The Mercenary Spirit and Simplicity

We have just brushed, in passing, against a certain very widespread prejudice that attributes a magical power to money. Having come so close to this burning ground, we will not sidestep it; instead, we are going to set foot on it, convinced that there are several truths to be told on this subject. They are not new, but how forgotten they are!

I see no way for us to do without money. All that certain theorists or lawmakers who blame it for every evil have managed to do so far is to change its name or its form. But they have never been able to do without some sign that represents the commercial value of things. Trying to abolish money is an undertaking much like trying to abolish writing. It is nonetheless true that this question of money is deeply troubling. It is one of the principal elements of our complicated life. The economic difficulties in which we struggle, social conventions, the whole arrangement of modern life have raised money to so eminent a rank that it is hardly surprising the human imagination attributes a kind of kingship to it. And it is from this side that we must approach the problem.

The word money has its counterpart in the word merchandise. If there were no merchandise, money would not exist. But as long as there is merchandise, there will be money, in whatever form. The source of all the abuses of which money has become the center lies in a confusion. Under the word and the notion of merchandise, people have confused objects that have no connection with one another. They have tried to give a market value to things that neither can nor should have any. The ideas of buying and selling have invaded provinces where they may rightly be regarded as foreigners, enemies, usurpers. It is legitimate for wheat, potatoes, wine, and cloth to be offered for sale and bought. It is perfectly natural that a man's labor should give him a claim to his living, and that a value representing that claim should be placed in his hand. But here already the analogy ceases to be complete. A man's work is not merchandise in the same sense as a sack of wheat or a hundredweight of coal. Elements enter into that work that cannot be valued in money. Finally, there are things that cannot be bought at all: sleep, for example, knowledge of the future, talent. Anyone who offers them to us for sale may be considered a madman or an impostor. Yet there are people who coin money from these things. They sell what does not belong to them, and their dupes pay for illusory values in real currency. In the same way there are merchants of pleasure, merchants of love, merchants of miracles, merchants of patriotism; and the title of merchant, so honorable when it designates a man who trades in what really is an article of commerce, becomes the worst of stigmas when it concerns the things of the heart, of religion, of one's country.

Almost everyone agrees that it is shameful to traffic in one's feelings, one's honor, one's robe, one's pen, or one's mandate. Unfortunately, what admits no contradiction in theory, what, put as we are putting it, sounds more like a commonplace than a lofty moral truth, has infinite trouble making its way into practice. Trafficking has invaded the world. The sellers have set up shop even in the sanctuary, and by sanctuary I do not mean only religious things but everything that humanity holds sacred and inviolable. It is not money that complicates life, corrupts it, and debases it; it is our mercenary spirit.

The mercenary spirit reduces everything to a single question: How much will this bring me? It sums up everything in a single axiom: With money you can get anything. With these two principles of conduct, a society can sink to depths of infamy that can be neither depicted nor imagined.

How much will this bring me? This question, so legitimate as long as it concerns the precautions each of us must take to secure a living by our work, becomes fatal as soon as it oversteps its limits and dominates the whole of life. This is so true that it degrades even the work that earns our bread. I provide paid work: nothing could be better. But if, while I do that work, my only inspiration is the desire to collect my pay, nothing could be worse. Anyone whose only motive for acting is his wage does bad work. What interests him is not the work but the money. If he can skimp on his effort without cutting into his earnings, you may be sure he will. Mason, plowman, factory hand: whoever does not love his labor puts neither interest nor dignity into it, and is, in short, a poor workman. The doctor who cares only about his fees is not someone it is safe to trust with your life, for what sets him in motion is the desire to fill his purse with the contents of yours. If it is in his interest for you to suffer longer, he is capable of cultivating your illness instead of strengthening your health. Whoever loves nothing in the teaching of children but the profit it brings is a sorry teacher, for that profit is paltry, but his teaching is more paltry still. What is the mercenary journalist worth? The day you write only for the sou, your prose ceases to be worth even that sou. The more human work touches on things of a lofty nature, the more the mercenary spirit, if it enters in, sterilizes and corrupts it. People are a thousand times right to say that all toil deserves its wage, that everyone who devotes effort to sustaining life must have a place in the sun - and whoever does nothing useful and does not earn a living is, in a word, nothing but a parasite. But there is no graver social error than to end by making gain the sole motive for action. The best of what we put into our work, whether it is done by strength of arm, by warmth of heart, or by strain of mind, is precisely what no one can pay us for. Nothing proves better that a human being is not a machine than this fact: two men at work with the same strength and the same movements produce entirely different results. Where does this phenomenon come from? From the difference in their intentions. One has the mercenary spirit; the other has a simple soul. Both collect their pay, but the work of the one is barren, while the other has put his soul into his work. The work of the first is like a grain of sand that lies there for all eternity without anything coming of it; the work of the second is like a living seed cast into the ground: it sprouts and yields harvests. There is no other secret to explain why so many people have failed while using the same outward methods as others. Automatons do not reproduce, and the work of the mercenary bears no fruit.

