Outgrown
them not because the wages were too high but because their wants were
too low; were only wants of the body, wants of the barrenest unculture;
_the inelastic wants_.
That is "my own invention," that phrase! The bodily wants of a reptile
are elastic. If an alligator or a boa-constrictor catches a dog he can
swallow him whole and enjoy that one meal in unriotous bliss for weeks.
Thereafter if he must put up with no more than a minnow or a mouse he
can do that for weeks in unriotous patience. In a spring in one of our
Northampton gardens I saw a catfish swallow a frog so big that the hind
toes stuck out of the devourer's mouth for four days; but they went in
at last, and the fish, in his fishy fashion, from start to finish was
happy. He was never demoralized. It is not so with us. We cannot much
distend or contract our purely physical needs. Especially is any
oversupply of them mischievous. They have not the reptilian elasticity.
Day by day they must have just enough. But the civilized man has
spiritual wants and they are as elastic as air.
A home is a house well filled with these elastic wants. Home-culture is
getting such wants into households--not merely into single
individuals--that lack them. What makes a man rich? Is the term merely
comparative? Not merely. To be rich is to have, beyond the demands of
our bodily needs, abundant means to supply our spiritual wants.
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