5.4. 4. In what Manner the Love of Equality and Frugality is inspired.
The love of equality and of a frugal economy is greatly excited by
equality and frugality themselves, in societies where both these virtues
are established by law.
In monarchies and despotic governments, nobody aims at equality;
this does not so much as enter their thoughts; they all aspire to
superiority. People of the very lowest condition desire to emerge from
their obscurity, only to lord it over their fellow-subjects.
It is the same with respect to frugality. To love it, we must
practise and enjoy it. It is not those who are enervated by pleasure
that are fond of a frugal life; were this natural and common, Alcibiades
would never have been the admiration of the universe. Neither is it
those who envy or admire the luxury of the great; people that have
present to their view none but rich men, or men miserable like
themselves, detest their wretched condition, without loving or knowing
the real term or point of misery.
A true maxim it is, therefore, that in order to love equality and
frugality in a republic, these virtues must have been previously
established by law.
