wealth! So true it is, that often and often, contrary to due filial
piety, the son meditates the death of the father; and most great and
most evident experience of this the Italians can have, both on the
banks of the Po and on the banks of the Tiber. And therefore Boethius
in the second chapter of his Consolations says: "Certainly Avarice
makes men hateful."

Nay, their possession is privation of good, for, possessing those
riches, a man does not give freely with generosity, which is a virtue,
which is a perfect good, and which makes men magnificent and beloved;
which does not lie in possession of those riches, but in ceasing to
possess them. Wherefore Boethius in the same book says: "Then money is
good when, bartered for other things, by the use of generosity one no
longer possesses it." Wherefore the baseness of riches is sufficiently
proved by all these remarks of his; and therefore the man with an
upright desire and true knowledge never loves them; and, not loving
them, he does not unite himself to them, but always desires them to be
far from himself, except inasmuch as they are appointed to some
necessary service; and it is a reasonable thing, since the perfect
cannot be united with the imperfect. So we see that the curved line
never joins the straight line, and if there be any conjunction, it is
not of line to line, but of point to point. And thus it follows that
the Mind which is upright in desire, and truthful in knowledge, is not
disheartened at the loss of wealth: as the text asserts at the end of
that part. And by this the text intends to prove that riches are as a
river flowing in the distance past the upright tower of Reason, or
rather of Nobility; and that these riches cannot take Nobility away
from him who has it. And in this manner in the present Song it is
argued against riches.

CHAPTER XIV.

Having confuted the error of other men in that part wherein it was
advanced in support of riches, it remains now to confute it in that
part where Time is said to be a cause of Nobility, saying, "Descent of
wealth;" and this reproof or confutation is made in that part which
begins: "They will not have the vile Turn noble." And in the first
place one confutes this by means of an argument taken from those men
themselves who err in this way; then, to their greater confusion, this
their argument is also destroyed; and it does this when it says, "It
follows then from this." Finally it concludes, their error b