VINCENT:  Marry, uncle, but the less surety we have to keep it, since it is a great commodity to have it, so much more the loth we are to forgo it.

ANTHONY:  That reason shall I, cousin, turn against yourself.  For if it be so as you say, that since the things be commodious, the less surety that you see you have of keeping them, the more cause you have to be afraid of losing them; then on the other hand the more a thing is of its nature such that its commodity bringeth a man little surety and much fear, that thing of reason the less we have cause to love.  And then, the less cause we have to love a thing, the less cause have we to care for it or fear its loss, or be loth to go from it.

VII

We shall yet, cousin, consider in these outward goods of fortune—­as riches, good name, honest estimation, honourable fame, and authority—­in all these things we shall, I say, consider that we love them and set by them either as things commodious unto us for the state and condition of this present life, or else as things that we purpose by the good use of them to make matter of our merit, with God’s help, in the life to come.

Let us then first consider them as things set by and beloved for the pleasure and commodity of them for this present life.

VIII

Now, as for riches, if we consider it well, the commodity that we take of it is not so great as our own foolish affection and fancy maketh us imagine it.  I deny not that it maketh us go much more gay and glorious in sight, garnished in silk—­but wool is almost as warm!  It maketh us have great plenty of many kinds of delicate and delicious victuals, and thereby to make more excess—­but less exquisite and less superfluous fare, with fewer surfeits and fewer fevers too, would be almost as wholesome!  Then, the labour in getting riches, the fear in keeping them, and the pain in parting from them, do more than counterweight a great part of all the pleasure and commodity that they bring.

Besides this, riches are the thing that taketh many times from its master all his pleasure and his life, too.  For many a man is slain for his riches.  And some keep their riches as a thing pleasant and commodious for their life, take none other pleasure of it in all their life than as though they bore the key of another man’s coffer.  For they are content to live miserably in neediness all their days, rather than to find it in their heart to diminish their hoard, they have such a fancy to look thereon.  Yea, and some men, for fear lest thieves should steal it from them, are their own thieves and steal it from themselves.  For they dare not so much as let it lie where they themselves may look on it, but put it in a pot and hide it in the ground, and there let it lie safe till they die—­and sometimes seven years thereafter.  And if the pot had been stolen away from that place five years before the man’s death, then all the same five years he lived thereafter, thinking always that his pot lay safe still, since he never occupied it afterward, what had he been the poorer?