Those who do not have any superfluities to exchange for ours must not be excluded, because, by the first principle that I established with regard to necessities, a superfluous portion of food that is necessary for human life does not belong to us, rather it is due to all those who have need of it. This is our duty to the poor. I also maintain that those who have a hard heart towards the poor, who don’t want to convey to them some of their superfluities because these poor are not able to convey theirs to them, are very bad stewards and do not understand their true interests.

We understand from this what the superfluities are to which we aspire with so much avidity, or what the true idea of them must be. They are goods that by themselves are useless to us, because they do not have a connection to our necessities nor our conveniences, but they become so as soon as and in the proportion that we convey them to others. For example, anyone who cultivates the land does not only want the quantity of food he needs to live and to be (138) comfortable, he also wants it to produce beyond what he needs for this result.

A man who has a fixed annual income and who claims to limit himself to it wants to persuade everyone that he does not seek more wealth and also deceives himself because he wants the same thing as the country gentleman, although in reverse. He complains when commodities are expensive and he can’t have them for nothing; his only desire is for the value of his annual income to increase every year, that is, to be able to buy more every year with this fixed sum of money that he receives, (134) and for the price of other commodities to decrease proportionally forever.

VI. To love superfluities, to want to push wealth to a kind of excess, and to never limit the desire to get rich is also a sign of the will and the universal passion that the Creator has inspired in men.

Thus the only true convenience is the one that lends a hand to necessities like a faithful minister. In this sense everything that facilitates, shortens, and eases the work and the effort of those who are busy providing necessities for others, and everything that sustains them and supports their good will must be regarded as a true convenience. Farmers, for example, only work to feed and to preserve the life of others by producing all the necessary food.

To that end, we must pay particular attention so that our senses, minds, and wills are not misled by establishing false conveniences in place of real ones, and so that because of this, we do not suffer the disadvantage of living uncomfortably and disagreeably. It is true that our senses often deceive us and that we surrender to appearances, and in this way, we often deprive ourselves of the principal amenities of life. Thus, the mind must come to the aid of the senses and carefully examine the objects that take hold of them and bring about an agreeable reaction.

This reflection on the order and the marvelous arrangement of things in nature shows us rather obviously the universal law that imposes itself on the will of all men who are equally driven to live comfortably, which is, that each one owes as much to others as he wants to receive from them. This proposition, although in appearance very simple, has great scope, considering it in all its strength.

The wonderful effects of this universal order confirm this truth for us every day. Countless numbers of men, who only work and are only occupied from morning until night to produce things that are only good for gratifying our senses and for distancing the objects that offend them, find in this way the means (117) to feed and to clothe themselves and even to have all the types of conveniences that an infinite number of others produce.

This common inclination for the agreeable and the convenient, which is simple and only shows (113) the same effects almost everywhere in man’s infancy, diversifies more or less as the contributors[^1] to his wealth present to him a certain quantity of different objects that excite in him, according to his inclinations, more or less love or aversion for one or the other. This diversity of human inclinations is the source of countless products to flatter our senses and to distance the objects that offend them.

V. We usually call conveniences everything that is not necesarry and that we can do without. But this negative proposition does not give an accurate idea of the matter. It even seems impossible to form one that is applicable to an infinite number of different objects that are called convenient or agreeable and which are only thus in relation to certain people who consider them to be so. It is clear that (110) what often seems convenient and agreeable to one is regarded as inconvenient and disagreeable by another because of the infinite diversity of human inclinations and feelings.