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What merchant would spend an additional hour at his
office daily, merely that he might move into a larger house in a better
quarter? In so far as health and comfort are concerned, he knows he will
be a loser by the exchange; and would never be induced to make it, were
it not for the increased social consideration which the new house will
bring him. Where is the man who would lie awake at nights devising means
of increasing his income in the hope of being able to provide his wife
with a carriage, were the use of the carriage the sole consideration? It
is because of the _eclat_ which the carriage will give, that he enters
on these additional anxieties. So manifest, so trite, indeed, are these
truths, that we should be ashamed of insisting on them, did not our
argument require it.
For if the desire for that homage which wealth brings, is the chief
stimulus to these strivings after wealth, then is the giving of this
homage (when given, as it is, with but little discrimination) the chief
cause of the dishonesties into which these strivings betray mercantile
men.


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