AVARICE AND AMBITION ARE INSATIABLE AND RESTLESS.
The man that would be truly rich must not increase his fortune, but
retrench his appetites: for riches are not only superfluous, but mean,
and little more to the possessor than to the looker-on. What is the
end of ambition and avarice, when at best we are but stewards of what
we falsely call our own? All those things that we pursue with so much
hazard and expense of blood, as well to keep as to get, for which we
break faith and friendship, what are they but the mere _deposita_ of
Fortune? and not ours, but already inclining toward a new master.
There is nothing our own but that which we give to ourselves, and of
which we have a certain and an inexpugnable possession. Avarice is
so insatiable, that it is not in the power of liberality to content
it; and our desires are so boundless, that whatever we get is but in
the way to getting more without end: and so long as we are solicitous
for the increase of wealth, we lose the true use of it; and spend our
time in putting out, calling in, and passing our accounts, without
any substantial benefit, either to the world or to ourselves. What is
the difference betwixt old men and children? the one cries for nuts
and apples, and the other for gold and silver: the one sets up courts
of justice, hears and determines, acquits and condemns, in jest; the
other in earnest: the one makes houses of clay, the other of marble:
so that the works of old men are nothing in the world but the progress
and improvement of children’s errors; and they are to be admonished and
punished too like children, not in revenge for injuries received, but
as a correction of injuries done, and to make them give over. There
is some substance yet in gold and silver; but as to judgments and
statutes, procuration and continuance-money, these are only the visions
and dreams of avarice. Throw a crust of bread to a dog, he takes it
open-mouthed, swallows it whole, and presently gapes for more: just so
do we with the gifts of Fortune; down they go without chewing, and we
are immediately ready for another chop. But what has avarice now to do
with gold and silver, that is so much outdone by curiosities of a far
greater value? Let us no longer complain that there was not a heavier
load laid upon those precious metals, or that they were not buried
deep enough, when we have found out ways by wax and parchments, and
by bloody usurious contracts, to undo one another. It is remarkable,
that Providence has given us all things for our advantage near at hand;
but iron, gold, and silver, (being both the instrument of blood and
slaughter, and the price of it) Nature has hidden in the bowels of the
earth.
There is no avarice without some punishment, over and above that which
it is to itself. How miserable is it in the desire! how miserable even
in the attaining of our ends! For money is a greater torment in the
possession than it is in the pursuit. The fear of losing it is a great
trouble, the loss of it a greater, and it is made a greater yet by
opinion. Nay, even in the case of no direct loss at all, the covetous
man loses what he does not get. It is true, the people call the rich
man a happy man, and wish themselves in his condition; but can any
condition be worse than that which carries vexation and envy along with
it? Neither is any man to boast of his fortune, his herds of cattle,
his number of slaves, his lands and palaces; for comparing that which
he has to that which he further covets, he is a beggar. No man can
possess all things, but any man may contemn them; and the contempt of
riches is the nearest way to the gaining of them.
Some magistrates are made for money, and those commonly are bribed with
money. We are all turned merchants, and look not into the quality of
things, but into the price of them; for reward we are pious, and for
reward again we are impious. We are honest so long as we may thrive
upon it; but if the devil himself gives better wages, we change our
party. Our parents have trained us up into an admiration of gold and
silver, and the love of it is grown up with us to that degree that
when we would show our gratitude to Heaven, we make presents of those
metals. This it is that makes poverty look like a curse and a reproach;
and the poets help it forward; the chariot of the sun must be all of
gold; the best of times must be the Golden Age, and thus they turn the
greatest misery of mankind into the greatest blessings.
Neither does avarice make us only unhappy in ourselves, but malevolent
also to mankind. The soldier wishes for war; the husbandman would have
his corn dear; the lawyer prays for dissension; the physician for a
sickly year; he that deals in curiosities, for luxury and excess, for
he makes up his fortunes out of the corruptions of the age. High winds
and public conflagrations make work for the carpenter and bricklayer,
and one man lives by the loss of another; some few, perhaps, have
the fortune to be detected, but they are all wicked alike. A great
plague makes work for the sexton; and, in one word, whosoever gains
by the dead has not much kindness for the living. Demades of Athens
condemned a fellow that sold necessaries for funerals, upon proof that
he wished to make himself a fortune by his trade, which could not be
but by a great mortality; but perhaps he did not so much desire to have
many customers, as to sell dear, and buy cheap; besides, that all of
that trade might have been condemned as well as he. Whatsoever whets
our appetites, flatters and depresses the mind, and, by dilating it,
weakens it; first blowing it up, and then filling and deluding it with
vanity.
