TELES
The fragments of Teles exhibit the same extreme asceticism of the Cynics in relation to wealth.[[979]] His main thesis is that the possession of money does not free from want and need.[[980]] Many who have great possessions do not use them, because of stinginess and sordidness.[[981]] But if wealth is not used, it is useless, and cannot free from need or want.[[982]] Here we meet a different application of the criterion of “use” from that with which we have become familiar in the Socratics, the Eryxias, and Ruskin. It is based on refusal, rather than inability to use, though the other idea is in the background. The author argues further that wealth does not free from need, because the wealthy life is always insatiate (ἄπληστος),[[983]] and wealth does not change the disposition,[[984]] by which change alone the life can be freed from need and slavery.[[985]] To try to accomplish this by wealth is like attempting to cure a patient of dropsy by stuffing him with water until he bursts.[[986]] Counsel is given, therefore, not to turn one’s sons to the acquisition of wealth, but to study under Crates, who can set them free from the vice of insatiety.[[987]]
Poverty, on the other hand, does not change the disposition of the temperate man for the worse[[988]] There is nothing distressing or painful about it,[[989]] for Crates and Diogenes were poor and yet passed their life in ease.[[990]] It is no harder to endure old age in poverty than in wealth, but all depends upon the disposition.[[991]] Poverty deprives the life of no positive good, but furnishes the opportunity of gaining good,[[992]] since it is conducive to the contemplative life of philosophy, while wealth is an obstacle to this.[[993]] It is the poor, rather than the wealthy, who have leisure.[[994]] They are also obliged to be strong (καρτερεῖν), while the wealthy become effeminate, since they have no impetus to work.[[995]] Thus poverty, when accompanied with justice, should be more highly honored than wealth.[[996]] The author concludes that it is therefore best to despise wealth and turn to the life of philosophy, for this develops generosity instead of stinginess, and contentment instead of insatiety. Such a life uses what is on hand, and lives content with present blessings (τοῖς παροῦσι).[[997]] The marked contrast between this ascetic philosophy of poverty and the saner teaching of Plato, who was as much opposed to poverty as to excessive wealth, is patent.