common drama, which we see
re-enacted in every family and in which every one of us has been and
will be an actor--to-day as a young radical who innovates customs,
to-morrow as an old conservative, out-of-date and malcontent in the
eyes of the young; a drama, petty and common, which no one longer
regards, so frequent is it and so frivolous it seems, but which,
instead, is one of the greatest motive forces in human history--in
greater or less degree, under different forms, active in all times and
operating everywhere. On account of it no generation can live quietly
on the wealth gathered, with the ideas discovered by antecedent
generations, but is constrained to create new ideas, to make new and
greater wealth by all the means at its disposal--by war and conquest,
by agriculture and industry, by religion and science. On account of
it, families, classes, nations, that do not succeed in adding to
their possessions, are destined to be impoverished, because, wants
increasing, it is necessary, in order to satisfy them, to consume the
accumulated capital, to make debts, and, little by little, to go to
ruin. Because of this ambition, ever reborn, classes renew themselves
in every nation. Opulent families after a few generations are
gradually impoverished; they decay and disappear, and from the
multitudinous poor arise new families, creating the new _elite_ which
continues under differing forms the doings and traditions of the old.
Because of this unrest, the earth is always stirred up by a fervour
for deeds or adventure--attempts that take shape according to the
age: now peoples make war on each other, now they rend themselves in
revolutions, now they seek new lands, explore, conquer, exploit; again
they perfect arts and industries, enlarge commerce, cultivate
the earth with greater assiduity; and yet again, in the ages more
laborious, like ours, they do all these things at the same time--an
activity immense and continuous. But its motive force is always the
need of the new generations, that, starting from the point at which
their predecessors had arrived, desire to advance yet farther--to
enjoy, to know, to possess yet more.

The ancient writers understood this thoroughly: what they called
"corruption" was but the change in customs and wants, proceeding from
generation to generation, and in its essence the same as that which
takes place about us to-day. The _avaritia_ of which they complained
so much, was the greed and impati