Study Edition · Essay 16
Of Avarice
Source: Cowley's Essays (published 1668). Text from Project Gutenberg #3549. Archaic verb forms modernized; vocabulary kept and glossed.
Cowley wrote his essays after retiring from public life to a quiet country house, and they mix prose with his own verse translations. This one starts by distinguishing two kinds of greed: the spender's and the hoarder's. It then proposes, tongue in cheek, that misers be treated as madmen, and ends with Cowley's lively versions of two poems by Horace on the folly of wealth. In the verse, “thou/thee/thy” and their verb forms (thou wouldst, dost, canst) are kept, because changing them would break the rhyme and rhythm. They are glossed instead.
77 sentences: 20 simple, 25 moderate, 32 complex. Hover a number for its paraphrase; click it for the full note.
Key Vocabulary
- avariceextreme greed for money
- rapaciousaggressively greedy; grasping
- unsatiableimpossible to satisfy (now “insatiable”)
- covetousgreedily wanting what others have
- excernto excrete; pass out of the body
- chougha crow-like bird, believed to steal shiny things
- colour(old sense) a pretext; a plausible excuse
- Mammonwealth seen as a false god
- antipodethe exact opposite
- alimony(old sense) means of living; maintenance
- vagranta homeless wanderer
- methinksit seems to me
- odioushateful; disgusting
- pismirean ant
- fruitionenjoyment of what one has
- Tantalusa mythical king punished with food and water always just out of reach
- virtuoso(old sense) a connoisseur or collector
- petara small bomb for blowing open gates (petard)
- LaconicSpartan (from Laconia); hence brief and spare
- indulgencykindness; generosity
The Essay
There are two sorts of avarice; the one is but of a bastard kind; and that is, the rapacious appetite of gain, not for its own sake, but for the pleasure of refunding it immediately through all the channels of pride and luxury.1 The other is the true kind, and properly so called; which is a restless and unsatiable desire of riches, not for any further end of use, but only to hoard, and preserve, and perpetually increase them.2 The covetous man of the first kind is like a greedy ostrich, which devours any metal, but it is with an intent to feed upon it, and in effect it makes a shift to digest and excern it.3 The second is like the foolish chough, which loves to steal money only to hide it.4 The first does much harm to mankind, and a little good too, to some few.5 The second does good to none; no, not to himself.6 The first can make no excuse to God, or angels, or rational men for his actions.7 The second can give no reason or colour, not to the devil himself, for what he does: he is a slave to Mammon without wages.8 The first makes a shift to be beloved; aye, and envied, too, by some people.9 The second is the universal object of hatred and contempt.10 There is no vice has been so pelted with good sentences, and especially by the poets, who have pursued it with stories and fables, and allegories and allusions; and moved, as we say, every stone to fling at it, among all which, I do not remember a more fine and gentlemen-like correction than that which was given it by one line of Ovid's.11 Desunt luxuriæ multa, avaritiæ omnia. Much is wanting to luxury; all to avarice.12 To which saying I have a mind to add one member and render it thus:— Poverty wants some, luxury many, avarice all things.13 Somebody says of a virtuous and wise man, that having nothing, he has all.14 This is just his antipode, who, having all things, yet has nothing.15 He is a guardian eunuch to his beloved gold: Audivi eos amatores esse maximos sed nil potesse.16 They are the fondest lovers, but impotent to enjoy.17
And, oh, what man's condition can be worse
Than his, whom plenty starves, and blessings curse?18
The beggars but a common fate deplore,
The rich poor man's emphatically poor.19
I wonder how it comes to pass that there has never been any law made against him.20 Against him, do I say?21 I mean for him, as there is a public provision made for all other madmen.22 It is very reasonable that the king should appoint some persons (and I think the courtiers would not be against this proposition) to manage his estate during his life (for his heirs commonly do not need that care), and out of it to make it their business to see that he should not want alimony befitting his condition, which he could never get out of his own cruel fingers.23 We relieve idle vagrants and counterfeit beggars, but have no care at all of these really poor men, who are, methinks, to be respectfully treated in regard of their quality.24 I might be endless against them, but I am almost choked with the superabundance of the matter.25 Too much plenty impoverishes me as it does them.26 I will conclude this odious subject with part of Horace's first Satire, which take in his own familiar style:—27
