THE UNHAPPY RICH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9058, 6 April 1908, Page 4

THE UNHAPPY RICH.

; In the cycle of essays on the "Science of Happiness," on which M. Jean Finot is now engaged, is one entitled "Rich and Pour," published in La Revue. In front of a table used by Louis XIV., and surround by pictures by the masters of th,e Renaissance, in a salon considered the wealthiest and most beautiful in Paris, M. Finot conversed, with the typical happy rich man, and his host, whose name passes as a synonym for wealth and happiness, answered with a melancholy smile the question put to him , "Are you happy?" "Very happy, in the opinion of others," said the man of wealth. "But what is happiness? If it is a series of pleasures and satisfaction I rarely experience them. Everything yields, or appears to yield, before the power of our money. Deceptions vex us as they vex other mortals, but success does not enchant us. The growth of our fortune leaves us cold, for we know well it 3 role in our happiness. These ceiebrated objects of art, the possession of which all connoisseurs envy us, procure doubtless an immense joy to those who sell them. .

But there is a rare joy which the rich scarcely ever experience," continued the rich man. "It is that of work crowned by success of an aim achieved after the efforts of years. We lack that which gives value to life, namely, its trial's and difficulties. Is my case exceptional? Look at the members of my family, usually so greatly envied; examine their colourless life, their melancholy, the lowering of their energy, and you will see the other side of secular wealth." M. Finot could not help pitying the lot of the richest man in Paris. Wealth, he writes gives us many fictitious pleasures, but it takes away irom us the only realities which man enjoys on earth, namely, the independence of his personality and the free expansion of himself. The general belief which thinks the opposite fails to distinguish between the abstract power of money and the exercise of wealth. All who would taste the heavenly life on earth must seek some solitude. We should love solitude, because it makes us understand that the sacrifices often necessary to gain wealth do not respond to the advantages which wealth procures. In our day we no longer possess money —It is money which possesses us. It is not a question of under-valuing money. When money has again become a simple instrument, humanity will know how to get from it all that it is capable of giving.