Of all the goods of life, which life, moreover, parsimoniously measures out to us, the most precious is certainly health. It is also the one we neglect the most. We waste our strength, we abuse our stomachs, we lavish our energy with guilty recklessness.
What do a regularly beating heart, a lucid brain, vigorous and powerful lungs matter? We have only one goal: wealth.
All our faculties, all our acts, all our hopes are concentrated and spent on the conquest of gold. On the road of time, we run without respite towards some fabulous land of Alaska which promises our covetousness the prodigious metal. A wind of madness carries us, we cry, we crush the weak, pushing some, pushed by others, torn, violent, bumping into obstacles, we fall without breath, we stiffen, leaving a shred of flesh on the sharp stones of the ground, then raised, we resume our fiery race, our clamors, our struggles, our eyes fixed on the dazzling mirage, our arms outstretched towards the city of joy.
How few, alas, are rewarded for their efforts? How few touch the expected boundary?
The possession of gold being the supreme and primordial thought of all, I believe it useful, in order not to wear out the patience of the readers, to devote the first chapters of this book to the various methods and means employed to earn it, since he there are men who toil. The chapters on health and beauty will only come later, since both these gifts have, according to common error, only a secondary value.
In the course of the present work, I have interposed on almost every page quotations, thoughts, maxims, borrowed from eminent men of all ages. First, to show the reader that by reading my recommendations, by following my advice, it is not me, an obscure writer, that he is listening to, but the voice of those who have the right to speak.
