I suppose you call a man rich just because his gold plate goes with him even on his travels, because he farms land in all the provinces, because he unrolls a large account-book, because he owns estates near the city so great that men would grudge his holding them in the waste lands of Apulia.
But after you have mentioned all these facts, he is poor. And why? He is in debt.
“To what extent?” you ask.
For all that he has. Or perchance you think it matters whether one has borrowed from another man or from Fortune.
What good is there in mules caparisoned in uniform livery? Or in decorated chariots and
“Steeds decked with purple and with tapestry,
With golden harness hanging from their necks,
Champing their yellow bits, all clothed in gold?”
Neither master nor mule is improved by such trappings.
But after you have mentioned all these facts, he is poor. And why? He is in debt.
“To what extent?” you ask.
For all that he has. Or perchance you think it matters whether one has borrowed from another man or from Fortune.
What good is there in mules caparisoned in uniform livery? Or in decorated chariots and
“Steeds decked with purple and with tapestry,
With golden harness hanging from their necks,
Champing their yellow bits, all clothed in gold?”
Neither master nor mule is improved by such trappings.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 87
Whenever Seneca starts to go on about the vices of the covetous, I am tempted to pick up the pace of my reading, assured that I have heard all of this before.
This is a mistake, however, since such a confirmation is exactly what I need to hear, again and again, as a remedy for the very moral wavering I described above. While I didn’t much enjoy it at the time, it was practicing my scales, over and over, that made me a passable musician, and it is now a regimen of frequent counsel that might help me to become a better man.
My students sometimes complain when I repeatedly remind them to correct a certain mistake, yet I gently point out that if they had already fixed it, then I wouldn’t need to nag them. I am well-advised to follow my own advice.
When I was in danger of becoming a maudlin drunk, it always helped me to recall the gory details of the last binge, so there could be no confusion about the outcome. Likewise, as I am enticed by the promises of trinkets and trophies, I deliberately consider the pitiful fate of those who define themselves by their riches.
Even as the affluence can produce an exterior splendor, how does it reflect our interior merits? Wealth does not make a man righteous, just as poverty does not make a man wicked, and no amount of hemming and hawing can change this fundamental fact.
If you reply that property may provide the means for countless good deeds, remember how the goodness must come from within the soul to begin with, and why the virtues can thrive both in prosperity and in privation.
Whenever Seneca starts to go on about the vices of the covetous, I am tempted to pick up the pace of my reading, assured that I have heard all of this before.
This is a mistake, however, since such a confirmation is exactly what I need to hear, again and again, as a remedy for the very moral wavering I described above. While I didn’t much enjoy it at the time, it was practicing my scales, over and over, that made me a passable musician, and it is now a regimen of frequent counsel that might help me to become a better man.
My students sometimes complain when I repeatedly remind them to correct a certain mistake, yet I gently point out that if they had already fixed it, then I wouldn’t need to nag them. I am well-advised to follow my own advice.
When I was in danger of becoming a maudlin drunk, it always helped me to recall the gory details of the last binge, so there could be no confusion about the outcome. Likewise, as I am enticed by the promises of trinkets and trophies, I deliberately consider the pitiful fate of those who define themselves by their riches.
Even as the affluence can produce an exterior splendor, how does it reflect our interior merits? Wealth does not make a man righteous, just as poverty does not make a man wicked, and no amount of hemming and hawing can change this fundamental fact.
If you reply that property may provide the means for countless good deeds, remember how the goodness must come from within the soul to begin with, and why the virtues can thrive both in prosperity and in privation.
To be rich is one thing, but to want to be rich is quite another.
The princes are in just as much debt as the paupers, though it is a bit easier for the pauper to walk away from it all with a clean conscience. On the proximate level, their big money is usually tied up in dicey investments, and on the ultimate level, their very comforts are always in the treacherous grips of Lady Fortune. The deficit is moral, and not merely financial.
To keep it simple, I turn to the old phrase: “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” The fixation on appearances is itself a fatal flaw, far worse than walking through the world with empty pockets.
—Reflection written in 2/2014
IMAGE: Heinrich Aldegrever, The Rich Man on His Deathbed (1554)
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