with regard to ourselves. And we consider neither their qualities, nor their usefulness, but only what it costs us to obtain them, as if the cost were a part of their being; and we call value in them, not what they bring, but what we bring to them. In this respect I think we are very thrifty in our outlay; according to its weight it is of use, to the extent that it has weight. Our opinion never lets it pass with false freightage.[1] The purchase gives value to the diamond, as resistance does to virtue, grief to devotion, and bitterness to medicine.
(b) A certain man,[2] in order to attain poverty, threw his money into that same ocean which so many search in all parts, seeking to fish up wealth. Epicurus says that to be rich is not an alleviation, but simply a change of trouble.[3] In truth, it is not want, but rather abundance, which gives birth to avarice. I will tell my experience in regard to this matter. I have lived in three different kinds of conditions since I left childhood behind. The first period, which lasted nearly twenty years, I passed with no other than haphazard resources, depending on the arrangements and support of others, with no established profession and without regulations. I spent my money the more easily and carelessly because it all lay in the turn of fortune. I was never better off. It never happened to me to find my friends’ purses closed, for I had impressed upon myself the necessity, beyond every other necessity, of never being in default at the end of the term in which I had agreed to pay my debt, which term they a thousand times prolonged, seeing the effort that I made to satisfy them; so that I gained by my thrifty and somewhat deceptive loyalty.[4] My nature is to feel some pleasure in paying, as if I relieved my shoulders of an annoying burden and of that semblance of servitude; as I feel a pleasure that
- ↑ Sur quoi je m’advise que nous sommes grands mesnagiers de nostre mise. Selon qu’elle poise, elle sert de ce mesme qu’elle poise. Nostre opinion ne la laisse jamais courir a faus fret.
- ↑ Aristippus. Montaigne refers to this again in Book II, chap. 11. Among other sources, this statement is found in Diogenes Laertius (Life of Aristippus) and in Horace, Satires, II, 3. 100.
- ↑ See Seneca, Epistle 17
- ↑ En maniere que j’en rendoy une loyauté mesnagere et aucunement piperesse.
