Let us first observe that prodigality, which is the opposite of avarice, is not always the opposite of cupidity. The need of spending engenders necessarily the need of obtaining and gaining as much money as possible; and the prodigal, if he is not so in the beginning, very soon becomes covetous, through the exhaustion of his resources. "Most prodigals," says Aristotle, "become greedy and grasping, because they always wish to spend at their will. Their own resources being soon exhausted, they must needs procure others; and as they scarcely take thought about dignity and honor, they appropriate without scruple, and as they can." We should, therefore, not view prodigality as a noble independence in respect to riches. It is so in the beginning, in fact, with young rich people; but they soon find out the limits of their great fortunes, and then begins their slavery in respect to those very goods they made at first so light of. Prudence and our own interest teach us, of course, sufficiently that prodigality is a stupid vice, and that it is absurd to sacrifice the wants of to-morrow to the pleasures of to-day. Simple common-sense advises economy and saving. But for this very reason may we ask, with Kant: "whether they deserve the name of virtues; and whether prodigality even, inasmuch as it tends to an unexpected indigence, should not be called an imprudence rather than a vice?" We shall say in reply that self-interest well understood becomes itself a duty when in opposition to passion. For instance, if, on the one side, passion lures me on to procure to myself a certain pleasure, and that, on the other, self-interest shows that this pleasure imperils my health, it is certain that _duty_ in this circumstance commands me to prefer my health to a momentary pleasure.[100] Prudence, then, is but the exercise of a more general duty, which, if not the basis, is at least the condition of all the others: the duty of self-preservation. Economy and saving are not only a duty of self-preservation, but also a duty of dignity: for experience teaches us that poverty and misery bring us into the dependency of others and that want leads to beggary. He who knows how to husband his means of existence, secures for himself in the future not only his livelihood, but also independence; in depriving himself of fleeting and commonplace pleasures, he buys what is far better, namely, dignity. "Be economical," says Franklin, "and independence shall be thy shield and buckler, thy helmet and crown; then shall thy soul walk upright, nor stoop to the silken wretch because he hath riches; nor pocket an abuse because the hand which offers it wears a ring set with diamonds." It is from this point of view that the charming and witty, though sometimes vulgar, precepts of poor Richard may be regarded as moral maxims, and should have access to all minds: "If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as of getting." "A fat kitchen makes a lean will."