To proceed now from the most prostitute of all vices, sensuality and
avarice, to that which passes in the world for the most generous, the
thirst of glory and dominion. If they that run mad after wealth and
honor, could but look into the hearts of them that have already gained
these points, how would it startle them to see those hideous cares and
crimes that wait upon ambitious greatness: all those acquisitions that
dazzle the eyes of the vulgar are but false pleasures, slippery and
uncertain. They are achieved with labor, and the very guard of them is
painful. Ambition puffs us up with vanity and wind: and we are equally
troubled either to see any body before us, or nobody behind us; so that
we lie under a double envy; for whosoever envies another is also envied
himself. What matters it how far Alexander extended his conquests,
if he was not yet satisfied with what he had? Every man wants as
much as he covets; and it is lost labor to pour into a vessel that
will never be full. He that had subdued so many princes and nations,
upon the killing of Clytus (one friend) and the loss of Hyphestion
(another) delivered himself up to anger and sadness; and when he was
master of the world, he was yet a slave to his passions. Look into
Cyrus, Cambyses, and the whole Persian line, and you shall not find so
much as one man of them that died satisfied with what he had gotten.
Ambition aspires from great things to greater; and propounds matters
even impossible, when it has once arrived at things beyond expectation.
It is a kind of dropsy; the more a man drinks, the more he covets. Let
any man but observe the tumults and the crowds that attend palaces;
what affronts must we endure to be admitted, and how much greater when
we are in! The passage to virtue is fair, but the way to greatness
is craggy and it stands not only upon a precipice, but upon ice too;
and yet it is a hard matter to convince a great man that his station
is slippery, or to prevail with him not to depend upon his greatness;
but all superfluities are hurtful. A rank crop lays the corn; too
great a burden of fruit breaks the bough; and our minds may be as well
overcharged with an immoderate happiness. Nay, though we ourselves
would be at rest, our fortune will not suffer it: the way that leads
to honor and riches leads to troubles; and we find the source of our
sorrows in the very objects of our delights.
What joy is there in feasting and luxury; in ambition and a crowd of
clients; in the arms of a mistress, or in the vanity of an unprofitable
knowledge? These short and false pleasures deceive us, and, like
drunkenness, revenge the jolly madness of _one_ hour with the nauseous
and sad repentance of _many_. Ambition is like a gulf: everything is
swallowed up in it and buried, beside the dangerous consequences of
it; for that which one has taken from all, may be easily taken away
again by all from one. It was not either virtue or reason, but the
mad love of a deceitful greatness, that animated Pompey in his wars,
either abroad or at home. What was it but his ambition that hurried
him to Spain, Africa, and elsewhere, when he was too great already
in everybody’s opinion but his own? And the same motive had Julius
Cæsar, who could not, even then, brook a superior himself, when the
commonwealth had submitted unto two already.
Nor was it any instinct of virtue that pushed on Marius, who at the
head of an army was himself led on under the command of ambition: but
he came at last to the deserved fate of other wicked men, and to drink
himself of the same cup that he had filled to others. We impose upon
our reason, when we suffer ourselves to be transported with titles; for
we know that they are nothing but a more glorious sound; and so for
ornaments and gildings, though there be a lustre to dazzle our eyes,
our understanding tells us that it is only outside, and the matter
under it is only coarse and common.
I will never envy those that the people call great and happy. A sound
mind is not to be shaken with a popular and vain applause; nor is it
in the power of their pride to disturb the state of our happiness. An
honest man is known now-a-days by the dust he raises upon the way, and
it is become a point of honor to overrun people, and keep all at a
distance; though he that is put out of the way may perchance be happier
than he that takes it. He that would exercise a power profitable to
himself, and grievous to nobody else, let him practice it upon his
passion. They that have burnt cities, otherwise invincible, driven
armies before them, and bathed themselves in human blood, after they
have overcome all open enemies, they have been vanquished by their
lust, by their cruelty, and without any resistance.
Alexander was possessed with the madness of laying kingdoms waste.
He began with Greece, where he was brought up; and there he quarried
himself upon that in it which was the best; he enslaved Lacedemon, and
silenced Athens: nor was he content with the destruction of those towns
which his father Philip had either conquered or bought; but he made
himself the enemy of human nature; and, like the worst of beasts, he
worried what he could not eat.
Felicity is an unquiet thing; it torments itself, and puzzles the
brain. It makes some people ambitious, others luxurious; it puffs up
some, and softens others; only (as it is with wine) some heads bear
it better than others; but it dissolves all. Greatness stands upon a
precipice: and if prosperity carries a man never so little beyond his
poise, it overbears and dashes him to pieces. It is a rare thing for
a man in a great fortune to lay down his happiness gently; it being a
common fate for a man to sink under the weight of those felicities that
raise him. How many of the nobility did Marius bring down to herdsmen
and other mean offices! Nay, in the very moment of our despising
servants, we may be made so ourselves.