The third error in the popular view is the confusion of guardianship with possession; the real state of men of property being, too commonly that of curators, not possessors of wealth. For a man's power of Use, Administration, Ostentation, Destruction, or Bequest; and possession is in use only, which for each man is sternly limited; so that such things, and so much of them, are well for him, or Wealth; and more of them, or any other things, are ill for him, or Illth. Plunged to the lips in Orinoco, he shall drink to his thirst measure,--more, at his peril; with a thousand oxen on his lands, he shall eat to his hunger measure,--more, at his peril. He cannot live in two houses at once; a few bales of silk or wool will suffice for the fabric of all the clothes he can ever wear, and a few books will probably hold all the furniture good for his brain.[71] Beyond these, in the best of us but narrow, capacities, we have but the power of administering, or if for harm, mal-administering, wealth (that is to say, distributing, lending, or increasing it);--of exhibiting it (as in magnificence of retinue or furniture), of destroying, or, finally, of bequeathing it. And with multitudes of rich men, administration degenerates into curatorship; they merely hold their property in charge, as Trustees, for the benefit of some person or persons to whom it is to be delivered upon their death; and the position, explained in clear terms, would hardly seem a covetable one. What would be the probable decision of a youth on his entrance into life, to whom the career hoped for him was proposed in terms such as these: "You must work unremittingly, and with your utmost intelligence, during all your available years; you will thus accumulate wealth to a large amount; but you must touch none of it, beyond what is needful for your support. Whatever sums you may gain beyond those required for your decent and moderate maintenance shall be properly taken care of, and on your death-bed you shall have the power of determining to whom they shall belong, or to what purposes be applied?"
[71] I reserve, until the completion and collection of these papers, any support by the authority of other writers of the statements made in them; were, indeed, such authorities wisely sought for and shown, there would be no occasion for my writing at all. Even in the scattered passages referring to this subject in three books of Carlyle's:--"Sartor Resartus"; "Past and Present"; and the "Latter-Day Pamphlets"; all has been said that needs to be said, and far better than I shall ever say it again. But the habit of the public mind at the present is to require everything to be uttered diffusely, loudly, and seven times over, before it will listen; and it has exclaimed against these papers of mine, as if they contained things daring and new, when there is not one assertion in them of which the truth has not been for ages known to the wisest, and proclaimed by the most eloquent of men. It will be a far greater pleasure to me hereafter, to collect their words than add to mine; Horace's clear rendering of the substance of the preceding passages in the text may be found room for at once:--