Avaritia or
Covetousness: At one time this sin was content to call itself "Honest
Thrift," and under that name was, as they might say in Aberdeen, "varra weel
respectit." The cold-hearted sins recommend themselves to Church and State
by the restraints they lay upon the vulgar and disreputable warm-hearted
sins. The thrifty poor do not swill beer in pubs, or indulge in noisy
quarrels in the streets to the annoyance of decent people—moreover, they are
less likely to become a burden on the rates. The thrifty well-to-do do not
abash their pious neighbours by lavish indulgence in Gula or Luxuria—which
are both very expensive sins. Nevertheless, there used always to be certain
reservations about the respect accorded to Covetousness. It was an
unromantic, unspectacular sin. Unkind people sometimes called it by rude
names, such as Parsimony and Niggardliness. It was a narrow, creeping,
pinched kind of sin; and it was not a good mixer. It was more popular with
Caesar than with Caesar's subjects; it had no glamour about it.
It was left for the present age
to endow Covetousness with glamour on a big scale, and to give it a title
which it could carry like a flag. It occurred to somebody to call it
Enterprise. From the moment of that happy inspiration, Covetousness has
gone forward and never looked back. It has become a swaggering,
swashbuckling, piratical sin, going about with its hat cocked over its eye,
and with pistols tucked into the tops of its jack- boots. Its war-cries are
"Business Efficiency! " "Free Competition!" "Get Out or Get Under!" and
"There's Always Room at the Top!" It no longer screws and saves—it launches
out into new enterprises; it gambles and speculates; it thinks in a big way;
it takes risks. It can no longer be troubled to deal in real wealth, and so
remain attached to Work and the Soil. It has set Money free from all such
hampering ties; it has interests in every continent; it is impossible to pin
it down to any one place or any concrete commodity—it is an adventurer, a
roving, rollicking free lance. It looks so jolly and jovial, and has such a
twinkle in its cunning eye, that nobody can believe that its heart is as
cold and calculating as ever. Besides, where is its heart? Covetousness is
not incarnated in individual people, but in business corporations,
joint-stock companies, amalgamations, trusts, which have neither bodies to
be kicked, not souls to be damned—nor hearts to be appealed to, either. It
is very difficult to fasten on anybody the responsibility for the things
that are done with money. Of course, if Covetousness miscalculates and some
big financier comes crashing down, bringing all the small speculators down
with him, we wag self-righteous heads, and feel that we see clearly where
the' fault lies. But we do not punish the fraudulent business man for his
frauds, but for his failure.
The Church says Covetousness is
a deadly sin—but does she really think so? Is she ready to found Welfare
Societies to deal with financial immorality as she does with sexual
immorality? Do the officials stationed at church doors in Italy to exclude
women with bare arms turn anybody away on the grounds that they are too
well-dressed to be honest? Do the vigilance committees who complain of
"suggestive" books and plays make any attempt to suppress the literature
which "suggests" that getting on in the world is the chief object in life?
Is Dives, like Magdalen, ever refused the sacraments on the grounds that
he, like her, is an "open and notorious evil-liver"? Does the Church
arrange services, with bright congregational singing, for Total Abstainers
from Usury?
The Church's record is not, in
these matters, quite as good as it might be. But is perhaps rather better
than that of those who denounce her for her neglect. The Church is not the
Vatican, nor the Metropolitans, nor the Bench of Bishops; it is not even the
Vicar or the Curate or the Churchwardens: the Church is you and I. And are
you and I in the least sincere in our pretence that we disapprove of
Covetousness?
Let us ask ourselves one or two
questions. Do we admire and envy rich people because they are rich, or
because the work by which they made their money is good work? If we hear
that Old So-and-So has pulled off a pretty smart deal with the Town Council,
are we shocked by the revelation of the cunning graft involved, or do we say
admiringly: "Old So-and-So's hot stuff—you won't find many flies on him"?
When we go to the cinema and see a picture about empty-headed people in
luxurious surroundings, do we say, "What drivel! " or do we sit in a misty
dream, wishing we could give up our daily-work and marry into surroundings
like that? When we invest our money, do we ask ourselves whether the
enterprise represents anything useful, or merely whether it is a safe thing
that returns a good dividend? Do we regularly put money into football pools
or dog-racing? When we read the newspaper, are our eyes immediately
arrested by anything which says "MILLLONS" in large capitals, preceded by
the £ or $ sign? Have we ever refused money, on the grounds that the work
that we had to do for it was something that we could not do honestly, or do
well? Do we NEVER choose our acquaintance with the idea that they are
useful people to know, or keep in with people in the hope that there is
something to be got out of them? And do we—this is important—when we blame
the mess that the economical world has got into, do we always lay the blame
on wicked financiers, wicked profiteers, wicked capitalists, wicked
employers, wicked bankers—or do we sometimes ask ourselves how far we
have contributed to make the mess?
