THE LAW OF EXPANDING DESIRE 365 



excite no desire. Here is the great difference Bookiv 

 between the necessaries of life and the luxuries. 

 Men crave for the former, whether they are able to 

 procure them or no. They crave for the latter only 

 in proportion as they feel them to be procurable. 

 A starving boy does not want a bun the less because 

 he has not a penny to buy it with. A man of taste, 

 with only a hundred pounds to spend, does not 

 crave for a piece of tapestry at all, if he knows that 

 the lowest price for it would be not less than a 

 thousand. 



Now under normal conditions the belief that 

 exceptional wealth is procurable by them is confined 

 to men with exceptionally vivid imaginations and 

 with certain exceptional talents and energies that TWS belief is 



, , r^-, f. 1 i naturally con- 



correspond to them. 1 hey crave lor wealth, in fined to men 



fact, because they believe themselves capable of 

 creating it, and their craving keeps pace with their 

 belief in the range of their capabilities. The more p> ductive 



1 powers 



wealth they can create, the more they desire to 

 create. Their desire for wealth, in fact, unlike 

 their desire for necessaries, is proportionate not to 

 their natural wants, but to the extent of their 

 natural powers. It follows what may be called the 

 law of expanding desire. Here, then, is the ex- 

 planation of the fact which is at first sight so 

 paradoxical that whilst the desire of wealth is 

 the strongest of all motives amongst a minority, the 

 absence of wealth is not felt as any privation by the 

 majority ; and so long as the normal conditions that 

 have just been indicated prevail, and the men who 



