Cease, therefore, forbidding to philosophers the possession of money; no one has condemned wisdom to poverty. The philosopher shall own ample wealth, but it will have been wrested from no man, nor will it be stained with another’s blood — wealth acquired without harm to any man, without base dealing, and the outlay of it will be not less honorable than was its acquisition; it will make no man groan except the spiteful. Pile up that wealth of his as high as you like; it will be honorable, if, while it includes much that each man would like to call his own, it includes nothing that any man is able to call his own. But he, surely, will not thrust aside the generosity of Fortune, and an inheritance that has been honorably acquired will give him no cause either to blush or to boast. Yet he will even have reason to boast if, throwing open his mansion and admitting the whole city to view his possessions, he shall be able to say: “If anyone recognizes anything as his own, let him take it.” O! a great man, O! a man excellently rich, if after these words he shall possess just as much! I mean this: if without risk and concern he has allowed the people to make search, if no man shall have found in his possession a single thing to lay his hands upon, then he will be rich boldly and in all openness. Not one penny will a wise man admit within his threshold that makes a dishonest entry; yet he will not repulse or exclude great wealth that is the gift of Fortune and the fruit of virtue. For what reason has he to grudge it good quarters? Let it come, let it be welcomed. But he will not flaunt it, neither will he hide it — the one is the part of a silly mind, the other of a timid and petty mind, that makes him keep a great blessing as it were, in his pocket — nor, as I said before, will he expel it from the house. For what shall he say to it? Will it be — “You are of no use,” or “I do not know how to use riches”? In the same way that, even if he is able to accomplish a journey on foot, he will prefer to mount into a carriage, so, even if he is able to be poor. He will prefer to be rich. And so he will possess wealth, but with the knowledge that it is fickle and likely to fly away, and he will not allow it to be a burden either to himself or to anyone else. He will give of it — why do you prick up your ears? why do you get ready your pocket? — he will give of it either to good men or to those whom he will be able to make good men; choosing the most worthy after the utmost deliberation, he will give of his wealth, as one who rightly remembers that he must render account no less of his expenditures than of his receipts; he will give of it only for a reason that is just and defensible, for wrong giving is no other than a shameful waste; he will have his pocket accessible, but it will have no hole in it — a pocket from which much can appear and nothing can drop.