Alfred Marshall about the Nature of Material and Immaterial Wealth

"All wealth consists of desirable things; that is, things which satisfy human wants directly or indirectly... Desirable things or goods are Material, or Immaterial... Material goods consist of useful material things, and of all rights to hold, or use, or derive benefits from material things, or to receive them at a future time. Non-material goods fall into two classes. One consists of man's own qualities and faculties for action and for enjoyment; such for instance as business ability, professional skill, or the faculty of deriving recreation from reading or music. All these lie within himself and are called internal. The second class are called external because they consist of relations beneficial to him with other people."

Principles of Economics

Alfred Marshall thinks that non-material goods are not to be counted as wealth:

"Not all desirable things are reckoned as wealth. The affection of friends, for instance, is an important element of wellbeing, but it is not reckoned as wealth, except by a poetic licence."

I see why he makes such a decision, he wants to make economics into science by limiting the subject matter to things that can be measured, or at least measured easily, but I am of a different opinion, or at least and I find it useful to talk about material and non-material wealth, and not simply to ignore the non-material side so early in the analysis, and at all. Indeed I want to concentrate on how material wealth can be used so as to produce as much of the immaterial as possible.

The wish of Mr. Marshall is to develop unselfishness in men. He thinks that this can be done simply collecting facts about material wealth and analysing them. I think that keeping the considerations and impacts on immaterial wealth ought to be carried out at the same time and not separated, otherwise the conclusions will be misleading notwithstanding the good intentions.

John Ruskin had made a similar criticism earlier, but it seems that Alfred Marhall did not pay heed, although he did seem to respect Ruskin's opinions:

"Modern political economy stands on a precisely similar basis. Assuming, not that the human being has no skeleton, but that it is all skeleton, it founds an ossifiant theory of progress on this negation of a soul; and having shown the utmost that may be made of bones, and constructed a number of interesting geometrical figures with death's-head and humeri, successfully proves the inconvenience of the reappearance of a soul among these corpuscular structures. I do not deny the truth of this theory: I simply deny its applicability to the present phase of the world."

John Ruskin, Unto This Last: Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy

John Ruskin on the Proper Use of False Wealth and the Nature of True Wealth of England

"Since the essence of wealth consists in power over men, will it not follow that the nobler and the more in number the persons are over whom it has power, the greater the wealth? Perhaps it may even appear, after some consideration, that the persons themselves are the wealth that these pieces of gold with which we are in the habit of guiding them, are, in fact, nothing more than a kind of Byzantine harness or trappings, very glittering and beautiful in barbaric sight, wherewith we bridle the creatures; but that if these same living creatures could be guided without the fretting and jingling of the Byzants in their mouths and ears, they might themselves be more valuable than their bridles. In fact, it may be discovered that the true veins of wealth are purple -- and not in Rock, but in Flesh -- perhaps even that the final outcome and consummation of all wealth is in the producing as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures. Our modern wealth, I think, has rather a tendency the other way; -- most political economists appearing to consider multitudes of human creatures not conducive to wealth, or at best conducive to it only by remaining in a dim-eyed and narrow-chested state of being.

Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question, which I leave to the reader's pondering, whether, among national manufactures, that of Souls of a good quality may not at last turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one? Nay, in some far-away and yet undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine that England may cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom they first arose; and that, while the sands of the Indus and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger, and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of a Heathen one, and be able to lead forth her Sons, saying: "These are my Jewels!""

Unto This Last: Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy