its multitude, not in its territory; but only in its sound multitude. It
is one thing, both in a man and a nation, to gain flesh, and another to
be swollen with putrid humors. Not that multitude ever ought to be
inconsistent with virtue. Two men should be wiser than one, and two
thousand than two; nor do I know another so gross fallacy in the records
of human stupidity as that excuse for neglect of crime by greatness of
cities. As if the first purpose of congregation were not to devise laws
and repress crimes! As if bees and wasps could live honestly in flocks--
men, only in separate dens! As if it were easy to help one another on
the opposite sides of a mountain, and impossible on the opposite sides of
a street! But when the men are true and good, and stand shoulder to
shoulder, the strength of any nation is in its quantity of life, not in
its land nor gold. The more good men a state has, in proportion to its
territory, the stronger the state. And as it has been the madness of
economists to seek for gold instead of life, so it has been the madness
of kings to seek for land instead of life. They want the town on the
other side of the river, and seek it at the spear point; it never enters
their stupid heads that to double the honest souls in the town on this
side of the river would make them stronger kings; and that this doubling
might be done by the ploughshare instead of the spear, and through
happiness instead of misery.

Therefore, in brief, this is the only object of all true policy and true
economy: "utmost multitude of good men on every given space of ground"--
imperatively always good, sound, honest men,--not a mob of white-faced
thieves. So that, on the one hand all aristocracy is wrong which is
inconsistent with numbers; and on the other all numbers are wrong which
are inconsistent with breeding.

122. Then, touching the accumulation of wealth for the maintenance of