Moral Letters to Lucilius

​Some of our school reply to this as follows: “Let us suppose that money is a good, from whatever source it is taken; yet money is not therefore derived from temple-robbery, even if it is taken from temple-robbery. Understand this in this way: in the same urn there is both gold and a viper. If you take the gold out of the urn because there is also a viper there, the urn, I say, does not therefore give me gold because it has a viper, but it gives gold although it also has a viper. In the same way, profit is made from temple-robbery, not because temple-robbery is shameful and criminal, but because it also has profit. Just as in that urn the viper is the evil, not the gold which lies with the viper, so in temple-robbery the crime is the evil, not the profit.”

​With whom I disagree; for the condition of each case is entirely different. In the former case, I can take the gold without the viper; in the latter, I cannot make profit without temple-robbery. That profit is not set alongside the crime, but mixed in with it.

”That which, while we wish to attain it, we fall into many evils, is not a good. But while we wish to attain riches, we fall into many evils; therefore, riches are not a good.” “Your proposition,” he says, “has two meanings: one, that while we wish to attain riches, we fall into many evils. But we fall into many evils even while we wish to attain virtue. Someone, while sailing for the sake of study, made shipwreck; someone was captured.

​The other meaning is as follows: that through which we fall into evils is not a good. It will not follow from this proposition that we fall into evils through riches or through pleasures; or if we fall into many evils through riches, riches are not only not a good, but they are an evil; yet you say that they are only not a good. Furthermore,” he says, “you concede that riches have some use. You number them among advantages; and yet, by the same reasoning, they will not even be an advantage. For through them many disadvantages happen to us.”

​To these some reply as follows: “You err who impute disadvantages to riches. They harm no one; either his own folly or another’s wickedness harms each person, just as a sword kills no one; it is the weapon of the one who kills. Riches do not therefore harm you, even if you are harmed because of riches.”

​Posidonius, as I think, speaks better, who says that riches are the cause of evils, not because they themselves do anything, but because they provoke those who will do it. For the efficient cause, which must immediately harm, is one thing, the preceding cause is another. Riches have this preceding cause; they puff up minds, produce pride, bring on envy, and alienate the mind to such an extent that the reputation of money delights us even though it is about to harm us.

​But it is fitting for all goods to be free from blame; they are pure, they do not corrupt minds, they do not disturb them. They do indeed elevate and expand them, but without swelling. Those which are goods produce confidence, riches produce audacity. Those which are goods give greatness of mind, riches insolence. But insolence is nothing else than a false appearance of greatness.

”In that way,” he says, “riches are also an evil, not only not a good.” They would be an evil and would themselves harm, if, as I said, they had an efficient cause; now they have a preceding cause, and indeed one that not only provokes minds but attracts them. For they spread a plausible appearance of good, credible to most people.