#10. Our Wants are various.# After a little reflection, we shall see that we generally want but 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.