I admire, Mæcenas, how it comes to pass,
That no man ever yet contented was,
Nor is, nor perhaps will be, with that state
In which his own choice plants him, or his fate.28
Happy the merchant! the old soldier cries.29
The merchant, beaten with tempestuous skies
Happy the soldier! one half-hour to thee
Gives speedy death or glorious victory.30
The lawyer, knocked up early from his rest
By restless clients, calls the peasant blest.31
The peasant, when his labours ill succeed,
Envies the mouth which only talk does feed.32
'Tis not, I think you'll say, that I want store
Of instances, if here I add no more,
They are enough to reach at least a mile
Beyond long Orator Fabius his style.33
But hold, you whom no fortune e'er endears,
Gentlemen, malcontents, and mutineers,
Who bounteous Jove so often cruel call,
Behold, Jove's now resolved to please you all.34
Thou, soldier, be a merchant; merchant, thou
A soldier be; and lawyer to the plough.35
Change all your stations straight.36 Why do they stay?37
The devil a man will change now when he may.38
Were I in General Jove's abusèd case,
By Jove, I'd cudgel this rebellious race;
But he's too good; be all, then, as you were;
However, make the best of what you are,
And in that state be cheerful and rejoice,
Which either was your fate or was your choice.39
No; they must labour yet, and sweat and toil,
And very miserable be awhile.40
But 'tis with a design only to gain
What may their age with plenteous ease maintain;
The prudent pismire does this lesson teach,
And industry to lazy mankind preach.41
The little drudge does trot about and sweat,
Nor does he straight devour all he can get,
But in his temperate mouth carries it home,
A stock for winter which he knows must come.42
And when the rolling world to creatures here
Turns up the deformèd wrong side of the year,
And shuts him in with storms and cold and wet,
He cheerfully does his past labours eat.43
Oh, does he so?44 your wise example, the ant
Does not at all times rest, and plenty want.
But, weighing justly a mortal ant's condition,
Divides his life 'twixt labour and fruition.45
Thee neither heat, nor storms, nor wet, nor cold
From thy unnatural diligence can withhold,
To the Indies thou wouldst run rather than see
Another, though a friend, richer than thee.46
Fond man! what good or beauty can be found
In heaps of treasure buried under ground?47
Which, rather than diminished e'er to see,
Thou wouldst thyself, too, buried with them be.48
And what's the difference? is't not quite as bad
Never to use, as never to have had?49
In thy vast barns millions of quarters store,
Thy belly, for all that, will hold no more
Than mine does.50 Every baker makes much bread,
What then? He's with no more than others fed.51
Do you within the bounds of Nature live,
And to augment your own you need not strive;
One hundred acres will no less for you
Your life's whole business than ten thousand do.52
But pleasant 'tis to take from a great store;
What, man? though you're resolved to take no more
Than I do from a small one; if your will
Be but a pitcher or a pot to fill,
To some great river for it must you go,
When a clear spring just at your feet does flow?53
Give me the spring which does to human use,
Safe, easy, and untroubled stores produce;
He who scorns these, and needs will drink at Nile,
Must run the danger of the crocodile;
And of the rapid stream itself which may,
At unawares bear him perhaps away.54
In a full flood Tantalus stands, his skin
Washed o'er in vain, for ever dry within;
He catches at the stream with greedy lips,
From his touched mouth the wanton torment slips.55
You laugh now, and expand your careful brow:
'Tis finely said, but what's all this to you?56
Change but the name, this fable is thy story,
Thou in a flood of useless wealth dost glory,
Which thou canst only touch, but never taste;
The abundance still, and still the want does last.57
The treasures of the gods thou wouldst not spare,
But when they're made thine own, they sacred are,
And must be kept with reverence; as if thou
No other use of precious gold didst know
But that of curious pictures to delight
With the fair stamp thy virtuoso sight.58
The only true and genuine use is this,
To buy the things which nature cannot miss
Without discomfort, oil, and vital bread.
And wine by which the life of life is fed,
And all those few things else by which we live
All that remains is given for thee to give.59
If cares and troubles, envy, grief, and fear,
The bitter fruits be which fair riches bear,
If a new poverty grow out of store,
The old plain way, ye gods! let me be poor.60
A Paraphrase on an Ode in Horace's Third Book, beginning thus: “Inclusam Danaen turris ahenea.”
