It is thus clear that the use of speech is a good as necessary to man as food is to his body, as much for the operations of his mind as for their communication to others, and not only with regard to those who are present, but also with regard to those who are absent, which includes reading and writing. If man’s wealth is created with the help of (78) an infinite number of others, he must necessarily be able to hear them and to speak to them no matter where they are.

To know what this necessary education is, without which the mind could never reach maturity, we must examine man’s[^1] natural disposition. The body naturally needs to eat, to drink, to sleep, and not to be cold; the mind needs to know and to reason. Man does not eat to learn the taste of bread and drink to know the taste of water; he sufficiently notices that without another person teaching it to him.

There is another kind of necessity about which I must say a word. Having considered man at his birth and in his natural poverty, and how he first begins at that moment to become rich because of the help of a large number of contributors—[^1] whose service provides him necessities— applying themselves to save his life and health, I must acknowledge that this necessity would be very imperfect if (70) we left it at that, and if we contented ourselves with giving his body every suitable kind of food, but left his mind, his most noble part, to lie fallow.

For example, our drinkers in Germany who imbibe such a large quantity of liqueurs that they often drink in one sitting the portion of ten or twenty persons until the extinction, not of thirst according to the natural order, but (63) of reason, common sense, health, and life itself; they drink so much to the health of one another that they die of this so-called health, not to mention the senseless quarrels[^1], the brawls, and the slaughter that occur under the influence of wine.

Together all these goods that are generally used for food, clothing, and in a word, the preservation of human life, although some use them differently from others, occupy without question the first rank among all the others on earth, because they are the necessary means for beginning our wealth and because without them, nothing else would merit being (59) called a good. Since they give and preserve life, we can say that they give life and value to all the other goods. In relation to the latter, they are like masters in relation to servants.

The result of this is an important truth with regard to the goods that people prepare to preserve life, which is, that everyone must necessarily have a quantity of them that is proportional to what they need to preserve themselves. It is not enough for them to be of a quality that is suitable for making the body perfect; it is also necessary to enjoy a sufficient quantity of them so that they produce this very necessary result. This proportion is a physical and moral necessity.

Here we are then at the source of what is called necessity as regards wealth, which appears in equal simplicity[^2] at the birth of all humans, who come into the world equally poor and destitute. From everything that I have just said on this subject, a double necessity, physical and moral, first presents itself, which impels (49) humans to rush to preserve the life of infants: this is the impossibility to do otherwise and the common interest to multiply combined with the obligation that they contracted at birth to return the same service that they received.

Even though these moral things cannot be measured like mathematical bodies,[^2] it is nevertheless important to advance our knowledge of them to the perfection of which our minds are capable.[^3] To this end, we must go back to the source of this formation of an infinite number of moral beings and draw from it the general principles on which everyone is usually of the same mind or without which none of their (41) very different inclinations would ever take place, just as without the impulse that the heart gives to an infinite number of arteries, veins, and other vessels in the human body, w

This story shows us that a man can be very poor and very miserable with a beautiful estate, a lot of money, and great access to credit,[^1] even though all three of these situations are commonly valued as wealth. This is because these goods become stone, mud, and nothing at all as soon as this multitude of contributors[^2] who must support it[^3] opposes the will of the owner and does not want (33) or cannot enjoy these goods.

IV. [^1]I said that wealth is the easy enjoyment of necessary, convenient, and superfluous goods. We normally separate the things that sustain human life and make it agreeable into necessities, conveniences, and superfluities. This shows three different degrees of wealth and of the natural and common desire of all humans in this regard: everyone wishes to be as rich as possible and to enjoy necessary, convenient, and superfluous goods.