Monuments to virtue

When I was young I would gawk at the mansions of the wealthy, not because I wanted luxury and finery for myself, but because the palaces seemed to me monuments to virtue. In fact what the mansions monumentalize is not virtue. It is the impostor that, as we lower our expectations on what man is and might be, we have put in its place. Productivity ought to be a virtue. But if I squander what I produce on luxury and vanity rather than reserving it for philanthropy, it is at best half a virtue, a mere torso of virtue, from which love, the head of all virtue, has been expeditiously removed.

The economic activity of man now runs smoothly on the prosaic fuel of self-interest. Minds capable of sublimer motives—passion for truth, love for fellow men—must stand aside. We say we have merely lowered our expectations to a realistic level. But once the system has adapted itself to run smoothly with base motives, it begins to demand base motives, and ends up elevating them into the new virtues.

Some say that justice demands we give our fellow men freedom to trade, and let them keep the gains from their enterprise. Perhaps they are right. But it is certainly unjust to praise those who squander these gains building monuments to vanity. Those clever enough to produce more must also be clever enough to figure out how to consume less. My youthful admiration of mansions testifies to an intellectual defect, and, as I now see it, ought to be a source of shame.