CLASS III. 1. 2. 13. OF VOLITION. 323 



the cultivation of the graces of the mind, which are frequently a 

 more valuable possession than celebrated beauty. 



13. Paupertatis timor. The fear of poverty is one kind of 

 avarice; it is liable to affect people who have left off a profitable 

 and active business; as they are thus deprived of their usual exer- 

 tions, and are liable to observe the daily expenditure of money, 

 without calculating the source from whence it flows. It is also 

 liable to occur with a sudden and unexpected increase of fortune. 



Mr. , a surgeon, about fifty years of age, who was always 



rather of a parsimonious disposition, had a large house, with a 

 fortune of forty thousand pounds, left him by a distant relation^ 

 and in a few weeks became insane from the fear of poverty, la- 

 menting that he should die in a jail or a workhouse. He had left 

 off a laborious country business, and the daily perception of profit 

 in his books; he also now saw greater expenses going forwards in 

 his new house, than he had been accustomed to observe, and did 

 not so distinctly see the source of supply; which seems to have 

 occasioned the maniacal hallucination. This idea of approach- 

 ing poverty is a very frequent and very painful disease, so as to 

 have induced many to become suicides, who were in good cir- 

 cumstances; more perhaps than any other maniacal hallucina- 

 tion, except the fear of Hell. 



The covetousness of age is more liable to affect single men, 

 than those who have families; though an accumulation of wealth 

 would seem to be more desirable to the latter. But an old man 

 in the former situation, has no personal connections to induce 

 him to open his purse; and having lost the friends of his youth, 

 and not easily acquiring new ones, feels himself alone in the 

 world: feels himself unprotected, as his strength declines, and is 

 thus led to depend for assistance on money, and on that account 

 wishes to accumulate it. Whereas the father of a family has not 

 only those connections, which demand the frequent expenditure 

 of money, but feels a consolation in the friendship of his children, 

 when age may render their good offices necessary to him. 



M. M. I have been well informed of a medical person in good 

 circumstances in London, who always carries an account of his 

 affairs, as debtor and creditor, in his pocket-book; and looks over 

 it frequently in a day, when this disease returns upon him; and 

 thus, by counteracting the maniacal hallucination, wisely prevents 

 the increase of his insanity. Another medical person, in London, 

 is said to have cured himself of this disease by studying mathe- 

 matics with great attention; which exertion of the mind relieved 

 the pain of the maniacal hallucination. 



Many moral writers have stigmatised this insanity; the covetous, 



