“The type of character produced by Wealth lies on the surface for all to see. Wealthy men are insolent and arrogant; their possession of wealth affects their understanding; they feel as if they had every good thing that exists; wealth becomes a sort of standard of value for everything else, and therefore they imagine there is nothing it cannot buy. They are luxurious and ostentatious; luxurious, because of the luxury in which they live and the prosperity which they display; ostentatious and vulgar, because, like other people’s, their minds are regularly occupied with the object of their love and admiration, and also because they think that other people’s idea of happiness is the same as their own. It is indeed quite natural that they should be affected thus; for if you have money, there are always plenty of people who come begging from you. Hence the saying . . . ‘whether it was better to grow rich or wise . . . . I see the wise men spending their days at the rich men’s doors.’ Rich men also consider themselves worthy to hold public office; for they consider they already have the things that give a claim to office . . . . The wrongs they do others are not meant to injure their victims, but spring from insolence or self-indulgence.”
