cessary purpose. Besides, he who abounds in money often wants
necessary food; and it is impossible to say that any person is in good
circumstances when with all his possessions he may perish with hunger.

Like Midas in the fable, who from his insatiable wish had everything he
touched turned into gold. For which reason others endeavour to procure
other riches and other property, and rightly, for there are other riches
and property in nature; and these are the proper objects of economy:
while trade only procures money, not by all means, but by the exchange
of it, and for that purpose it is this which it is chiefly employed
about, for money is the first principle and the end of trade; nor are
there any bounds to be set to what is thereby acquired. Thus also there
are no limits to the art of medicine, with respect to the health which
it attempts to procure; the same also is true of all other arts; no line
can be drawn to terminate their bounds, the several professors of them
being desirous to extend them as far as possible. (But still the means
to be employed for that purpose are limited; and these are the limits
beyond which the art cannot proceed.) Thus in the art of acquiring
riches there are no limits, for the object of that is money and
possessions; but economy has a boundary, though this has not: for
acquiring riches is not the business of that, for which reason it should
seem that some boundary should be set to riches, though we see the
contrary to this is what is practised; for all those who get riches add
to their money without end; the cause of which is the near connection
of these two arts with each other, which sometimes occasions the one to
change employments with the other, as getting of money is their common
object: for economy requires the possession of wealth, but not on
its own account but with another view, to purchase things necessary
therewith; but the other procures it merely to increase it: so that some
persons are confirmed in their belief, that this is the proper object
of economy, and think that for this purpose money should be saved and
hoarded up without end; the reason for which disposition is, that they
are intent upon living, but not upon living well; and this desire being
boundless in its extent, the means which they aim at for that purpose
are boundless also; and those who propose to live well, often confine
that to the enjoyment of the pleasures of sense; so that as this also
seems to depend