Just as the sin of Gluttony
thrives on our little greeds, so the sin of Covetousness thrives on our
little acts of avarice—on the stupid and irresponsible small share-holder,
for example, who is out to get money for nothing. There is a book called
Wall Street Under Oath [by Louis Pecora] which makes entertaining but
rather shameful reading. It is an account of the exposure of various great
business and banking frauds in the United States at the time of the post-war
slump. When we have finished wondering at the barefaced venality,
graspingness and lack of scruple
of the notorious financiers who
stood in the dock to answer the charge of fraud, we may fruitfully wonder at
the incredible avarice and criminal folly of their victims. For no
share-pusher could vend his worthless stock, if he could not count on
meeting, in his prospective victim, an unscrupulous avarice as vicious as
his own, but stupider. Every time a man expects, as he says, his money to
work for him, he is expecting other people to work for him; and when he
expects it to bring in more money in a year than honest work could produce
in that time, he is expecting it to cheat and steal on his behalf.
We are all in it together. I
often wonder why Germany was so foolishly impatient as to go to war. If
domination was all she wanted, she could have it without shedding a drop of
blood, by merely waiting long enough and trusting to the avarice of
mankind. You may remember the sordid and cynical French business man on the
boat that brought Elie J. Bois to England after the collapse of France.
Someone asked him: "Why did France break down like this?" and he answered:
"Because she had too many men like me." France was bought—the politicians
were bought, the Press was bought, Labour was bought, the Church was bought,
big business was bought, even the army was bought. Not always by open
bribes in cash, but by the insidious appeal to security, and business
interests and economic power. Nobody would destroy anything or let go of
anything; there was always the hope of making a deal with the enemy.
Everybody, down to the smallest provincial official and the pettiest petty
shopkeeper had a vested interest in non-resistance. Wars are not made by
business men, who are terrified of the threat to their powers: what business
men make are surrenders. Nobody prays more fervently than the business man
to be freed from the "crushing burden of armaments"; the first thing that
happens in a war is the freezing of international credits, which the
business man does not like. The same business man who will view with
perfect indifference the senseless destruction of fish and fruit, coffee and
corn in peacetime, because it does not pay to distribute them, is
preternaturally sensitive about the senseless destruction of property by
war. Patience, cunning and the appeal to avarice could bring the whole
world into economic subjection by a slow interior corruption. We may,
perhaps, count ourselves fortunate that Hitler's patience was at last
exhausted and that he conjured up the devil of Wrath to cast out the devil
of Covetousness. When Satan casts out Satan, his kingdom does not stand;
but we have come to a grievous pass if we have to choose between one devil
and another—if the only deliverance from Covetousness is the Wrath of war,
and the only safeguard against war, a peace based on Covetousness.
The virtue of which Covetousness
is the perversion is something more positive and warm-hearted than Thrift—it
is the love of the real values, of which the material world has only two:
the fruits of the earth and the labour of the people. As for the spiritual
values, Avarice has no use for them: they cannot be assessed in money, and
the moment that anyone tries to assess them in money they softly and
suddenly vanish away.
We may argue eloquently that
"Honesty is the best Policy”—unfortunately, the moment honesty is adopted
for the sake of policy it mysteriously ceases to be honesty. We may say
that the best Art should be recompensed at the highest rate, and no doubt it
should; but if the artist lets his work be influenced by considerations of
marketing, he will discover that what he is producing is not Art. And we
may say, with some justice, that an irreligious nation cannot prosper; but
if a nation tries to cultivate religion for the sake of regaining
prosperity, the resulting brand of religion will be addressed to a very
queer God indeed. There is said to be a revival just now of what is called
"interest" in religion. Even Governments are inclined to allot broadcasting
time to religious propaganda, and to order National Days of Prayer. However
admirable these activities may be one has a haunting feeling that God's
acquaintance is being cultivated because He might come in useful. But God
is quite shrewd enough to see through that particular kind of commercial
fraud.
But we are only halfway through
our list of the Deadly Sins. Hand in hand with Covetousness goes its close
companion-Invidia or Envy, which hates to see other men
happy...
