the last thing in one’s thought,85 and the fact that people universally put them first is the cause of many ills to state and individual alike.86 Wealth is not blind, if only it follows wisdom.87 The things usually called goods are not rightly so named, unless the possessor be just and worthy.88 To the base, on the other hand, they are the greatest evil.89 In all of this, Plato is the forerunner of Ruskin, with his characteristic assertions: “Only so much as one can use is wealth, beyond that is illth”; and “Wealth depends also on vital power in the possessor.”90
Plato especially inveighs against excessive wealth and luxury.91 Men are urged not to lay up riches for their children, since great wealth is of no use to them or the state.92 The prime object of good legislation should not be, as is commonly supposed, to make the state as rich as possible,93 since excessive wealth and luxury decrease productive efficiency,94 are incompatible with the highest character or happiness, being based on both unjust acquisition (κτῆσις) and unjust expenditure (ἀναλώματα),95 produce degeneration in individual and nation,96 and are the direct cause of war97 and civic strife.98 Were it feasible, he would prefer to go back to the simpler life of earlier times, before luxury and the inordinate desire for riches had so dominated all society.99 Of course he realizes that such a return is impossible, but he has little hope of any other escape from the evils. He is thus led to express the belief that the fewer wants the better, a doctrine common also to Ruskin, Carlyle, and Thoreau.100
However, Plato has no prejudice against moderate wealth. His sermons are directed against excessive commercialism, which puts money before the human interest,101 thereby causing injustice, degenerate luxury, vicious extremes of wealth and poverty, political graft, individual inefficiency, and wars both within and without the state. Though his philosophy leads to asceticism, and his attitude toward wealth seems, on the surface, to breathe this spirit, yet Plato is not an ascetic in his doctrine of wealth, as is often wrongly asserted. He describes the true attitude as that which partakes of both pleasures and pains, not shunning, but mastering them.102