The Instructor 3.6.35

lives painfully, and will not live. Wealth seems to me like a snake: if one does not know how to take hold of it harmlessly, lifting the beast from a distance by the tip of the tail, it will coil around the hand and bite. Wealth too, wriggling in the hand of one who holds it skillfully or unskillfully, is dangerous, clinging and biting, unless one, despising it, uses it with knowledge, so that the beast may be charmed by the incantation of the Word and he himself remain unharmed. It seems that he alone, unnoticed, is rich who possesses what is worth most. What is worth much is not stone, not silver, not clothing, not bodily beauty, but virtue, which is the Word handed on by the Instructor for practice: the Word who forswears luxury, calls in working with one's own hands as a servant, and praises frugality, the offspring of self-control. “Take instruction,” he says, “and not silver, and knowledge rather than tried gold; for wisdom is better than precious stones, and nothing precious is worth as much as she.” And again: “Reap my fruit rather than gold and precious stone and silver; for my produce is better than choice silver.” And if we must distinguish, let the one with many possessions be called rich, loaded with gold like a dirty purse; but the just man is seemly, since seemliness is order, measured in the fitting arrangement of management and giving. “For there are those who sow and gather more,” of whom it is written: “He scattered, he gave to the poor; his righteousness remains forever.” So it is not the one who has and keeps, but the one who shares, who is rich; and it is sharing, not possession, that shows the blessed man; and generosity is a fruit of the soul; so wealth is in the soul.