To them it seems that the desire for great wealth means simply the desire for purely sensual self-indulgence--especially for the eating and drinking of expensive food and wine.

Consequently, whenever they wish to caricature a capitalist they invariably represent him as a man with a huge, protuberant stomach.

The folly of this conception is sufficiently shown by the fact that many of the greatest of fortune-makers have, in their personal habits, been abstemious and even niggardly to a degree which has made them proverbial; and that, even in the case of those who value personal luxury, the maximum of self-indulgence which any single human organism can appreciate, is obtainable by a hundredth part of the fortunes for the production of which such men work.

The real secret of the attraction which wealth has for those who create it lies in the fact that wealth is simply a form of power.

These men are made conscious by experience, as less gifted men are not, that they can, by the exercise of their own mental energies, add indefinitely to the wealth-producing forces of the community.