Many poor men, younger sons, and so on, are driven to beg or steal by bad government and an idle upbringing, since they are generally trained for no occupation, and then hanged for theft. What could be more disgraceful? “Many executions are no less shameful to a ruler than many funerals to a physician.” The fault lies with the governors. “They beat more readily than they teach,” like schoolmasters who would rather punish pupils than teach them when they go wrong. They should take far greater care, through good government, to prevent theft and begging and remove their causes, instead of letting people continue to their destruction, as they do. They should likewise root out the causes of wrangling—the multitude of lawyers—and settle disputes, “lawsuits that last five years or a century,” by some shorter method.

As it is, they go to law over every toy and trifle. “The maddened court bellows with lawsuits, and the fury of the disputants rages against each other.” They are ready to tear one another’s throats out, and, for profit, “to squeeze blood,” as Jerome says, “from their brother’s heart”; to slander, lie, disgrace, backbite, abuse, bear false witness, swear oaths and break them, fight and wrangle, spend their possessions, lives, fortunes, and friendships, and ruin one another. All to enrich some harpy of a lawyer who preys on both sides and cries, “Go on, Socrates! Go on, Xanthippe!” Or some corrupt judge who, like the kite in Aesop, carries off both the mouse and the frog while they fight.

In general, they prey on one another like ravenous birds, savage beasts, or voracious fish. “There is no middle course: everyone here is either hunted or a hunter, either a corpse being torn apart or a raven doing the tearing.” Deceive or be deceived; tear others apart or be torn apart yourself. Like buckets in a well: as one rises, another falls; one is empty, another full. One man’s ruin is a ladder for a third. Such is our ordinary way of doing things.

What is the marketplace? A place, according to Anacharsis, where people cheat one another—a trap. Indeed, what is the world itself? A vast chaos, a confusion of conduct, as changeable as the air, “a dwelling place of madmen,” a disorderly crowd full of corruption, a market of wandering spirits and goblins, a theatre of hypocrisy, a shop of knavery and flattery, a nursery of villainy, a stage for babbling, a school of fickleness, an academy of vice; a war “in which you must fight, willing or unwilling, and either conquer or succumb”—kill or be killed; where everyone pursues his own private ends and stands on guard for himself.

No charity, love, friendship, fear of God, alliance, marriage tie, blood relationship, or Christian faith can restrain them. If they are offended in any way, or their self-interest is touched, they turn vicious. Old friends suddenly become bitter enemies over trifles and small offences. Those who once willingly performed every mutual act of love and kindness now abuse and persecute one another to death, with more than Vatinian hatred, and refuse reconciliation.

They love one another as long as they are useful, or can serve each other’s purposes. But when there is no further benefit to be expected, they hang a man or dismiss him, as they would an old dog. Cato considers it a great “impropriety” to treat people like old shoes or broken glasses thrown onto the rubbish heap. He could not bring himself to sell an old ox, much less dismiss an old servant. Yet these men abuse their servant instead of rewarding him; once they have made him an instrument of their wickedness, they kill him, as Bayezid II, emperor of the Turks, did Ahmed Pasha, or repay him with deadly hatred, as Tiberius treated Silius.

In a word, everyone pursues his own ends. Our “highest good” is profit, and the goddess we worship is “the goddess Money,” Queen Money, to whom we sacrifice daily. She directs our hearts, hands, affections—everything. This most powerful goddess raises us up, casts us down, promotes us, gives us standing; she alone commands our actions. For money we pray, run, ride, go, come, labour, and compete like fish for a crumb dropped into the water.

We are respected for money, greatness, office, rank, and authority, rather than worth, virtue—which is “a good fit for the stage”—wisdom, courage, learning, honesty, religion, or any ability. Honesty is counted folly; knavery, shrewdness. People are admired on the strength of reputation, for what they seem rather than what they are. There is such evasion, lying, cheating, plotting, counterplotting, trimming, flattery, fraud, and pretence that a person who conforms to the world must gravely offend God, “playing the Cretan with a Cretan,” or else live in contempt, disgrace, and misery.

One assumes an air of temperance and holiness, another of austerity, a third of studied simplicity, when in fact he, and he, and he, and all the rest are hypocrites, double-dealers, mere exteriors, so many pictures that change as you turn them: a lion on one side, a lamb on the other. How would Democritus have felt at the sight of these things?