Those who would too nearly imitate others of superior fortune, must thank themselves if they are ruined. This is nothing against luxury; for whoever can subsist, and lives above his income is a fool. Some persons of quality may keep three or four coaches and six, and at the same time lay up money for their children: while a young shopkeeper is undone for keeping one sorry horse. It is impossible there should be a rich nation without prodigals, yet I never knew a city so full of spendthrifts, but there were covetous people enough to answer their number. As an old merchant breaks for having been extravagant or careless a great while, so a young beginner falling into the same business, gets an estate by being saving or more industrious before he is forty years old: besides, that the frailties of men often work by contraries: some narrow souls can never thrive because they are too stingy, while longer heads amass great wealth by spending their money freely, and seeming to despise it. But the vicissitudes of fortune are necessary, and the most lamentable are no more detrimental to society, than the death of the individual members of it. Christenings are a proper balance to burials. Those who immediately lose by the misfortunes of others, are very sorry, complain, and make a noise; but the others who get by them, as there always are such, hold their tongues, because it is odious to be thought the better for the losses and calamities of our neighbour. The various ups and downs compose a wheel, that always turning round, gives motion to the whole machine. Philosophers, that dare extend their thoughts beyond the narrow compass of what is immediately before them, look on the alternate changes in the civil society, no otherwise than they do on the risings and fallings of the lungs; the latter of which are much a part of respiration in the most perfect animals as the first; so that the fickle breath of never-stable fortune is to the body politic, the same as floating air is to a living creature.