untruths, as others do who, when rich, have the air of being poor, and, when poor, of being rich, and dispense their consciences from ever testifying honestly to what they have: an absurd and shameful sort of prudence. (b) Was I going on a journey — it never seemed to me that I was sufficiently provided; and the more I was laden with coin, the more also was I laden with fear, sometimes as to the safety of the roads, sometimes as to the fidelity of those who carried my luggage, about which, like others I know, I was never sufficiently sure unless I had it under my eyes. Did I leave my strong-box at home — what a multitude of suspicions, and thorny thoughts, and, what is worse, incommunicable ones! My mind was always turned in that direction. (c) Considering every thing, it is more trouble to at money than to get it. (b) If I did not conduct myself exactly as I say, at least it was difficult to prevent myself from doing so. I derived from this state little or no ease: (c) with more money to spend, expenditure weighed no less on me; (b) for, as Bion said, “A man with hair is as much displeased as a bald man, to have his hair pulled out.”[1] And when you are accustomed to a certain pile [of money] and have set your mind upon it, it is no longer at your service; (c) you would not dare to encroach upon it. (b) It is a structure which, so it seems to you, will crumble if you touch it; necessity must take you by the throat for it to be broken into. And I would have first pawned my clothes, and sold a horse, with much less reluctance and less repining than I would then have made a breach in that favored purse which I kept apart. But the danger lay in this, that with difficulty can one establish definite limits to this craving (c) (they are hard to find in respect to things which one thinks good) (b) and fix the moment to stop saving. One goes on ever and ever enlarging the heap, and raising it from one figure to another, to the point of churlishly depriving oneself of the enjoyment of one’s own property, and of putting it all under lock and key and making no use of it. (c) With this kind of use of money, the richest men in the world are those who guard the gates and walls of an important city. Every man who himself possesses money is avaricious, to my thinking. Plato
- ↑ Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi, VIII, 3.