No doubt we are obliged to bow before economic fact and acknowledge the difficulties of life; day by day it becomes more urgent to combine our means of action carefully in order to feed, clothe, house, and bring up our families. Whoever takes no account of these imperious necessities, who neither calculates nor plans ahead, is merely a dreamer or a bungler, liable sooner or later to hold out his hand to the very people whose thrift he despises. And yet what would become of us if this kind of concern absorbed us entirely? If, like perfect bookkeepers, we wanted to measure our effort by the money it brings us, to do nothing any longer that does not bring in a return, and to regard as useless or as wasted effort everything that cannot be set out in figures in an account book?

Were our mothers paid anything for loving us and raising us? What would become of our filial piety if we wanted to be paid for loving and caring for our aged parents?

What does telling the truth bring us? Unpleasantness, sometimes suffering and persecution. Defending our country? Fatigue, wounds, and often death. Doing good? Trouble, ingratitude, even resentment. Devotion enters into all the essential functions of humanity. I challenge the shrewdest calculators to keep their footing in the world without ever appealing to anything but calculation. No doubt those who know how to "wind their ball of yarn" are hailed as clever. But look more closely. How much of the thread in their ball do they owe to the devotion of simple people? Would they have done so well if they had met in the world only sharp customers of their own kind, whose motto is: No money, no Swiss! Let us say it aloud: it is thanks to a few who do not count too strictly that the world holds together. The finest services and the hardest tasks are generally paid little or nothing. Fortunately, there will always be people ready for selfless tasks, and even for those that are paid only in suffering and cost money, rest, and life itself. The part such people play is often painful and not free of discouragement. Which of us has not heard accounts of painful experiences in which the speaker regretted his past kindnesses and all the pains he had taken, only to reap disappointment? Such confidences generally end with the words: "I was foolish enough to do this and that." Sometimes people are right to judge themselves so, for it is always a mistake to cast pearls before swine; but how many lives there are whose only truly beautiful acts are precisely the ones regretted because of human ingratitude! What we should wish for humanity is that the number of these foolish acts may keep on growing.

I come now to the creed of the mercenary spirit. Its merit is brevity. For the mercenary, the law and the prophets are contained in this single axiom: With money you can get anything. If you look at social life superficially, nothing is more obvious. "The sinews of war," "ringing proof," "the key that opens every door," "king of the world"!... By gathering everything that has been said about the glory and power of money, one could compose a litany longer than the one sung in honor of the Virgin Mary. You must have been penniless, if only for a day or two, and have tried to live in the world as it is, to form some idea of what someone with an empty purse goes without. I urge those who love contrasts and unexpected situations to try living without money for just half a week, far from their friends and acquaintances, far, in short, from the circle in which they are somebody. They will gain more experience in forty-eight hours than someone of settled position gains in a whole year. Alas! some go through these experiences against their will; and when real ruin falls upon their heads, though they stay in their own country, among the companions of their youth, their former colleagues, and even people who owe them favors, others pretend no longer to know them. With what bitterness they comment on the mercenary creed: with money you can get anything; without money you can have nothing. You become the pariah, the leper, the one from whom everyone turns away. Flies go to corpses; men go to money. As soon as money withdraws, emptiness forms around you. What tears it has caused to flow, this mercenary creed! Bitter tears, tears of blood, wept by the very people who had perhaps once been worshipers of the golden calf.

And yet this creed is false, utterly false. I am not going to march to the attack with old refrains, such as the one about the rich man lost in a desert who cannot get even a drop of water for his money, or the one about the decrepit millionaire who would give half of all he owns to buy from some sturdy, penniless young fellow his twenty years and his robust health! Nor will I try to prove to you that happiness cannot be bought. So many people, among those who have money and especially among those who have none, smile at that truth as at the most threadbare of clichés. But I shall appeal to everyone's memories and experiences, to make you lay your finger on the gross lie hidden beneath an axiom that everyone goes about repeating.

