"Too great happiness makes men
greedy, nor are their desires ever so temperate, as to terminate in
what is acquired:" a step is made from great things to greater, and
men having attained what they did not expect, form the most
unbounded hopes; to which the poet Ovid thus alludes.
"Luxuriant animi rebus plerumque secundis,
Nec facile est aequa commoda mente pati;
And again:
"Creverunt opes et opum furiosa cupido,
Et eum possideant plurima, plura petunt."
And also the poet Horace:
" - scilicet improbae
Crescunt divitiae, tamen
Curtae nescio quid semper abest rei.
Crescentem sequitur cura pecuniam
Majorumque fames."
To which purpose the poet Lucan says:
" - O vitae tuta facultas
Pauperis, angustique lares, o munera nondum
Intellecta Deum!"
And Petronius:
Non bibit inter aquas nec poma fugacia carpit
Tantalus infelix, quem sua vota premunt.
Divitis hic magni facies erit, omnia late
Qui tenet, et sicco concoquit ore famem."
The mountains are full of herds and horses, the woods well stored
with swine and goats, the pastures with sheep, the plains with
cattle, the arable fields with ploughs; and although these things in
very deed are in great abundance, yet each of them, from the
insatiable nature of the mind, seems too narrow and scanty.
Therefore lands are seized, landmarks removed, boundaries invaded,
and the markets in consequence abound with merchandise, the courts
of justice with law-suits, and the senate with complaints.
Concerning such things, we read in Isaiah, "Woe unto them that join
house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place,
that they be placed alone in the midst of the earth."
If therefore, the prophet inveighs so much against those who proceed
to the boundaries, what would he say to those who go far beyond
them?
