sness from being counted
in thy riches, but rather thou hast chosen to count them in thy riches
because they seemed to thee precious.

'Then, what seek ye by all this noisy outcry about fortune? To chase
away poverty, I ween, by means of abundance. And yet ye find the result
just contrary. Why, this varied array of precious furniture needs more
accessories for its protection; it is a true saying that they want most
who possess most, and, conversely, they want very little who measure
their abundance by nature's requirements, not by the superfluity of vain
display. Have ye no good of your own implanted within you, that ye seek
your good in things external and separate? Is the nature of things so
reversed that a creature divine by right of reason can in no other way
be splendid in his own eyes save by the possession of lifeless chattels?
Yet, while other things are content with their own, ye who in your
intellect are God-like seek from the lowest of things adornment for a
nature of supreme excellence, and perceive not how great a wrong ye do
your Maker. His will was that mankind should excel all things on earth.
Ye thrust down your worth beneath the lowest of things. For if that in
which each thing finds its good is plainly more precious than that whose
good it is, by your own estimation ye put yourselves below the vilest of
things, when ye deem these vile things to be your good: nor does this
fall out undeservedly. Indeed, man is so constituted that he then only
excels other things when he knows himself; but he is brought lower than
the beasts if he lose this self-knowledge. For that other creatures
should be ignorant of themselves is natural; in man it shows as a
defect. How extravagant, then, is this error of yours, in thinking that
anything can be embellished by adornments not its own. It cannot be. For
if such accessories add any lustre, it is the accessories that get the
praise, while that which they veil and cover remains in its pristine
ugliness. And again I say, That is no _good_, which injures its
possessor. Is this untrue? No, quite true, thou sayest. And yet riches
have often hurt those that possessed them, since the worst of men, who
are all the more covetous by reason of their wickedness, think none but
themselves worthy to possess all the gold and gems the world contains.
So thou, who now dreadest pike and sword, mightest have trolled a carol
"in the robber's face," hadst thou entered the road of life with em