to man, but that an ample income allows every one to satisfy
his particular likes and to protect himself against his particular
dislikes. But the situation is not changed if we see it under this
more general aspect of the money as means for the satisfaction of all
possible wishes. The psychological law of the relativity of
consciousness negates no less this general claim. There is no limit to
the quantity of desires. On the level of expensive life the desires
become excessive, and only excessive means can satisfy them; on a
lower economic level, the desires are modest, but modest means are
therefore able to give complete satisfaction and happiness.

The greatest dissatisfaction, hopeless despair, expresses itself in
suicide. Statistics show that those who sink to this lowest degree of
life satisfaction are not the poorest. Not seldom they are the
millionaires who have lost their fortune and kept only enough for a
living which would still be a source of happiness to hosts of others.
If the average wage were five thousand dollars, or, better said, the
comfort w