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33

they value, they should value it at its worth.

First, comes the vulgus – Anglice, the mob. These place their summum
bonum in riches – riches in great quantities. And These are all in the wrong box –
though so many of them there be. In And reasons good, – for this wealth of
which the vulgus are so fond, – is but of small value be there ever so much of it. In
the first place, it is slippery and unsteady; in the next, it is not loved for its own
sake but for the sake of something else that is to be obtained for it, & in the third
place, is whom does it belong to? Not to the owner but to Fortune.† † p8.

It is slippery & unsteady – which is, in plain English, the varnish being
stripped off, it is liable to be lost. But it is not the question is, what is its worth, not to
him who has it not, but to him who has it. And, as is well observed by Adam Smith
in England at least – the country where the Tutor wrote, that for one man who has lost
what he had, you have a good thousand who have not only kept it, but added to it.
But these blindfold travellers in the paths of common place, are wholly heedless
of the history of man – heedless of the changes which times has introduced into
the value & security of wealth. That treasure which in ancient times might days was
thus with great propriety his associated with uncertainty & mutability might
now be made to represent possession in its maximum of security. In the heart of
Greece – in Athens, when Aristotle wrote, land was at two years purchase: in
England it is at worth thirty years purchase.

But It is not desired for its own sake – it is only desired because something
which is desired may be obtained in exchange for it. And if by it & for it a man gets
what he wants, in what respect is it the less valuable? If a man obtain the object
of his desire, what more would he have? And if he has not the summum bonum
itself, has he not something just as good as ever the summum bonum would be?

But, worst of all, – it is not ours – it is not in our possession but
in the temerity of Fortune. Non in nostrâ potestate, sed in Fortunæ Temeritate.
In this beautiful union of rhetoric with poetry – in this dance of Fortune between
the two tates, lies the strength of the argument, whose strength by the way, in
the process of being decanted out of Latin into English, mostly evaporates. And
what remains? but this – what which was told us before, – that wealth is a slippery
sort of thing – that it shifts glides out of people's hands – that it may drop glide out of ours –
for such news once telling might well have sufficed.

There may be something more. Yes! we learn that Fortune is
a woman – &that woman a rash one. Good in rhetoric – but this is a book
on Ethics. Good in rhetoric? No! not even this – for where design is not, neither
can rashness be.

Identifier: | JB/015/165/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 15.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	015	Main Headings	deontology
Folio number	165	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	linking material	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f33
Penner	sir john bowring	Watermarks	[[watermarks::[prince of wales feathers] i&m 1818]]
Marginals		Paper Producer	arthur wellesley, duke of wellington
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year	1818
Notes public		ID Number	5381
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