A tower of brass, one would have said,
And locks, and bolts, and iron bars,
And guards as strict as in the heat of wars
Might have preserved one innocent maidenhood.61
The jealous father thought he well might spare
All further jealous care;
And as he walked, to himself alone he smiled
To think how Venus' arts he had beguiled;
And when he slept his rest was deep,
But Venus laughed to see and hear him sleep.62
She taught the amorous Jove
A magical receipt in love,
Which armed him stronger and which helped him more
Than all his thunder did and his almightyship before.63
She taught him love's elixir, by which art
His godhead into gold he did convert;
No guards did then his passage stay,
He passed with ease, gold was the word;
Subtle as lightning, bright, and quick, and fierce,
Gold through doors and walls did pierce;
And as that works sometimes upon the sword,
Melted the maiden dread away,
Even in the secret scabbard where it lay.64
The prudent Macedonian king,
To blow up towns, a golden mine did spring;
He broke through gates with this petar,
'Tis the great art of peace, the engine 'tis of war,
And fleets and armies follow it afar;
The ensign 'tis at land, and 'tis the seaman's star.65
Let all the world slave to this tyrant be,
Creature to this disguisèd deity,
Yet it shall never conquer me.66
A guard of virtues will not let it pass,
And wisdom is a tower of stronger brass.67
The muses' laurel, round my temples spread,
Does from this lightning's force secure my head,
Nor will I lift it up so high,
As in the violent meteor's way to lie.68
Wealth for its power do we honour and adore?
The things we hate, ill fate, and death, have more.69
From towns and courts, camps of the rich and great,
The vast Xerxean army, I retreat,
And to the small Laconic forces fly
Which hold the straits of poverty.70
Cellars and granaries in vain we fill
With all the bounteous summer's store:
If the mind thirst and hunger still,
The poor rich man's emphatically poor.71
Slaves to the things we too much prize,
We masters grow of all that we despise.72
A field of corn, a fountain, and a wood,
Is all the wealth by nature understood.73
The monarch on whom fertile Nile bestows
All which that grateful earth can bear,
Deceives himself, if he suppose
That more than this falls to his share.74
Whatever an estate does beyond this afford,
Is not a rent paid to the Lord;
But is a tax illegal and unjust,
Exacted from it by the tyrant lust.75
Much will always wanting be,
To him who much desires.76 Thrice happy he
To whom the wise indulgency of Heaven,
With sparing hand but just enough has given.77
Sentence Notes
In plain English: There are two kinds of greed. One is not the genuine kind: it is a grasping hunger for money, not for its own sake, but for the pleasure of spending it at once on show and luxury.
In plain English: The other is true greed, properly speaking: a restless, never-satisfied desire for wealth, not to use it for anything, but only to hoard it, keep it, and keep adding to it.
In plain English: The first kind of greedy man is like an ostrich, which swallows any metal but intends to feed on it, and actually manages to digest it and pass it out again.
Reference & context: Natural history: it was widely believed that ostriches could digest iron. (They do swallow stones and metal to help grind food.)
In plain English: The second is like the silly chough, a bird that steals coins only to hide them away.
Reference & context: Folklore: choughs and jackdaws were said to steal shiny objects and hide them.
In plain English: The spender does a lot of harm to people, but also a little good to a few (those he spends his money on).
In plain English: The hoarder does good to nobody, not even to himself.
In plain English: The spender can't justify himself to God, the angels, or any sensible person.
In plain English: The hoarder can't give a reason or even an excuse, not even to the devil, for what he does: he serves the god of money and doesn't even get paid.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A perfect paradox: the miser serves money but never gets any benefit from it, like a slave without wages.
Reference & context: Biblical: Matthew 6:24, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Mammon is an Aramaic word for wealth, treated as a false god.
In plain English: The spender manages to be loved, and even envied, by some people.
In plain English: The hoarder is hated and despised by everyone.
In plain English: No vice has been pelted with more wise sayings, especially by poets, who have attacked it with stories, fables, allegories and references, and, as the saying goes, “moved every stone” to throw at it. Of all these, I can't recall a finer, more elegant rebuke than one line of Ovid's.
