Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/132

 baser when they are together. However, I can easily prove to thee by an example, and thou shalt clearly understand, that this present life is like unto a shadow, wherein no man can attain to true happiness. If a very mighty man were to be banished from his own land, or sent on his lord's errand, and came to a foreign country where he was quite unknown and unknowing, and whose language was entirely strange to him, thinkest thou that his power at home would make him honourable there? I know that it could not. If honours belonged naturally to wealth, or if wealth were really possessed by the wealthy man, they would not forsake him, but would accompany him, in whatever country he happened to be. But as they do not really belong to him they desert him, and because they are not in their nature good they vanish like a shadow or smoke. Though their false hope and imagination lead fools to believe that power and wealth are the highest good, yet it is quite otherwise. When a man of great wealth happens to be either in a foreign land or among the wise men of his own country, his wealth counts for nothing, for then men perceive that they owe their distinction not to any virtue of their own but to the applause of the silly people. If then they derived any special or natural good from this power, they would keep this good, even though they lost their power, and instead of forsaking them this natural good would ever cleave unto them and make them respected in whatever land they were.

Now thou mayest understand that wealth and power