were to be bought with money, he is a vain person, who admires heaps of gold and rich possessions. For what Hippomachus said to some persons, who commended a tall man as fit to be a champion in the Olympic games, "It is true (said he) if the crown hang so high, that the longest arm could reach it;" the same we may say concerning riches; they were excellent things, if the richest man were certainly the wisest and the best: but as they are, they are nothing to be wondered at, because they contribute nothing towards felicity which appears, because some men choose to be miserable, that they may be rich, rather than be happy with the expense of money and doing noble things. 2. Riches are useless and unprofitable; for, beyond our needs and conveniences, nature knows no use of riches: and they say, that the princes of Italy, when they sup alone, eat out of a single dish, and drink in a plain glass, and the wife eats without purple; for nothing is more frugal than the back and belly, if they be used as they should: but when they would entertain the eyes of strangers, when they are vain, and would make a noise, then riches come forth to set forth the spectacle, and furnish out the comedy of wealth, of vanity'. No man can, with all the wealth in the world, buy so much skill, as to be a good lutenist; he must go the same way that poor people do, he must learn and take pains: much less can he buy constancy or chastity or courage; nay, not so much as the contempt of riches: and, by possessing more than we need, we cannot obtain so much power over our souls, as not to require more. And certainly riches must deliver me from no evil, if the possession of them cannot take away the longing for them. If any man be thirsty, drink cools him; if he be hungry, eating meat satisfies him; and when a man is cold, and calls for a warm cloak, he is pleased, if you give it him; but you trouble him, if you load him with six or eight cloaks. Nature rests, and sits still, when she hath her portion; but that, which exceeds it, is a trouble and a burden: and, therefore, in true philosophy, no man is rich, but he that is poor, according to the common account: for when God hath satisfied those needs, which he made, that is, all that is natural, whatsoever is beyond it, is thirst and a disease; and, unless it be sent back again in 1 Plut. charity or religion, can serve no end but vice or vanity it can increase the appetite to represent the man poorer, and full of a new and artificial, unnatural need; but it never satisfies the need it makes, or makes the man richer. can satisfy the covetous desire of wealth. No wealth 3. Riches are troublesome; but the satisfaction of those appetites, which God and nature hath made, are cheap and easy; for who ever paid use-money for bread, and onions, and water, to keep him alivem? but when we covet after houses of the frame and design of Italy, or long for jewels, or for my next neighbour's field, or horses from Barbary, or the richest perfumes of Arabia, or Galatian mules, or fat eunuchs for our slaves from Tunis, or rich coaches from Naples, then we can never be satisfied, till we have the best thing, that is fancied, and all that can be had, and all that can be desired, and that we can lust no more: but, before we come to the one half of our first wild desires, we are the bondmen of usurers, and of our worse tyrant appetites, and the tortures of envy and impatience. But I consider, that those, who drink on still, when their thirst is quenched, or eat, after they have well dined, are forced to vomit not only their superfluity, but even that, which at first was necessary: so those, that covet more, than they can temperately use, are oftentimes forced to part even with that patrimony, which would have supported their persons in freedom and honour, and have satisfied all their reasonable desire. 4. Contentedness is therefore health, because covetousness is a direct sickness and it was well said of Aristippus (as Plutarch reports him), if any man, after much eating and drinking, be still unsatisfied, he hath no need of more meat or more drink, but of a physician; he more needs to be purged than to be filled: and therefore, since covetousness cannot be satisfied, it must be cured by emptiness and evacuation. The man is without remedy, unless he be reduced to the scantling of nature, and the measures of his personal necessity. Give to a poor man a house, and a few cows, pay his little debt, and set him on work, and he is provided for, and quiet: but when a man enlarges beyond a fair possession, and desires another lordship, you spite him, if you let him have it; for, m Ergo solicita tu causa, pecunia, vitæ es: Per te immaturum mortis adimus iter.-Propert. 3. 7. 2. by that, he is one degree the further off from the rest in his desires and satisfaction; and now he sees himself in a bigger capacity to a larger fortune; and he shall never find his period, till you begin to take away something of what he hath; for then he will begin to be glad to keep that, which is left but reduce him to nature's measures, and there he shall be sure to find rest: for there no man can desire beyond his bellyful; and, when he wants that, any one friend or charitable man can cure his poverty; but all the world cannot satisfy his covetousness. 