is pleasure is in his money, and in his possessions only as
representing it. (In the first case the money is as an atmosphere
surrounding the wealth, rising from it and raining back upon it; but in
the second, it is as a deluge, with the wealth floating, and for the
most part perishing in it.[42]) The shortest distinction between the men
is that the one wishes always to buy, and the other to sell.

84. Such being the great relations of the classes, their several
characters are of the highest importance to the nation; for on the
character of the store-holders chiefly depend the preservation, display,
and serviceableness of its wealth; on that of the currency-holders, its
distribution; on that of both, its reproduction.

We shall, therefore, ultimately find it to be of incomparably greater
importance to the nation in whose hands the thing is put, than how much
of it is got; and that the character of the holders may be conjectured
by the quality of the store; for such and such a man always asks for
such and such a thing; nor only asks for it, but if it can be bettered,
betters it: so that possession and possessor reciprocally act on each
other, through the entire sum of national possession. The base nation,
asking for base things, sinks daily to deeper vileness of nature and
weakness in use; while the noble nation, asking for noble things, rises
daily into diviner eminence in both; the tendency to degradation being
surely marked by "[Greek: ataxia];" that is to say, (expanding the Greek
thought), by carelessness as to the hands in which things are put,
consequent dispute for the acquisition of them, disorderliness in the
accumulation of them, inaccuracy in the estimate of them, and bluntness
in conception as to the entire nature of possession.

85. The currency-holders always increase in number and influence in
proportion to the bluntness of nature and clumsiness of the
store-holders; for the less use people can make of things, the more they
want of them, and the sooner weary of them, and want to change them for
something else; and all frequency of change increases the quantity and
power of currency. The large currency-holder himself is essentially a
person who never has been able to make up his mind as to what he will
have, and proceeds, therefore, in vague collection and aggregation, with
more and more infuriate passion, urged by complacency in progress,
vacancy in idea, and pride of conquest.

While, however, there i