XII. This is viewing things according to what they are in their own nature. To estimate the felicity of any man, you should not consider the goods he possesses, but the enjoyment he receives from the possession of them. Although the rich man always sits down to a splendid banquet, a poor man regales himself better than him, if, as is most commonly the case, he knows better what he eats. No man will say, that the existence of riches without their use is of any value. It is necessary, in order to relish their sweets, that you should expend them. They are a good of such a nature, that they can only be enjoyed when you part with them. He who keeps his gold in a chest may receive some satisfaction in contemplating, that he has it at his command, but that is much inferior to the inevitable chagrin, which attends his continual care and anxiety. Horace sung wisely, who held, that convenience consisted more in the want, than in the possession of such goods, as their concern for the preservation of kept people in constant alarms and terrors night and day, for fear a thief should break in and steal them, an unfaithful servant purloin them, or a fire consume them. _An vigilare metu exanimem, noctesque diesque_ _Formidare malos fures, incendia, servos_ _Ne te compilent fugientes, hoc juvat? Horum_ _Semper ego optarim pauperimus esse bonorum._ Lib. 1. Sat. 1. XIII. Quicksilver occasions continual tremors to him who works it in the mines; gold and silver, to him who keeps and turns them over in a chest. There is no doubt, but the pleasure of finding himself rich is greatest in a covetous man, but his care and anxiety are excessive in proportion to it. Besides this, he is not so much gratified by the goods he enjoys, as he is made uneasy by the desire of possessing those he is not master of. There is always in his heart an immense vacuum, as obnoxious to his avarice, as a vacuum in all bodies is to nature, and his thirst is of the dropsical kind, so that the more he drinks, the more he craves.