Now as to the point under consideration. I find the three terms, _luxury_, _sensuality_, and _excess_, generally considered in a synonimous light, notwithstanding the characteristic differences which distinguish them. _Luxury consists in providing the objects of sensuality, in so far_ _as they are superfluous._ _Sensuality_ consists _in the actual enjoyment of them_; and _excess_ implies _an abuse of enjoyment_. A person, therefore, according to these definitions, may be very _luxurious_ from vanity, pride, ostentation, or with a political view of encouraging consumption, without having a turn for sensuality, or a tendency to fall into excess. _Sensuality_, on the other hand, might have been indulged in a Lacedemonian republic, as well as at the court of Artaxerxes. _Excess_, indeed, seems more closely connected with _sensuality_, than with _luxury_; but the difference is so great, that I apprehend _sensuality_ must in a great measure be extinguished, before _excess_ can begin. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAP. XXI. _Of Physical and Political Necessaries._ After having cleared up our ideas concerning _luxury_, it comes very naturally in, to examine what is meant by _physical necessary_. I have observed in the third chapter of the first book, that in most countries where food is limited to a determined quantity, inhabitants are fed in a regular progression down from plenty and ample subsistence, to the last period of want, and dying from hunger. _It is ample subsistence where no degree of superfluity is implied_, which communicates an idea of the _physical-necessary_. It is the top of this ladder; it is the first rank among men who enjoy no superfluity whatsoever. A man enjoys the physical-necessary as to food, when he is fully fed; if he is likewise sufficiently clothed, and well defended against every thing which may hurt him, he enjoys his full physical-necessary. The moment he begins to add to this, he may be considered as moving upwards into another category, to wit, the class of the _luxurious_, or consumers of superfluity; of which there are to be found, in most countries, as many stages upward, as there are stages downwards, from where he stood before. This is one general idea of the question. Let me now look for another.