Note 71 — II.

I reserve, until the completion and collection of these papers, any support by the authority of other writers of the statements made in them; were, indeed, such authorities wisely sought for and shown, there would be no occasion for my writing at all. Even in the scattered passages referring to this subject in three books of Carlyle's:—"Sartor Resartus"; "Past and Present"; and the "Latter-Day Pamphlets"; all has been said that needs to be said, and far better than I shall ever say it again. But the habit of the public mind at the present is to require everything to be uttered diffusely, loudly, and seven times over, before it will listen; and it has exclaimed against these papers of mine, as if they contained things daring and new, when there is not one assertion in them of which the truth has not been for ages known to the wisest, and proclaimed by the most eloquent of men. It will be a far greater pleasure to me hereafter, to collect their words than add to mine; Horace's clear rendering of the substance of the preceding passages in the text may be found room for at once:— Si quis emat citharas, emptas comportet in unum, Nec studio citharae, nec Musae deditus ulli; Si scalpra et formas, non sutor; nautica vela, Aversus mercaturis: delirus et amens Undique dicatur merito. Quî discrepat istis, Qui nummos aurumque recondit, nescius uti Compositis, metuensque velut contingere sacrum?

With which it is perhaps desirable also to give Xenophon's statement, it being clearer than any English one can be, owing to the power of the general Greek term for wealth, "useable things":—

Ταῦτὰ ἄρα ὄντα, τῷ μὲν ἐπισταμένῳ χρῆσθαι αὐτῶν ἑκάστοις χρήματά ἐστι, τῷ δὲ μὴ ἐπισταμένῳ, οὐ χρήματα· ὥσπέρ γε αὐλοὶ τῷ μὲν ἐπισταμένῳ ἀξὶως λόγου αὐλεῖν χρήματά εἰσι, τῷ δἐ μὴ ἐπισταμένῳ οὐδὲν μᾶλλον ἤ ἄχρηστοι λίθοι, εἰ μὴ ἀπσδιδοῖτό γε αὐτούς. * * * Μὴ πωλούμενοι μὲν γὰρ οὐ χρήματά εἰσιν οἱ αὐλοί· (οὐδὲν γὰρ χρήσιμοί εἰσι) πωλούμενοι δὲ χρήματα· Πρὸς ταῦτα δ’ ὁ Σωκράτης εἶπεν, ἢν ἐπίστηταί γε πωλεῖν. Εί δὲ πωλοίη αὗ πρὸς τοὖτον ὃς μὴ ἐπίστηται χρῆσθαι, οὐδὲ πωλούμενοι εἰσὶ χρήματα.