Reference & context: Wordplay: Cowley twists the proverb “leave no stone unturned” into picking up every stone to throw.
In plain English: Luxury lacks many things; greed lacks everything.
Reference & context: Literary: this line is actually by Publilius Syrus (1st century BC), a writer of Latin maxims, not Ovid; Seneca quotes it too. “Wanting” means lacking. (The source misprints “multa” as “malta”.)
In plain English: I'd like to add one more part to that saying and translate it like this: poverty lacks some things, luxury lacks many, greed lacks everything.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A three-step ladder of need, in which the richest person is the most needy. Cowley improves the ancient maxim.
In plain English: Someone once said of a good, wise man that, though he owned nothing, he had everything.
Reference & context: Biblical: 2 Corinthians 6:10, “as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.”
In plain English: The miser is that man's exact opposite: he owns everything, yet has nothing.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A mirror-image reversal of the biblical paradox.
In plain English: He guards his beloved gold like a eunuch guarding a harem. As the Latin says: “I've heard they are the greatest lovers, but can do nothing.”
Reference & context: History: eunuchs guarded royal harems in the East; they were close to the women but could not enjoy them. The Latin line is in the style of Roman comedy.
In plain English: Misers love their money more than anyone, but they are unable to enjoy it.
In plain English: What could be worse than the state of a man whom abundance starves and good fortune curses?
In plain English: Beggars only complain of an ordinary misfortune; but the rich man who is poor in spirit is poor in the fullest sense.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: “The rich poor man” is a striking oxymoron. The line returns near the end, in the Horace ode.
In plain English: I'm surprised there's never been a law passed against the miser.
In plain English: Did I say “against” him?
In plain English: I mean a law to help him, just as the state provides for other madmen.
Reference & context: Cowley's joke: the miser should be treated not as a criminal but as insane.
In plain English: It would be very sensible for the king to appoint people (and I don't think courtiers would object to the job) to manage the miser's estate while he lives, since his heirs will manage it well enough after. They would make sure he got a living suitable to his station, which he could never squeeze out of his own cruel fingers.
Reference & context: Historical: the Crown did appoint guardians to manage the estates of the insane and of orphans, and courtiers eagerly bid for these profitable posts. That is the point of Cowley's sly aside.
Modernized: need not → do not need
In plain English: We give charity to lazy tramps and fake beggars, yet we don't care at all for these truly poor men, who, I'd say, deserve respectful treatment because of their social rank.
Reference & context: Historical: the Elizabethan Poor Laws provided parish relief for the poor and punishments for “sturdy beggars.”
In plain English: I could go on attacking misers forever, but I'm almost choking on how much there is to say.
In plain English: Like them, I'm made poor by having too much.
Reference & context: Literary echo: Ovid's Narcissus says inopem me copia fecit, “plenty has made me poor” (Metamorphoses III.466).
In plain English: I'll finish this unpleasant subject with part of Horace's first Satire, translated in his own chatty style.
Reference & context: Literary: Horace, Satires I.1 (c.35 BC), addressed to his patron Maecenas, asks why nobody is content with his lot, and why people pile up wealth.
In plain English: I wonder, Maecenas, why no one has ever been, is, or perhaps ever will be, content with the situation that either his own choice or fate has put him in.
Reference & context: Historical: Gaius Maecenas, friend of the emperor Augustus and generous patron of poets. His name became a word for any patron of the arts.
In plain English: “How lucky the merchant is!” cries the old soldier.
In plain English: The merchant, battered by storms at sea, cries: “How lucky the soldier is! In half an hour you get either a quick death or a glorious victory.”
In plain English: The lawyer, woken early by clients banging on his door, says the farmer is the lucky one.
In plain English: The farmer, when his crops fail, envies the lawyer, whose mouth earns its food just by talking.
In plain English: You'll agree it's not for lack of examples that I stop here; there are enough to run on a mile further than even long-winded Fabius.
Reference & context: Literary: Fabius was a notoriously wordy Stoic writer whom Horace mocks. “Fabius his style” is an old way of writing the possessive, “Fabius's style.”
In plain English: But wait, all you gentlemen, grumblers and rebels whom no luck ever satisfies, who keep calling generous Jupiter cruel: look, Jupiter has decided to give you all what you want.
