Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/305

Rh they have gotten together from all parts, with their cunning casts and subtle shifts. And therefore, like as we have in greater hatred and detestation, vipers, the venomous flies cantharides, and the stinging spiders called philangia and tarantale, than either bears or lions, for that they kill folk and sting them to death; but receive no good or benefit at all by them when they are dead; even so be these wretches more odious and worthy to be hated of us, who by their miserable parsimony and pinching do mischief, than those who by their riot and wastefulness be hurtful to a commonweal, because they take and catch from others that which they themselves neither will nor know how to use. Whereupon it is that such as these, when they have gotten abundance, and are in manner full, rest them for a while, and do no more violence as it were in time of truce and surcease of hostility; much after the manner as Demosthenes said unto them who thought that Demades had given over all his lewdness and knavery: O (quoth he), you see him now full as lions are, who when they have filled their bellies, prey no more for the lice until they be hungry again: but such covetous wretches as be employed in government of civil affairs, and that for no profit nor pleasure at all which they intend, those, I say, never rest nor make holiday, they allow themselves no truce nor cessation from gathering and heaping more together still, as being evermore empty, and have always need of all things though they have all.

But some man perhaps will say: These men (I assure you) do save and lay up goods in store for their children and heirs after their death, unto whom whiles they live they will part with nothing: If that be so, I can compare them very well to those mice and cats in gold mines, which feed upon the gold ore, and lick up all the golden sand that the mines yield, so that men cannot come by the gold there before they be dead and cut up in manner of anatomies. But tell me (I pray you) wherefore are these so willing to treasure up so much money and so great substance, and leave the same to their children, inheritors and successors after them? I verily believe to this end, that those children and heirs also of theirs should keep the same still for others likewise, and so to pass from hand to hand by descent of many degrees; like as earthen conduct-pipes, by which water is conveyed into some cistern, withhold and retain none of all the water that passeth through them, but do transmit and send all away from them, each one to that which is next, and reserve none to themselves; thus do they until some arise from