Lands and possessions many men esteem much more yet than money,
because the lands seem not so casual as money is, or plate. For
though their other substance may be stolen and taken away, yet
evermore they think that their land will lie still where it lay.
But what are we the better that our land cannot be stirred, but
will lie still where it lay, since we ourselves may be removed and
not suffered to come near it? What great difference is there to us,
whether our substance be movable or unmovable, since we be so
movable ourselves that we may be removed from them both and lose
them both twain? Yet sometimes in the money is the surety somewhat
more. For when we be fain ourselves to flee, we may make shift to
carry some of our money with us, whereas of our land we cannot
carry one inch.
If our land be a thing of more surety than our money, how happeth
it then that in this persecution we are more afraid to lose it? For
if it be a thing of more surety, then can it not so soon be lost.
In the transfer of these two great empires--Greece first, since I
myself was born, and after Syria, since you were born too--the land
was lost before the money was found!
Oh, Cousin Vincent, if the whole world were animated with a
reasonable soul, as Plato thought it were, and if it had wit and
understanding to mark and perceive everything, Lord God, how the
ground on which a prince buildeth his palace would loud laugh its
lord to scorn, when it saw him proud of his possession and heard
him boast himself that he and his blood are for ever the very lords
and owners of the land! For then would the ground think the while,
to itself, "Ah, thou poor soul, who thinkest thou wert half a god,
and art amid thy glory but a man in a gay gown! I who am the ground
here, over whom thou are so proud, have had a hundred such owners
of me as thou callest thyself, more than ever thou hast heard the
names of. And some of them who went proudly over mine head now lie
low in my belly, and my side lieth over them. And many a one shall,
as thou does now, call himself mine owner after thee, who shall
neither be kin to thy blood nor have heard any word of thy name."
Who owned your village, cousin, three thousand years ago?
VINCENT: Three thousand, uncle? Nay, nay, in any king, Christian
or heathen, you may strike off a third part of that well
enough--and, as far as I know, half of the rest, too. In far fewer
years than three thousand it may well fortune that a poor
ploughman's blood may come up to a kingdom, and a king's right
royal kin on the other hand fall down to the plough and cart, and
neither that king know that ever he came from the cart, nor that
carter know that ever he came from the crown.
ANTHONY: We find, Cousin Vincent, in full ancient stories many
strange changes as marvellous as that, come about in the compass of
very few years, in effect. And are such things then in reason so
greatly to be set by, that we should esteem the loss so great, when
we see that in keeping them our surety is so little?
VINCENT: Marry, uncle, but the less surety we have to keep it,
since it is a great commodity to have it, so much more the loth we
are to forgo it.
ANTHONY: That reason shall I, cousin, turn against yourself. For
if it be so as you say, that since the things be commodious, the
less surety that you see you have of keeping them, the more cause
you have to be afraid of losing them; then on the other hand the
more a thing is of its nature such that its commodity bringeth a
man little surety and much fear, that thing of reason the less we
have cause to love. And then, the less cause we have to love a
thing, the less cause have we to care for it or fear its loss, or
be loth to go from it.