In plain English: “You, soldier, become a merchant; you, merchant, become a soldier; and lawyer, go and plough the fields.”
In plain English: “Swap your positions right now.”
In plain English: So why are they hanging back?
In plain English: Not a single one of them will change, now that he's allowed to.
Reference & context: Idiom: “The devil a man” is an old emphatic way of saying “not one man.”
In plain English: If I were Jupiter, insulted like this, I swear I'd thrash this rebellious bunch. But he's too kind, so he says: stay as you were, but make the best of what you are, and be cheerful in the position that fate or your own choice has given you.
Reference & context: The accent in “abusèd” tells you to pronounce the -ed as a separate syllable for the rhythm.
In plain English: No, they insist they must keep on working, sweating and toiling, and be miserable for a while.
In plain English: “But it's only so we can save enough to live comfortably in old age,” they say. “The wise ant teaches this lesson and preaches hard work to lazy humans.”
Reference & context: Biblical: Proverbs 6:6, “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.” Fable: Aesop's “The Ant and the Grasshopper.”
In plain English: “The little worker scurries about and sweats, and doesn't immediately gobble up all he finds, but carries it home in his moderate mouth, a store for the winter he knows is coming.”
In plain English: “And when the turning world shows living things the ugly wrong side of the year (winter), and shuts the ant in with storms, cold and rain, he happily eats what he worked for.”
Reference & context: The image is of winter as the rough underside of a piece of cloth: the “wrong side” of the year.
In plain English: Oh, is that so? (Horace now answers the greedy man.)
In plain English: Your wise example, the ant, doesn't spend all its time resting and going without. Sensibly judging the needs of a mortal creature, it divides its life between work and enjoying the results.
In plain English: But nothing (heat, storms, rain or cold) can stop you from your unnatural drive for work; you'd run all the way to the Indies rather than see anyone, even a friend, richer than you.
In plain English: Foolish man! What's good or beautiful about piles of treasure buried in the ground?
In plain English: Rather than ever see your treasure grow smaller, you'd be buried with it yourself.
In plain English: And what's the difference? Isn't never using something just as bad as never having had it?
In plain English: You may store millions of measures of grain in your huge barns, but your stomach still won't hold any more than mine.
Reference & context: Measures: a “quarter” of grain was eight bushels.
In plain English: Every baker makes lots of bread. So what? He doesn't eat any more than anyone else.
In plain English: Live within the limits of what nature needs, and you won't have to struggle to increase your wealth. A hundred acres will serve your whole life's needs just as well as ten thousand.
In plain English: “But it's nice to take from a big supply,” you say. What? Even if you're only going to take as much as I take from my small one? If all you want is to fill a jug or a pot, must you go to some great river for it, when a clear spring flows right at your feet?
In plain English: Give me the spring that safely and easily provides what people need. Whoever scorns it and insists on drinking from the Nile must risk the crocodiles, and the fast current that may sweep him away without warning.
In plain English: Tantalus stands up to his neck in water, washed all over but forever thirsty inside. He snatches at the water with greedy lips, and the cruel, teasing stream slips away from his mouth.
Reference & context: Mythology: Tantalus, punished in the underworld, stands in a pool that drains away whenever he tries to drink, beneath fruit that rises out of reach. He gives us the word “tantalise.”
In plain English: Now you laugh and your worried forehead relaxes. “Very nicely said,” you think, “but what's that got to do with me?”
In plain English: Just change the name, and this story is about you. You glory in a flood of useless wealth that you can touch but never enjoy; the abundance stays, and so does the hunger.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A famous moment where the reader suddenly realises the story is about them.
Reference & context: Literary: Horace's original line, mutato nomine de te fabula narratur (“change the name and the story is about you”), is one of the most quoted lines in Latin.
In plain English: You wouldn't hesitate to grab even the gods' treasures, but once they're yours they become sacred and must be worshipped. It's as if gold had no use except to please your collector's eye with the fine pictures stamped on the coins.
In plain English: The only real use of money is to buy what nature can't do without: oil, life-giving bread, wine that nourishes our spirits, and the few other things we need to live. Everything left over is given to you so that you can give it away.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The moral of the poem in one line: surplus wealth exists to be given away.