Fill your purse as best you can, and let us set off together for a spa town, of which there are many. I mean one of those places once unknown, full of simple, respectful, welcoming people, among whom life was good and cost little. Fame with her hundred trumpets has drawn them out of obscurity and taught them what profit they could draw from their situation, their climate, and their own persons. You set off, trusting in Dame Fame, and flatter yourself that with your money you will secure a peaceful retreat and, far from the artificial, civilized world, weave a little poetry into the fabric of your days. The first impression is good: the natural setting and certain patriarchal customs, slow to disappear, strike you favorably at first. But as the days pass, the impression sours, and what lies underneath comes to light. What you took for genuine old things, like family furniture handed down for centuries, is only fakery to hoodwink the gullible. There are price tags on everything; everything is for sale, from the soil to the inhabitants. These primitive folk have become the most cunning of businessmen. Given your money, they have solved the problem of getting it at the least possible cost. It is all tricks and snares, traps spread everywhere like spiders' webs, and the fly these people were waiting for at the bottom of their hole is you. That is what twenty or thirty years of the mercenary regime have made of a population that was once simple and honest, and whose company did good to overworked city dwellers. Homemade bread has disappeared, the butter comes from a factory, they have perfectly mastered the method of skimming milk and the latest recipes for adulterating wine; they have all the vices of city people without their virtues.

As you leave, you count your money. A great deal of it is gone, and you complain. You are wrong. You never pay too dearly for the conviction that there are things you cannot get for money.

You need an intelligent and capable employee in your establishment: try to find this rare bird. According to the principle that anything can be had for money, you ought, depending on whether you offer a mediocre, ordinary, good, very good, or excellent salary... to find mediocre, ordinary, very good, or superior employees. But everyone who applies for the vacant post will place himself in the last category, and will have taken care beforehand to obtain testimonials in support of his claims. It is true that nine times out of ten, when put to the test of practice, these highly capable people will prove to lack all know-how. Then why did they take a position with you? In truth, they ought to reply like the cook in the comedy who is paid so dearly and cannot do a thing: "Why did you hire yourself out as a cordon bleu?" "To collect my sou on the franc." That is the main thing. You will always find people who like to draw large salaries. Ability you will find more rarely. And if it is honesty you need, the difficulties will increase. Mercenaries you will find easily; devotion is another matter. Far be it from me to deny the existence of devoted servants, or of employees who are both honest and intelligent. But you will meet as many of them, and sometimes more, among the poorly paid as among the most handsomely rewarded. And it matters little, after all, where you meet them; be sure that they are not devoted out of self-interest. They are devoted because they have kept a fund of simplicity that makes them capable of self-denial.

People also go about everywhere repeating that money is the sinews of war. No doubt war costs a great deal of money, and we know something about that. Does it follow that, to defend itself against its enemies and do honor to its flag, a country need only be rich? The Greeks long ago took it upon themselves to administer to the Persians the proof to the contrary, and that proof will never cease to be repeated in history. With gold you can buy ships, cannon, and horses; but you cannot buy military genius, political wisdom, discipline, or enthusiasm. Put billions into the hands of your recruiters and charge them with bringing you a great captain and an army of sans-culottes. You will find a hundred captains instead of one, and a thousand soldiers; but send them under fire, and you will get what you paid for.

One might at least imagine that with money alone it is possible to relieve misery and do good. Alas! That, too, is an illusion we must give up. Money, in large sums or small, is a seed that makes abuses sprout. Unless you add intelligence, goodness, and wide experience of people, you will do nothing but harm, and you will run a serious risk of corrupting both those who receive your largesse and those you have charged with distributing it.

Money cannot suffice for everything; it is a power, but it is not omnipotence. Nothing complicates life, nothing demoralizes people, nothing distorts the normal working of society so much as the growth of the mercenary spirit. Wherever it reigns, everyone dupes everyone. You can no longer trust anything or anyone; you can no longer obtain anything of worth. We are not detractors of money; but the common law must be applied to it: Everything in its place, everything in its rank! When money, which ought to be a servant, becomes a tyrannical force, disrespectful of moral life, of dignity, and of freedom; when some strive to obtain it at any price, bringing to market what is not merchandise; when others who possess wealth imagine they can obtain from their fellows what no one is permitted either to sell or to buy, then we must rise up against this gross and criminal superstition and denounce the imposture aloud: May your money perish with you! What a human being holds most precious has generally been received freely. Let us, in turn, know how to give it freely.

Translator's notes

Robe: a gown of office, such as a judge's or a lawyer's, standing for the profession itself.

"Wind their ball of yarn" renders the French idiom faire sa pelote: to build up a private fortune little by little.

No money, no Swiss (Pas d'argent, pas de Suisse): an old French saying from the days of Swiss mercenary soldiers, who would not serve unpaid; nothing is done for nothing.

A sou was a twentieth of a franc. "My sou on the franc" is the cook's customary cut of one sou on every franc spent on the household's purchases.

Sans-culottes: the common people of the French Revolution, so called because they wore trousers rather than knee breeches; many of the Revolution's citizen-soldiers came from their ranks.

May your money perish with you: the apostle Peter's words to Simon the sorcerer, who offered him money for the power to confer the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:20).