Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/300

278 and transporting their natural appetite of things needful and necessary, into a disordinate lust to things dangerous, rare, hard to be gotten, and unprofitable when they be had. For never is any man poor in regard of such things as suffice nature; never doth he take up money upon usury for to buy himself meat, cheese, bread, or olives; but one indebteth himself for to build a sumptuous and stately house; another runs in debt because he would purchase a grove of olive trees that joineth to his own land; one is engaged deeply in the usurer's books, by laying corn-grounds and wheat-fields to his own domains, another because he would be possessed of fruitful vineyards; some are indebted with buying mules of Galatia, and others, because they would be masters

have cast themselves into the bottomless gulf of obligations, conditions, covenants, interests, statutes, real gages, and pawns: and afterwards it cometh to pass that like as they who drink when they be not dry, and eat without a stomach, many times cast up by vomit even that which they did eat and drink when they were hungry and thirsty; even so, when they will needs have such things as be superfluous and to no use, do not enjoy the benefit of those things that are needful and necessary indeed. Lo, what kind of people these be!

As for those who are at no cost, nor will lay out anything, and notwithstanding they have much, yet ever covet more; a man may rather marvel and wonder at them, if he would but remember that which Aristippus was wont to say: He that eateth much (quoth he) and drinketh likewise much, and is never satisfied nor full, goeth to the physicians, asketh their opinion what his disease and strange indisposition of the body might be, and withal craveth their counsel for the cure and remedy thereof: but if one who hath five fair bedsteads already with the furniture thereto belonging, and seeketh to make them ten; and having ten tables with their cupboards of plate, will needs buy ten more; and for all that he is possessed of fair manors and goodly lands, have his bags and coffers full of money, is never the better satisfied, but still gapeth after more, breaketh his sleeps, devising and casting as he lieth awake how to compass the same, and when he hath all, yet is he not full; such an one (I say) never thinks that he hath need of a physician to cure his malady or