The Wise Man: O World, I wish to ask you further: what do you give to those who serve you as you desire?
Wealth is the cause of many evils
The World: Whatever they desire.
The Wise Man (tempting her): I desire wealth.
As wealth grows, greed increases, and from greed envy is born
The World: In the wall of your house, built by your great-grandfather, he hid an immeasurable treasure. Tomorrow at the earliest, or the day after, the wall will collapse, and you will find there the treasure your ancestor walled in, greater than you coveted; behold, I have made you rich.
The Wise Man: O World, but I desire still more: I wish to become famous and of great name.
Envy is fratricidal
The World: Your brother or friend, having much wealth, lives and fares very well. But it is not good for him to be your equal, of the same measure as you. So with the wealth you found in your great-grandfather’s wall, seek to bring it about that you kill him, and, having killed him, take his wealth too. Thus you will become richer, more famous, and more praised than all.
The greedy man wishes everyone to be poor
The Wise Man: O World, but I desire also lands and inheritances — villages, fields, and vineyards — that I may grow stronger still and gain an even more glorious name.
The World: Behold, I have given you much wealth; go, then, to those who, because of poverty, are selling their lands and villages, and, finding them in great distress, you will buy it all at a low price. In this way, behold, you will become a man of estates and fields.
The Wise Man does not ask for wealth because he truly desires it — Cantemir tells us plainly: „tempting her.” He lays a snare for the World, so as to see her true face revealed, much as the Fathers, in their work upon thoughts, would follow an evil thought all the way to its end — not to embrace it, but to see where it leads. And the World, not knowing how to hide from herself, falls straight into the trap: at the first request she gives a seemingly innocent gift — a found treasure, not a stolen one. But each following step uncovers more clearly the seed hidden within that first gift.
This is precisely the teaching Evagrius Ponticus, and after him Saint John Cassian, placed at the foundation of their whole theology of the passions: the love of money (philargyria) never remains alone. It gives birth to vainglory — the desire „to become famous and of great name” — and vainglory, fed further, gives birth to envy of the one who might stand beside you, equal in measure. Cantemir’s text unfolds this genealogy of the passions with almost clinical clarity: wealth → greed → envy → murder. It is no arbitrary list, but a ladder descending, step by step, toward hell.
And the summit of this descent is none other than the first murder in the history of mankind: the killing of Abel by Cain, precisely out of envy that his brother’s sacrifice had been accepted more favorably (Genesis 4:3-8). The Apostle James names plainly the root of such deeds: „You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain” (James 4:2). The World in the Divan invents nothing new — she merely repeats the first enmity, only in other words: „it is not good for him to be your equal.”
The last step is perhaps the most timeless of all: greed that wishes poverty upon others as the price of its own enrichment. „Go to those who, because of poverty, are selling their lands… and you will buy it all at a low price” — the World plainly proposes that the neighbor’s distress become an occasion for gain. Saint Basil the Great, in his Homilies to the Rich, rebukes exactly this spirit: whoever rejoices in another’s misfortune for his own benefit no longer has mercy, but has made his brother’s hunger into his own trade. And Saint Isaac the Syrian says that the merciful man cannot bear to see any creature suffer, still less profit from it.
Here Cantemir shows us not the story of one wicked man, but the inner logic of any passion left to grow unchecked: given a first step — the desire for wealth — the rest follows almost of itself, all the way to blood. And the Wise Man, in tempting her, does not fall — he only shows, for the reader, where each step of this ladder leads, so that none may be tempted to climb it.
