Subsection 12. Love of money. Covetousness as a cause.

Plutarch, in his book on whether diseases of the body are more grievous than those of the soul, holds that if you examine all the causes of our miseries in this life, you will find that most began in stubborn anger, that furious desire for conflict, or some unjust or immoderate passion, such as covetousness.

“Where do the wars and conflicts among you come from?” Saint James asks. I will add usury, fraud, robbery, simony, oppression, lying, swearing, bearing false witness and the rest. Do they not flow from this fountain of covetousness: greed in acquiring, obstinacy in keeping, meanness in spending? Their wickedness and injustice towards God, their neighbours and themselves all come from here.

“The desire for money is the root of all evil, and those who crave it pierce themselves with many sorrows,” 1 Timothy 6:10. Hippocrates therefore gives this good advice in his letter to the herbalist Crateuas: if possible, among his other herbs he should cut up the weed of covetousness by the roots, leaving none of it behind. Then, know this for certain: along with their bodies, you may quickly cure all the diseases of their minds.

For covetousness is indeed the pattern, image and epitome of all melancholy, the fountain of many miseries, of much discontented care and woe: this inordinate or immoderate desire for gain, to acquire or keep money, as Bonaventure defines it. Or, as Augustine describes it, a madness of the soul; Gregory, a torture; Chrysostom, an insatiable drunkenness; Cyprian, blindness, “a splendid punishment,” a plague overthrowing kingdoms and families, an incurable disease.

Budé calls it a bad disposition, yielding to no remedies: neither Asclepius nor Plutus can cure such people. A continual plague, says Solomon, and vexation of spirit; another hell. I know that some think covetous men happy and worldly-wise, that there is more pleasure in acquiring wealth than in spending it, and no delight in the world to equal it.

It was Bias’s question of old: “What do you never tire of?” “Getting money.” “What is most delightful?” “Making a profit.” What do you suppose makes a poor man labour all his life, carry such heavy burdens, eat so poorly, wear himself away, endure so much misery, perform such menial tasks with such patience, rise early and lie down late, unless there is an extraordinary delight in getting and keeping money?

What makes a merchant who lacks nothing, with “enough and more than enough at home,” range all over the world through those intemperate zones of heat and cold, willingly risk his life, and accept such wretched hunger and filthy conditions in a stinking ship, unless the pleasure and hope of getting money give a relish to the rest and soften his unremitting toil?

What makes them go into the bowels of the earth, a hundred fathoms deep, risking their precious lives, enduring poisonous vapours and foul smells, when they already have enough if only they could be content, and have no such need to labour—what but the extraordinary delight they take in riches?

This may seem plausible at first sight, a persuasive and powerful argument. But let anyone who thinks so consider it more closely, and he will soon see that things are very different from what he supposes. It may perhaps be pleasant at first, as almost all melancholy is. Such men generally have some “lucid intervals,” with pleasant symptoms mixed in. But you must remember Chrysostom’s distinction: it is one thing to be rich, another to be covetous.

Generally they are all fools, simpletons, madmen, miserable wretches, living out of their senses, “without the art of enjoyment,” in perpetual slavery, fear, suspicion, sorrow and discontent: “they have more aloes than honey.” Indeed, they are possessed by their money rather than its possessors.

As Cyprian puts it, they are “enslaved to money,” bound apprentice to their goods, as Pliny says; or, as Chrysostom calls them, “slaves of riches,” slaves and drudges to their possessions. We may conclude of them all what Valerius says of Ptolemy, king of Cyprus: in title he was king of that island, but in his mind a miserable drudge to money.

Lacking freedom, More precious than metals.

Lacking his liberty, which is better than gold. Damasippus the Stoic in Horace proves that all mortals have their fits of folly, some in one way, some in another, but that covetous men are madder than the rest. Whoever looks closely into their condition and examines their symptoms will find nothing better to say of them than that they are all fools, as Nabal was, “in fact and in name” (1 Kings 15).

For what greater folly or madness can there be than to wear himself away when he need not? And when, as Cyprian observes, he could free himself from his burden and relieve his pains, he still goes on as his wealth increases: getting more when he has enough, living out of his senses, starving his own appetite for enjoyment, withholding from his wife and children, allowing neither them nor other friends to use or enjoy what is rightfully theirs and perhaps badly needed.

Like a hog, or a dog in the manger, he merely keeps it so that it can do nobody else any good, harming himself and others; and for a little fleeting gain he damns his own soul. Such men are generally sad and sour by nature, as Ahab was in spirit because he could not obtain Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 22). If he ever spends his money, even on necessities or for his own children’s benefit, he brawls and scolds. His heart is heavy; he is deeply troubled and reluctant to part with it.