case of cupidity. They are covetous who strive after wealth with
passion. Various motives may arouse this passion, and although they may
increase the malice, they do not alter the nature, of the vice. Some
covet wealth for the sake of possessing it; others, to procure
pleasures or to satisfy different passions. Avarice it continues to be,
whatever the motive. Not even prodigality, the lavish spending of
riches, is a token of the absence of cupidity. Rapacity may stand
behind extravagance to keep the supply inexhausted.

It is covetousness to place one's greatest happiness in the possession
of wealth, or to consider its loss or privation the greatest of
misfortunes; in other words, to over-rejoice in having and to
over-grieve in not having.

It is covetousness to be so disposed as to acquire riches unjustly
rather than suffer poverty.

It is covetousness to hold, or give begrudgingly, when charity presses
her demands.

There is, in these cases, a degree of malice that is ordinarily mortal,
because the law of God and of nature is not respected.

It is the nature of this vice to cause unhappiness which increases
until it becomes positive wretchedness in the miser. Anxiety of mind is
followed by hardening of the heart; then injustice in desire and in
fact; blinding of the conscience, ending in a general stultification of
man before the god Mammon.

All desires of riches and comfort are not, therefore, avarice. One may