According to Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy:
What's
the market? A place, according to Anacharsis, wherein they cozen one
another, a trap; nay, what's the world itself? A vast chaos, a confusion
of manners, as fickle as the air, domicilium insanorum [a
madhouse], a turbulent troop full of impurities, a mart of walking
spirits, goblins, the theatre of hypocrisy, a shop of knavery, flattery,
a nursery of villainy, the scene of babbling, the school of giddiness,
the academy of vice; a warfare, ubi velis nolis pugnandum, aut vincas aut succumbas [where you have to fight whether you will or no, and either conquer or go under],
in which kill or be killed, wherein every man is for himself, his
private ends, and stands upon his own guard. No charity, love,
friendship, fear of God, alliance, affinity, consanguinity,
Christianity, can contain them, but if they be anyways offended, or that
string of commodity be touched, they fall foul. Old friends become
bitter enemies on a sudden for toys and small offences, and they that
erst were willing to do all mutual offices of love and kindness, now
revile and persecute one another to death, with more than Vatinian
hatred, and will not be reconciled. So long as they are behoveful, they
love, or may bestead each other, but when there is no more good to be
expected, as they do by an old dog, hang him up or cashier him: which
Cato counts a great indecorum, to use men like old shoes or broken
glasses, which are flung to the dunghill; he could not find in his heart
to sell an old ox, much less to turn away an old servant: but they,
instead of recompense, revile him, and when they have made him an
instrument of their villainy, as Bajazet the Second, Emperor of the
Turks, did by Acomethes Bassa, make him away, or instead of reward, hate
him to death, as Silius was served by Tiberius. In a word, every man
for his own ends. Our summum bonum is commmodity, and the goddess we adore Dea Moneta,
Queen Money, to whom we daily offer sacrifice, which steers our hearts,
hands, affections, all: that most powerful goddess, by whom we are
reared, depressed, elevated, esteeemed the sole commandress of our
actions, for which we pray, run, ride, go, come, labour, and contend as
fishes do for a crumb that falleth into the water.
("Democritus to the Reader", 64-65)
The Whole World Plays the Fool
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