In plain English: If worry, trouble, envy, grief and fear are the bitter fruit of riches, and if having plenty breeds a new kind of poverty, then, gods, let me be poor in the old, simple way.
In plain English: You'd think a bronze tower, with locks, bolts, iron bars and guards as strict as in wartime, would be enough to protect one innocent girl's virginity.
Reference & context: Literary: Horace, Odes III.16. Mythology: King Acrisius of Argos locked his daughter Danaë in a bronze tower because a prophecy said her son would kill him. Zeus reached her as a shower of gold, and she bore the hero Perseus.
In plain English: The protective father thought he needn't worry any more; he smiled to himself as he walked, thinking he had outwitted the goddess of love, and he slept soundly. But Venus laughed as she watched and heard him sleep.
In plain English: She taught lovesick Jupiter a magic recipe for love that armed and helped him more than all his thunderbolts and almighty power ever had.
In plain English: She taught him love's alchemy, by which he turned his divinity into gold. No guards stopped him then; gold was the password. Quick, bright and fierce as lightning, gold went straight through doors and walls; and just as lightning can melt a sword inside its sheath without burning the sheath, it melted away the girl's fear in her most secret place.
Reference & context: Science of the time: Pliny and Seneca reported that lightning could melt a sword while leaving its scabbard unharmed. Alchemy: the “elixir” was the substance thought to turn base metals into gold.
In plain English: Wise King Philip of Macedon blew up cities by setting off a “mine” of gold; this was the bomb he used to break their gates. Gold is the great skill of peace and the siege-engine of war; fleets and armies follow it from far off. It is the flag on land and the sailor's guiding star.
Reference & context: Historical: Philip II of Macedon (father of Alexander) supposedly said no fortress was impregnable if a donkey loaded with gold could get inside, meaning bribery. Pun: a “mine” is both a gold mine and an explosive tunnel. (The source reads “scar”, evidently a misprint for “star”.)
In plain English: Let the whole world be slaves to this tyrant, servants of this god in disguise; it will never conquer me.
In plain English: My virtues stand guard and won't let gold in, and wisdom is a stronger bronze tower than Danaë's.
Reference & context: The poem's opening image returns: the tower that failed against gold is replaced by wisdom, which does not fail.
In plain English: The poet's laurel wreath round my head protects me from this lightning (gold), and I won't raise my head so high that it gets in the way of the violent storm.
Reference & context: Folklore: laurel (bay) trees were believed never to be struck by lightning, and laurel wreaths crowned poets. “Meteor” once meant any atmospheric event, including lightning.
In plain English: Do we worship wealth because it is powerful? The things we hate (bad luck and death) are more powerful still.
In plain English: I retreat from towns and royal courts, the camps of the rich and powerful, as vast as Xerxes' army, and run to join the small Spartan band holding the narrow pass of poverty.
Reference & context: Historical: at Thermopylae (480 BC) a small Spartan force under Leonidas held a narrow pass against the huge Persian army of Xerxes. Pun: “straits” means both a narrow pass and hardship (“in dire straits”).
In plain English: It's useless to fill cellars and barns with all the summer's harvest if the mind still feels hungry and thirsty; the rich man who is poor inside is truly poor.
In plain English: We become slaves to whatever we value too highly, and masters of whatever we don't care about.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A neat reversal: we are free from what we despise and enslaved by what we love too much.
In plain English: A field of grain, a spring and a wood: that is all the wealth nature recognises.
In plain English: The king who receives everything the fertile Nile valley can produce is fooling himself if he thinks he really gets any more than this.
In plain English: Whatever an estate produces beyond these basics is not rent owed to its lord, but an illegal, unjust tax squeezed out of it by greed, the real tyrant.
In plain English: Whoever wants a lot will always be lacking a lot.
In plain English: Three times happy is the man to whom Heaven, wisely kind, has given with a careful hand just enough.
Fun Fact
In his day Cowley was the most celebrated poet in England. When he died in 1667, King Charles II reportedly said that Mr. Cowley had “not left a better man behind him in England,” and he was buried in Westminster Abbey next to Chaucer and Spenser. Seventy years later Alexander Pope asked, “Who now reads Cowley?” The man who wrote so well about the emptiness of worldly glory became one of literature's great examples of it.