5. Covetousness is the most fantastical and contradictory disease in the whole world: it must therefore be incurable; because it strives against its own cure. No man, therefore, abstains from meat, because he is hungry; nor from wine, because he loves it, and needs it: but the covetous man does so, for he desires it passionately, because he says, he needs it, and, when he hath it, he will need it still, because he dares not use it. He gets clothes, because he cannot be without them; but when he hath them, then he can: as if he needed corn for his granary, and clothes for his wardrobe, more than for his back and belly. For covetousness pretends to heap much together for fear of want; and yet, after all his pains and purchase, he suffers that really, which, at first, he feared vainly; and, by not using what he gets, he makes that suffering to be actual, present, and necessary, which, in his lowest condition, was but future, contingent, and possible. It stirs up the desire, and takes away the pleasure of being satisfied. It increases the appetite, and will not content it it swells the principal to no purpose, and lessens the use to all purposes; disturbing the order of nature, and the designs of God; making money not to be the instrument of exchange or charity, nor corn to feed himself or the poor, nor wool to clothe himself or his brother, nor wine to refresh the sadness of the afflicted, nor his oil to make his own countenance cheerful; but all these to look upon, and to tell over, and to take accounts by, and make himself considerable, and wondered at by fools; that while he lives, he may be called rich, and when he dies, may be accounted miserable; and, like the dish-makers of China, may leave a greater heap of dirt for his nephews, while he himself hath a new lot fallen to him in the portion of Dives. But thus the ass carried wood and sweet herbs to the baths, but was never washed or perfumed himself: he heaped up sweets for others, while himself was filthy with smoke and ashes. And yet it is considerable; if the man can be content to feed hardly, and labour extremely, and watch carefully, and suffer affronts and disgrace, that he may get money more, than he uses in his temperate and just needs, with how much ease might this man be happy? and with how great uneasiness and trouble does he make himself miserable? For he takes pains to get content, and, when he might have it, he lets it go. He might better be content with a virtuous and quiet poverty, than with an artificial, troublesome, and vicious. The same diet and a less labour would, at first, make him happy, and, for ever after, rewardable. 6. The sum of all is that, which the apostle says, "Covetousness is idolatry;" that is, it is an admiring money for itself, not for its use; it relies upon money, and loves it more, than it loves God and religion: and it is "the root of all evil;" it teaches men to be cruel and crafty, industrious in evil, full of care and malice; it devours young heirs, and grinds the face of the poor, and undoes those, who specially belong to God's protection, helpless, craftless, and innocent people; it inquires into our parent's age, and longs for the death of our friends; it makes friendship an art of rapine, and changes a partner into a vulture, and a companion into a thief; and, after all this, it is for no good to itself; for it dares not spend those heaps of treasure, which it snatched and men hate serpents and basilisks worse than lions and bears; for these kill, because they need the prey, but they sting to death and eat not". And if they pretend all this care and heap for their heirs (like the mice of Africa, hiding the golden ore in their bowels, and refusing to give back the indigested gold, till their guts be out) they may remember, that what was unnecessary for themselves, is as unnecessary for their sons; and why cannot they be without it, as well as their fathers, who did not use it? And it often happens, that to the sons, it becomes an instrument to serve some lust or other; that, as η Ἡ φιλοχρημοσύνη μήτηρ κακότητος ἁπάσης. Χρυσὸς ἀεὶ δόλος ἐστὶ καὶ ἄργυρος ἀνθρώποισιν. Χρυσὶ κακῶν ἀρχηγέ, βιοφθόρε, πάντα χαλέπτων, Εἴθέ σε μὴ θνητοῖσι γενέσθαι πῆμα ποθεινόν· Σοῦ γὰρ ἕκητι μάχαι τε, λεηλασίαι τε, φόνοι τε, Εχθρὰ δὲ τέκνα γονεῦσιν, ἀδελφειοί τε συναίμοις. Phocylid. 38, the gold was useless to their fathers, so may the sons be to the public, fools or prodigals, loads to their country, and the curse and punishment of their father's avarice: and yet all that wealth is short of one blessing; but it is a load, coming with a curse, and descending from the family of a longderived sin. However, the father transmits it to the son, and it may be the son to one more; till a tyrant, or an oppressor, or a war, or change of government, or the usurer, or folly, or an expensive vice, makes holes in the bottom of the bag, and the wealth runs out like water, and flies away, like a bird from the hand of a child. 7. Add to these the consideration of the advantages of poverty; that it is a state freer from temptation, secure in dangers, but of one trouble, safe under the Divine Providence, cared for in heaven by a daily ministration, and for whose support God makes every day a new decree; a state, of which Christ was pleased to make open profession, and many wise men daily make vows: that a rich man is but like a pool, to whom the poor run, and first trouble it, and then draw it dry that he enjoys no more of it, than according to the few and limited needs of a man; he cannot eat like a wolf or an elephant: that variety of dainty fare ministers but to sin and sicknesses; that the poor man feasts oftener than the rich, because every little enlargement is a feast to the poor, but he, that feasts every day, feasts no day, there being nothing left, to which he may, beyond his ordinary, extend his appetite: that the rich man sleeps not so soundly as the poor labourer; that his fears are more, and his needs are greater (for who is poorer, he that needs 57. or he that needs 50007.?); the poor man hath enough to fill his belly, and the rich hath not enough to fill his eye; that the poor man's wants are easy to be relieved by a common charity, but the • Provocet ut segnes animos, rerumque remotas P Ingeniosa vias paulatim exploret egestas.-Claudian, 36. 31. -Sed olim Prodigio par est in nobilitate senectus. Hortulus hic, puteusque brevis, nec reste movendus, In tenues plantas facili diffunditur haustu. Vive bidentis amans, et culti villicus horti : Unde epulum possis centum dare Pythagoreis. Est aliquid, quocunque loco, quocunque recessu, Unius dominum sese fecisse lacertæ.-Juven. Sat. iii. 226. |