themselves with the fancy of their nobility, and are pleased with this conceit—­that they are descended from ancestors who have been held for some successions rich, and who have had great possessions; for this is all that makes nobility at present.  Yet they do not think themselves a whit the less noble, though their immediate parents have left none of this wealth to them, or though they themselves have squandered it away.  The Utopians have no better opinion of those who are much taken with gems and precious stones, and who account it a degree of happiness next to a divine one if they can purchase one that is very extraordinary, especially if it be of that sort of stones that is then in greatest request, for the same sort is not at all times universally of the same value, nor will men buy it unless it be dismounted and taken out of the gold.  The jeweller is then made to give good security, and required solemnly to swear that the stone is true, that, by such an exact caution, a false one might not be bought instead of a true; though, if you were to examine it, your eye could find no difference between the counterfeit and that which is true; so that they are all one to you, as much as if you were blind.  Or can it be thought that they who heap up a useless mass of wealth, not for any use that it is to bring them, but merely to please themselves with the contemplation of it, enjoy any true pleasure in it?  The delight they find is only a false shadow of joy.  Those are no better whose error is somewhat different from the former, and who hide it out of their fear of losing it; for what other name can fit the hiding it in the earth, or, rather, the restoring it to it again, it being thus cut off from being useful either to its owner or to the rest of mankind?  And yet the owner, having hid it carefully, is glad, because he thinks he is now sure of it.  If it should be stole, the owner, though he might live perhaps ten years after the theft, of which he knew nothing, would find no difference between his having or losing it, for both ways it was equally useless to him.

“Among those foolish pursuers of pleasure they reckon all that delight in hunting, in fowling, or gaming, of whose madness they have only heard, for they have no such things among them.  But they have asked us, ’What sort of pleasure is it that men can find in throwing the dice?’ (for if there were any pleasure in it, they think the doing it so often should give one a surfeit of it); ’and what pleasure can one find in hearing the barking and howling of dogs, which seem rather odious than pleasant sounds?’ Nor can they comprehend the pleasure of seeing dogs run after a hare, more than of seeing one dog run after another; for if the seeing them run is that which gives the pleasure, you have the same entertainment to the eye on both these occasions, since that is the same in both cases.  But if the pleasure lies in seeing the hare killed and torn by the dogs, this ought rather to stir pity, that a