As the place of Courage amongst the virtues is a matter of doubt, so is that of Avarice amongst the vices.  It must not, however, be confounded with greed, which is the most immediate meaning of the Latin word avaritia.  Let us then draw up and examine the arguments pro et contra in regard to Avarice, and leave the final judgment to be formed by every man for himself.

On the one hand it is argued that it is not Avarice which is a vice, but extravagance, its opposite.  Extravagance springs from a brutish limitation to the present moment, in comparison with which the future, existing as it does only in thought, is as nothing.  It rests upon the illusion that sensual pleasures possess a positive or real value.  Accordingly, future need and misery is the price at which the spendthrift purchases pleasures that are empty, fleeting, and often no more than imaginary; or else feeds his vain, stupid self-conceit on the bows and scrapes of parasites who laugh at him in secret, or on the gaze of the mob and those who envy his magnificence.  We should, therefore, shun the spendthrift as though he had the plague, and on discovering his vice break with him betimes, in order that later on, when the consequences of his extravagance ensue, we may neither have to help to bear them, nor, on the other hand, have to play the part of the friends of Timon of Athens.

At the same time it is not to be expected that he who foolishly squanders his own fortune will leave another man’s intact, if it should chance to be committed to his keeping; nay, sui profusus and alieni appetens are by Sallust very rightly conjoined.  Hence it is that extravagance leads not only to impoverishment but also to crime; and crime amongst the moneyed classes is almost always the result of extravagance.  It is accordingly with justice that the Koran declares all spendthrifts to be “brothers of Satan.”

But it is superfluity that Avarice brings in its train, and when was superfluity ever unwelcome?  That must be a good vice which has good consequences.  Avarice proceeds upon the principle that all pleasure is only negative in its operation and that the happiness which consists of a series of pleasures is a chimaera; that, on the contrary, it is pains which are positive and extremely real.  Accordingly, the avaricious man foregoes the former in order that he may be the better preserved from the latter, and thus it is that bear and forbear—­sustine et abstine—­is his maxim.  And because he knows, further, how inexhaustible are the possibilities of misfortune, and how innumerable the paths of danger, he increases the means of avoiding them, in order, if possible, to surround himself with a triple wall of protection.  Who, then, can say where precaution against disaster begins to be exaggerated?  He alone who knows where the malignity of fate reaches its limit.  And even if precaution were exaggerated it is an error