Moreover, I think this also well deserves to be considered--that there is nothing in the special nature of money to hinder its being taken away from those who possess it against their will.' 'I admit it.' 'Why, of course, when every day the stronger wrests it from the weaker without his consent.

Else, whence come lawsuits, except in seeking to recover moneys which have been taken away against their owner's will by force or fraud ?' 'True,' said I.
'Then, everyone will need some extraneous means of protection to keep his money safe.' 'Who can venture to deny it ?' 'Yet he would not, unless he possessed the money which it is possible to lose.' 'No; he certainly would not.' 'Then, we have worked round to an opposite conclusion: the wealth which was thought to make a man independent rather puts him in need of further protection.

How in the world, then, can want be driven away by riches?
Cannot the rich feel hunger?
Cannot they thirst?
Are not the limbs of the wealthy sensitive to the winter's cold?
"But," thou wilt say, "the rich have the wherewithal to sate their hunger, the means to get rid of thirst and cold." True enough; want can thus be soothed by riches, wholly removed it cannot be.

For if this ever-gaping, ever-craving want is glutted by wealth, it needs must be that the want itself which can be so glutted still remains.

I do not speak of how very little suffices for nature, and how for avarice nothing is enough.