s this obscurity in the nature of possession of
currency, there is a charm in the seclusion of it, which is to some
people very enticing. In the enjoyment of real property, others must
partly share. The groom has some enjoyment of the stud, and the gardener
of the garden; but the money is, or seems, shut up; it is wholly
enviable. No one else can have part in any complacencies arising from
it.

The power of arithmetical comparison is also a great thing to
unimaginative people. They know always they are so much better than they
were, in money; so much better than others, in money; but wit cannot be
so compared, nor character. My neighbour cannot be convinced that I am
wiser than he is, but he can, that I am worth so much more; and the
universality of the conviction is no less flattering than its clearness.
Only a few can understand,--none measure--and few will willingly adore,
superiorities in other things; but everybody can understand money,
everybody can count it, and most will worship it.

86. Now, these various temptations to accumulation would be politically
harmless if what was vainly accumulated had any fair chance of being
wisely spent. For as accumulation cannot go on for ever, but must some
day end in its reverse--if this reverse were indeed a beneficial
distribution and use, as irrigation from reservoir, the fever of
gathering, though perilous to the gatherer, might be serviceable to the
community. But it constantly happens (so constantly, that it may be
stated as a political law having few exceptions), that what is
unreasonably gathered is also unreasonably spent by the persons into
whose hands it finally falls. Very frequently it is spent in war, or
else in a stupefying luxury, twice hurtful, both in being indulged by
the rich and witnessed by the poor. So that the _mal tener_ and _mal
dare_ are as correlative as complementary colours; and the circulation
of wealth, which ought to be soft, steady, strong, far-sweeping, and
full of warmth, like the Gulf stream, being narrowed into an eddy, and
concentrated at a point, changes into the alternate suction and
surrender of Charybdis. Which is indeed, I doubt not, the true meaning
of that marvellous fable, "infinite," as Bacon said of it, "in matter of
meditation."[43]

87. It is a strange habit of wise humanity to speak in enigmas only, so
that the highest truths and usefullest laws must be hunted for through
whole picture-galleries of dreams, which to the vul