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Money-Making: Nothing but Play

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Moralist

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Mr. Ruskin, in his lecture on Work,* says:: 'Whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the sake of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is 'play,' the 'pleasing thing,' not the useful thing. . . . The first of all English games is making money. That is an all-absorbing game; and we knock each other down oftener in playing at that than at foot-ball, or any other rougher sport; and it is absolutely without purpose; no one who engages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money: he never knows. He doesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. 'What will you make of what you have got?' you ask. 'Well, I'll get more,' he says. Just as at cricket, you get more runs. There's no use in the runs, but to get more of them than other people is the game. And there's no use in the money, but to have more of it than other people is the game. So all that great foul city of London there: rattling, growling, smoking, stinking: a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore: you fancy it is a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; very nasty play, and very hard play,. but still play. It is only Lord's Cricket Ground without the turf: a huge billiard-table without the cloth, and with pockets as deep as the bottomless pit, but mainly a billiard table after all.'

* In 'The Crown of Wild Olive, Three Lectures on Work, Traffic, and War.' By John Ruskin, M.A., 1866.