152 See also _Rau_ (Ueber die Cameralwissenschaft, Entwickelung ihres Wesens und ihrer Theile, 1825); _Baumstark_ (Cameralistische Enclycopädie, 1835). _ 153 Xenoph._ Œconom. I, 8 ff. Cyrop. VIII; 2, 23. He saw with equal clearness the moral light and shade of wealth. (Œcon. XI. 9. Conviv. 4. Memor. I, 6. Cyrop. VIII, 3, 35 ff. Hiero 4.) _ 154 Thomas Aquinas_ values earthly goods according to the end they are made to serve; when used for a good purpose, they have a mediately true value. Hence it was an error of the stoics to despise them under all circumstances. (Summa Theol. II, 2. Qu., 50, 3. 58, 2. 59, 3. 125, 4.) _ 155 Whateley_ considers the savage much beneath the materialist, instead of superior to him. The latter possesses, although he frequently abuses it, the faculty of self-control and forethought, which is entirely wanting in the former. (Lectures, No. 6.) _Dunoyer_, De la Liberté du Traväil, liv. IV, ch. I, 8, an apology for the moral wholesomeness of civilization, since promotive of military prowess, favorable to the development of the sciences, and even poetical. _Baudrillart_, Manual d’Œkonomie politique, 1857, 24. See _Fallati_, Ueber die sogennannte materiellen Tendenz der Gegenwart, 1842. 156 See the inscription on the tomb of Sardanapalus: ταῦτ᾽ ἔχω, ὄσσ᾽ ἔφαγον καὶ ἐφύβρισα καί μετ᾽ ἔδωτος τέδπν ἔπαθον. (Strabo, XIV, 672.) _Isaiah_, 122, 13, 56, 12, and the book of wisdom (2) characterizes the view of the fallen Jewish people. In Greece, the Cynic and Epicurean schools were only different phases of the same degeneration. “Thirst, for money, and nothing else, will be the ruin of Sparta!” (_Cicero_, De Offic, II, 22, 77.) See the magnificent description by Demosthenes, in which he shows the over-estimation of material things to be the principal cause of the decline of Athens, and in which he lays great stress on the fact, that Athens, on its decay, had a larger population, more wealth, ships, and evidences of external power, than in its golden age. (Phil., III, 120 seq.) Also Phil., IV, 144, cautions us against the Manchester criterion of national prosperity. See _Plato_, De Rep., VIII. In Rome, the principle _ommia venalia esse_ was a chief element in the total decline and fall of the republic. (_Sallust_, Cat., 10 ff., Jug., 8 ff.) In an age when people think they can do everything with money, the ruin of all things is the last end of mercantile, financial and political speculation. (_Condillac_, Le Commerce et le Gouverment, 1776, II, 18.)