Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: History of moral science. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![tion, ])riidence, and foresight, which are always sd essential to our welfare, whether engaged in private or in public life, and, besides making us appear in the eyes of others as objects of pity and contempt, the excessive indulgence of these resentful feelings not unfrequently plunges us into a course of violence, no way proportioned to the injuries sustained, which endanger our own and others' existence, and ])roduce bitter inward reflections to the end of our days. Avarice, or an excessive craving after wealth, does also weaken the power or force of the other passions, particularly the generous kind, in proportion to its strength over the individual. The grovelling and sordid desires of the miser, check the growth of all public spirit and patriotism j and even those social feelings and propensities which arise from the relations between friends, neighbours, and acquaintances, wither and die under its pesti- ferous influence, and the whole man becomes an object of meanness, littleness, and contempt. Even this extravagant desire of wealth defeats, in many cases, its own object; for the miser is so engrossed with his darling treasures, whether they be great or small, that he cannot think of advancing any por- tion of his wealth in speculative concerns or mer- cantile enterprises, which, when judiciously ma-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21033419_0026.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
