So is it really the case that there is no possession planted within you and truly your own, so that you all must look for your possessions in things external to you and separate from you? Is the order of things so upside-down that an animal that is divine by virtue of its reason never seems to itself to be radiant except by the possession of its inanimate possessions? Everything else is satisfied with its own, but you mortals!--though you are like God by virtue of your minds you try to acquire from what is bottommost things on which to pride your superior nature....
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, Book II, Prose 5, Relihan, tr. Hackett (2001) p. 37.
