No More Learning

CHREMYLUS. We will buy them.

POVERTY. But first say, who will sell them, if everyone is rich?

CHREMYLUS. Some greedy dealer from Thessaly--the land which supplies so
many.

POVERTY. But if your system is applied, there won't be a single
slave-dealer left. What rich man would risk his life to devote himself to
this traffic? You will have to toil, to dig and submit yourself to all
kinds of hard labour; so that your life would be more wretched even than
it is now.

CHREMYLUS. May this prediction fall upon yourself!

POVERTY. You will not be able to sleep in a bed, for no more will ever be
manufactured; nor on carpets, for who would weave them if he had gold?
When you bring a young bride to your dwelling, you will have no essences
wherewith to perfume her, nor rich embroidered cloaks dyed with dazzling
colours in which to clothe her.
And yet what is the use of being rich, if
you are to be deprived of all these enjoyments? On the other hand, you
have all that you need in abundance, thanks to me; to the artisan I am
like a severe mistress, who forces him by need and poverty to seek the
means of earning his livelihood.

CHREMYLUS. And what good thing can you give us, unless it be burns in the
bath,[772] and swarms of brats and old women who cry with hunger, and
clouds uncountable of lice, gnats and flies, which hover about the
wretch's head, trouble him, awake him and say, "You will be hungry, but
get up! " Besides, to possess a rag in place of a mantle, a pallet of
rushes swarming with bugs, that do not let you close your eyes for a bed;
a rotten piece of matting for a coverlet; a big stone for a pillow, on
which to lay your head; to eat mallow roots instead of bread, and leaves
of withered radish instead of cake; to have nothing but the cover of a
broken jug for a stool, the stave of a cask, and broken at that, for a
kneading-trough, that is the life you make for us! Are these the mighty
benefits with which you pretend to load mankind?

POVERTY. 'Tis not my life that you describe; you are attacking the
existence beggars lead.

CHREMYLUS. Is beggary not Poverty's sister?

POVERTY. Thrasybulus and Dionysius[773] are one and the same according to
you. No, my life is not like that and never will be. The beggar, whom you
have depicted to us, never possesses anything. The poor man lives
thriftily and attentive to his work; he has not got too much, but he does
not lack what he really needs.

CHREMYLUS.