by the nature of the case,
can be the lot of but a limited number.

Eminent above all other conceptions of temporal good, is that which
makes it to consist emphatically in the possession of money, or the
ability to command it by its equivalents. And because the capacities
of enjoyment have never been measured, nor material wealth rationally
estimated as a means of meeting those capacities, riches are prized,
not as a means, but an end; and becoming themselves the end, no amount
of possession lessens the desire to accumulate.

A just philosophy argues on the case, that all cannot be rich, in the
common acceptation of the term, whether be considered the limits to
earth's productiveness, and the possibility of increasing material
wealth; or whether, _rich_ being more a relative than an absolute term,
that the supposition of _all rich_ is self-contradictory: therefore,
in a juster sense, the supposition of all rich must be admissible;--the
sense, namely, that whenever riches shall be reasonably estimated
simply as the means of meeting capacities of enjoyment surveyed and
known, then it will be found that the earth's productiveness, and the
stock of material wealth, admit each to take to the fullness of his
wants, leaving enough for all who come after.

It is further the office of Philosophy to show in detail, what is thus
wrought out as a conclusion from general principles; to show how much
is consumed by artificial wants, and subjection to the tyranny of
fashion; to show how the correction of factitious desires would leave
natural and rational desires for better enjoyment than is now found, so
that self-love would find not occasion for envy, or repining at a
brother's prosperity.

The unceasing desire to become richer would be, however, but a
mitigated evil, if men sought only wealth by production. The
aggravation of the case is, that they whom the desire most impels, seek
the increase of their own store, not by producing, but by contriving to
turn to their own stock the avails of the industry of others. Our
young men, in deplorable numbers, slide into the persuasion, that any
means of living and thriving are better than productive industry.
Hence the rush into trade, the professions, into speculations, where
the hazards are such, that the cool calculations of pure avarice would
rather incline a man to prefer the prospect of growing rich by digging
the earth. So much the preference of contrivance to labor overmaste