What is missing when a person has wealth but cannot enjoy it?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

The Preacher says that possessions and a long life cannot replace the ability to enjoy what one has.

Chapter breakdown

The Preacher describes a painful situation: God gives someone wealth, possessions, and honor, but not the power to enjoy them. A stranger enjoys them instead. He calls this empty and miserable.

He then imagines someone with a hundred children and many years of life, yet no satisfaction in those good things and no burial. He says that a child born dead has a better lot. The child comes and goes in darkness, and its name is forgotten. It has not seen the sun or known the difference between good and evil. Still, the speaker says it has more rest than the person who cannot enjoy life. Even two thousand years would not solve that person’s loss. Both go to the same place. This comparison expresses the Preacher’s argument about an unsatisfied life; it is not a general verdict on the worth of living people.

People work to feed their mouths, but their souls remain unfilled. The speaker asks what advantage wisdom brings over foolishness, and what the poor person gains beyond knowing how to walk among the living. He prefers seeing what one can desire to desiring what one does not know. This too belongs to his account of vanity.

The chapter ends with human limits. A person cannot contend with one stronger than himself. Many words and disputes are empty. Wealth, years, and argument do not give people complete control over life.

The story inside

A wealthy person cannot enjoy his possessions. The Preacher tests whether many children or a much longer life would help, then turns to hunger, desire, and the limits of human strength.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Having possessions does not always mean being able to enjoy them.
2
The Preacher’s comparison with a stillborn child concerns the misery of an unsatisfied life.
3
Long life and many arguments do not remove human limits.

Test your recall

Why does the Preacher say that even two thousand years would not solve the problem he describes?

Show answer

The person still cannot enjoy life’s good things. More years do not supply that missing enjoyment, and everyone eventually goes to the same place.

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 70481–70484
A man to whom God hath given riches, and substance, and honour, and his soul wanteth nothing of all that he desireth: yet God doth not give him power to eat thereof, but a stranger shall eat it up.
Lines 70486–70489
If a man beget a hundred children, and live many years, and attain to a great age, and his soul make no use of the goods of his substance, and he be without burial: of this man I pronounce, that the untimely born is better than he.
Lines 70499–70500
All the labour of man is for his mouth, but his soul shall not be filled.
Lines 70505–70506
Better it is to see what thou mayst desire, than to desire that which thou canst not know.
Lines 70509–70511
He that shall be, his name is already called: and it is known, that he is a man, and cannot contend in judgment with him that is stronger than himself.