ut little of any one kind of commodity, and
prefer to have a portion of one kind and a portion of another kind.
Nobody likes to make his dinner off potatoes only, or bread only, or
even beef only; he prefers to have some beef, some bread, some potatoes,
besides, perhaps, beer, pudding, &c. Similarly, a man would not care to
have many suits of clothes all alike; he may wish to have several suits,
no doubt, but then some should be warmer, others thinner; some for
evening dress, others for travelling, and so on. A library all made of
copies of the same book would be absurd; to keep several exact
duplicates of any work would be generally useless. A collector of
engravings would not care to have many identical copies of the same
engraving. In all these, and many other cases, we learn that _human
wants tend towards variety_; #each separate want is soon satisfied, or
made full# (Latin, _satis_, enough, and _facere_, to make), and then
some other want begins to be felt. This was called by Senior #the law of
variety#, and it is the most important law in the whole of political
economy.

It is easy to see, too, that there is a natural order in which our wants
follow each other as regards importance; we must have food to eat, and
if we cannot get anything else we are glad to get bread; next we want
meat, vegetables, fruit, and other delicacies. Clothing is not on the
whole as necessary as food; but, when a man has plenty to eat, he begins
to think of dressing himself well. Next comes the question of a house to
live in; a mere cabin is better than nothing, but the richer a man is
the larger the house he likes to have. When he has got a good house he
wants to fill it with furniture, books, pictures, musical instruments,
articles of vertu, and so forth. Thus we can lay down very roughly #a
law of succession of wants#, somewhat in this order: air, food,
clothing, lodging, literature, articles of adornment and amusement.

It is very important to observe that there is no end nor limit to the
number of various things which a rich man will like to have, if he can
get them. He who has got one good house begins to wish for another: he
likes to have one house in town, another in the country. Some dukes and
other very rich people have four, five, or more houses. From these
observations we learn that there can never be, among civilised nations,
so much wealth, that people would cease to wish for any more. However
much we manage to produce, the