. Believe me, my good fellow, the only thing that keeps one
from going mad, is swimming silently along with the stream, letting
five always pass for even, and fitting oneself to that which cannot be
changed. At the same time there is also another remedy that may serve
to keep one afloat. One may lay down certain fixt unshakable
principles, a line of conduct from which one never swerves. Money,
wealth, gain, the circulation and the flowing of property and of the
precious metals toward every quarter, through every relation of life,
and every region of the earth, are one of the very strangest devices
the world ever hit upon. It is a creature of necessity like every
thing else; and as there is nothing on which passion has seized with
such force, it has bred it up to be a monster more chimerical and wild
than anything the fever of a heated fancy ever dreamt of. This monster
is incessantly devouring and preying on all that comes within its
reach; nothing satiates it; it gnaws and crunches the bones of the
destitute, and laps up their tears. That in London and Paris before a
palace, where a single banquet costs a thousand pieces of gold, a poor
man should die of starvation, when the hundredth part of a piece of
gold might save him,--that families should perish in frantic
despair,--that there should be madness and suicide in the very room
where a couple of paces off gamblers are rioting in gold,--all this
seems so natural to us, such a matter of course, that we no longer
feel any surprise at it; and everybody takes for granted with
cold-blooded apathy, that it all must be so, and cannot be otherwise.
How every state pampers this money-monster!--indeed it cannot help
doing so--and trains it up to be more ferocious! In many countries
wealth can no longer increase except among the rich, whereby the poor
will be still more impoverisht, until at length Time will cast up the
dismal sum, and then draw a bloody pen across the appalling amount.
When I found myself thus rich, I held it to be my duty to keep this
wealth in controul, so far as man can, and to tame the wild beast.
Unquestionably the creation has been doomed to woe; else war, disease,
famine, pain, and passion would not run riot and lay waste so.
Existence and torment are one and the same word: nevertheless every
one who does not mean wantonly to play the fiend, is bound to
alleviate misery wherever he can. There is no property in the sense
which most people put on the word;