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 278 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

humanity that could be saved were its wants. Not that he ever formally classifies them. Indeed he can hardly be said to recognize all their categories. But nevertheless he presupposes them. In his estimation they are in themselves morally neu- tral, yet according to the relative importance assigned to each of them they may express either a healthy or decadent person- ality. It is in this perspective in which he sees the various wants of men that Jesus shows the instinct of the practical man and not that of the fanatic. Thus in the case of purely physical wants, with a characteristic loyalty to his anti-ascetic ideals, Jesus assumes the legitimacy of the child's cry for food, 1 bids his disciples pray for bread, 3 and pities a multitude which he saw grow faint with hunger. 3 Yet physical wants are inferior to many others. Man is not to live by bread alone, 4 and spiritual intensity might altogether lift one as it did himself, quite above mere physical hunger. 5 One of the sharpest rebukes he ever administered to his disciples was occasioned by their crude mis- interpretation of one of his sayings as a caution against certain classes of bakers from whom they might be tempted to buy bread. 6 The same is true of all economic wants. Who better than Jesus ever appreciated the power of a merchant's desire to succeed in business, 7 or of a laborer's passion for a larger wage ? 8 The Heavenly Father knows his children have need of food and raiment, 9 but just for that very reason men are not to make the search for them the chief end in life. A man's life does not consist in the abundance of things that he possesses. 10 The satisfaction, not of these lower wants, but of those other and higher desires after truth and the higher verities and experi- ences of life, is to be the underlying motive in the new order of life. Men are not to be compelled to be good, but their desires are to lead them to goodness, or, if the desire be lacking, are to

'Matt 7:9. 6 Matt. 16:5-12; Mark 8: 14-21.

'Matt. 6: II. 7 Matt 13:45.

3 Matt. 15:32; Mark 8:3. 8 Matt. 20:2^.

Matt. 4:4. 'Matt. 6:31,32; John 6 : 27.

$ John 4:31-34. I0 Luke 12: IS.