Meanwhile, James occupies the standpoint of the Christian optimist, who fights for the highest and the best. So Simon Peter writes: “Beloved, I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11). We need not press the distinction between wars and fightings, though the first means a state of war and the lasting resentment connected with it, while the second refers to battles or outbursts of passion which occur during a state of war. James does not, of course, here refer to wars between nations but to the factional bickerings in the churches, the personal wrangles that embitter church life. “Among you,” he adds, to drive the question home. James answers his first question by a second. “Come they not hence, even of your pleasures that war in your members?” James sees an intimate connection between strife and laxity of life. The case of the church at Corinth is a point where factional divisions and gross immorality flourished together. Plato (Phaedo 66) says: “Wars and factions, and fightings have no other source than the body and its lusts. For it is for the getting of wealth that all our wars arise, and we are compelled to get wealth because of our body, to whose service we are slaves.” James and Plato agree therefore in finding the origin of war in the lusts of the body, but they differ in their opinion as to how to treat the body. Plato exhorts neglect and scorn of the body, while James urges the victory of the spirit over the body. “Plato has no idea that the body may be sanctified here and glorified hereafter; he regards it simply as a necessary evil, which may be minimized by watchfulness, but which can in no way be turned into a blessing” (Plummer). The source of all war (private and public) is “the pleasures that war in your members.” The same word for “war” between the fleshly desires occurs in 1 Peter 2:11, and in Romans 7:23 Paul uses it of the conflict between the two laws of his nature. The word for “pleasure” does not necessarily mean sensual pleasures but that which is sweet and leads to sinful strife (like ambition, love of money or power). In Titus 3:3 Paul combines both words, “lusts and pleasures.”[84] “The potential pleasure seated in each member constitutes a hostile force, a foe lying in ambush against which we have continually to be on our guard” (Mayor). In the _Letter of Aristeas_[85] the question is asked: “Why do not the majority of men receive virtue?” The answer is given: “Because all are naturally without self-control and are bent on pleasures.” It must be said that the philosophy of hedonism in this sense of the term has a powerful hold upon the average man. Buddha said trouble came of desire.