Philosophy of this selfish world is that taught by Lear's unselfish fool, "Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following; but the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after;" or by Timon's poet, who laboriously conveys the same idea that flashes from the fool:
"When fortune, in her shift and change of mood,
Spurns down her late belov'd, all his dependents,
Which laboured after him to the mountain's top,
Even on their hands and knees, let him slip down,
Not one accompanying his declining foot."
Timon, however, takes a widely different view of life. To him society is a disinterested brotherhood in which to possess largely is but to have the greater scope for the luxury of giving, and in which want itself may be but a means to try one's friends, and to learn their sterling value. His first act of bounty, not less noble than reasonable, is to pay the debt on which his friend Ventidius is imprisoned. It is done with graceful freedom, and his liberated friend is invited to him for further help in the fine sentiment, that
"'Tis not enough to help the feeble up,
But to support him after."
The dowry of the servant Lucilius, to satisfy the greed of the old miser whose daughter he courts, is more lavish and less reasonable. Timon will counterpoise with his fortune, what the old man will give with his daughter, though he feels the burthen of the task.
"To build his fortune, I would strain a little,
For ’tis a bond in men."
His inquiries are of the shortest. He has no hesitation, no suspicion, but gives away fortunes as if his means were exhaustless, and his discrimination infallible. He acts in fervent disbelief of his opinion immediately afterwards expressed, that since
