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And for a moment, even the philosophers have that moment of doubt, that recollection–no matter how silly–of the everyman’s worries: Should I be making more money at this point in my life? Is there something special I should have accomplished by this age? Am I perceived as a fool for my wanderings?

To be sure, those doubts still exist. We are still men, and we are still pack creatures. It is in our blood and bones to compare our standings to those of our peers–the ones in our pack that nursed together on the same teets of culture and time.

The doubts of a philosopher doing his job last but for that moment. Under normal circumstances our nomadic tendencies in mind and body don’t allow us to cultivate too much of such nonsense. Money is the simplest of all to bellow a laugh at, many of us having the goal at life’s twilight to “die as rich as Socrates.”

Not such a goal to an everyman, who fears with all his heart the same end as my last prize.

If I come into money, will I spurn it? Of course not, but neither will I attempt to build a private empire which for all concerned is nothing but a sand castle formed with plastic, wood and concrete. I see no use in cultivating such an empire. My empire is, and always has been, what my mind is able to touch. Not control or impose, but touch.

The market school calls me a fool and tells me that such ideas are a quick path to premature mortality, but I disagree. Wealth is anonymous. It is equivalent to fame insomuch as the wealth is held, but rarely does it ever lead to the type of immortality that its keepers had hoped for.

Empires rise and fall, and so too would wealth flow along with the empire that guarantees the wealth’s meaning. Ideas, on the other hand, do not succumb to such charges. Ideas bend without breaking. Ideas change to suit their environment. The only type of wealth with a well cultivated path to immortality is a wealth of ideas. You may pass on money to any of a thousand people and many of them are likely to keep it locked away, more still are likely to lose it without ever having understood the good it can do. Would the same dichotomy of horde and expunge happen with an idea as it would with money? Likely, yes. But less likely.