as never enough provided: and the
more I loaded myself with money, the more also was I loaded with fear,
one while of the danger of the roads, another of the fidelity of him who
had the charge of my baggage, of whom, as some others that I know, I was
never sufficiently secure if I had him not always in my eye. If I
chanced to leave my cash-box behind me, O, what strange suspicions and
anxiety of mind did I enter into, and, which was worse, without daring to
acquaint anybody with it. My mind was eternally taken up with such
things as these, so that, all things considered, there is more trouble in
keeping money than in getting it. And if I did not altogether so much as
I say, or was not really so scandalously solicitous of my money as I have
made myself out to be, yet it cost me something at least to restrain
myself from being so. I reaped little or no advantage by what I had, and
my expenses seemed nothing less to me for having the more to spend; for,
as Bion said, the hairy men are as angry as the bald to be pulled; and
after you are once accustomed to it and have once set your heart upon
your heap, it is no more at your service; you cannot find in your heart
to break it: 'tis a building that you will fancy must of necessity all
tumble down to ruin if you stir but the least pebble; necessity must
first take you by the throat before you can prevail upon yourself to
touch it; and I would sooner have pawned anything I had, or sold a horse,
and with much less constraint upon myself, than have made the least
breach in that beloved purse I had so carefully laid by. But the danger
was that a man cannot easily prescribe certain limits to this desire
(they are hard to find in things that a man conceives to be good), and to
stint this good husbandry so that it may not degenerate into avarice: men
still are intent upon adding to the heap and increasing the stock from
sum to sum, till at last they vilely deprive themselves of the enjoyment
of their own proper goods, and throw all into reserve, without making any
use of them at all. According to this rule, they are the richest people
in the world who are set to guard the walls and gates of a wealthy city.
All moneyed men I conclude to be covetous. Plato places corporal or
human goods in this order: health, beauty, strength, riches; and riches,
says he, are not blind, but very clear-sighted, when illuminated by
prudence. Dionysius the son did a very handsome act upon this subjec