“No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself.”
-Plato
I hate to bring my good friend Ebenezer Scrooge back into the mix, but here goes. In the Beginning of A Christmas Carol, everyone would agree that Scrooge wasn’t exactly the nicest person in the world. Though he wasn’t really a bad person, one might say he was somewhat of a bad man, and his selfish ways do leave us scrambling for similar adjectives.
The moral of the story was that no amount of money that the old miser gained could make him happy.
He could never be at peace with himself because the money did not actually bring him any joy. The same goes for misers of today. If a good man makes a lot of money, he has a goal and purpose for the money (sadly 10 million iPads give about the same utility as 1 iPad would), and there is a high likelihood that said man will give money in charity. Giving money to those less fortune, contrary to what anti-welfare people would have you believe, give you a happy feeling, and gives you even the tiniest bit of inner peace.
Achieving wealth does not give you peace or happiness, but giving of yourself, and seeing the smile on the face of those who benefit from your generosity will give you that peace.
