Acquisitiveness

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 218, 10 June 1933, Page 17

Acquisitiveness

“Acquisitiveness is natural to human nature. We may persuade men temporarily to abstain from exercising it or to pretend that they do not. but there is no reasonable probability that either a Gautama or a Lenin will be able to extirpate it from the human species. Our only hope lies in its transformation and sublimation. “It was the shrewd Thomas Fuller who observed that these natural passions of human beings were not weeds to be rooted up but wild plants to be cultivated. And Bishop Joseph Butler maintained man's moral education and probation was exercised in discerning the right use of, and then rightly using, these natural passions. “Acquisitiveness is undoubtedly one of these natural passions, and. rightly used, it may develop in the individual powers of intelligence, energy, diligence, concentration, selfdenial, unselfishness ami administrative ability, all of which may do as much to perfect his own personality as to benefit the community in which he lives. “The State has an undoubted right to decide under what limitations ma terial wealth may be acquired, held anil used, but if the State be wise ii will not seek to extirpate acquisitiveness from human nature, but to transform and inspire acquisitiveness so that it may be used by men to promote increasingly in many-sided fashion the welfare of humanity.—The Rev. Dr. H. D. A. Major, in “The Modern Churchman.”