ch,
and who have had great possessions; for this is all that makes nobility
at present. Yet they do not think themselves a whit the less noble,
though their immediate parents have left none of this wealth to them, or
though they themselves have squandered it away. The Utopians have no
better opinion of those who are much taken with gems and precious stones,
and who account it a degree of happiness next to a divine one if they can
purchase one that is very extraordinary, especially if it be of that sort
of stones that is then in greatest request, for the same sort is not at
all times universally of the same value, nor will men buy it unless it be
dismounted and taken out of the gold. The jeweller is then made to give
good security, and required solemnly to swear that the stone is true,
that, by such an exact caution, a false one might not be bought instead
of a true; though, if you were to examine it, your eye could find no
difference between the counterfeit and that which is true; so that they
are all one to you, as much as if you were blind. Or can it be thought
that they who heap up a useless mass of wealth, not for any use that it
is to bring them, but merely to please themselves with the contemplation
of it, enjoy any true pleasure in it? The delight they find is only a
false shadow of joy. Those are no better whose error is somewhat
different from the former, and who hide it out of their fear of losing
it; for what other name can fit the hiding it in the earth, or, rather,
the restoring it to it again, it being thus cut off from being useful
either to its owner or to the rest of mankind? And yet the owner, having
hid it carefully, is glad, because he thinks he is now sure of it. If it
should be stole, the owner, though he might live perhaps ten years after
the theft, of which he knew nothing, would find no difference between his
having or losing it, for both ways it was equally useless to him.

"Among those foolish pursuers of pleasure they reckon all that delight in
hunting, in fowling, or gaming, of whose madness they have only heard,
for they have no such things among them. But they have asked us, 'What
sort of pleasure is it that men can find in throwing the dice?' (for if
there were any pleasure in it, they think the doing it so often should
give one a surfeit of it); 'and what pleasure can one find in hearing the
barking and howling of dogs, which seem rather odious than pleasant
sounds?' Nor can the