The last principle of the nationalist ideology remains to be studied. _Min tsu_, nationalism, was to provide an instrumentality for self-control and for external defense in a world of armed states. But these two would remain ineffectual in a starved and backward country, if they were not supplemented by a third principle designed to relieve the physical impotence of the nation, to promote the material happiness of its individual members and to guarantee the continued survival of the Chinese society as a whole. Union and self-rule could be frustrated by starvation. China needed not only to become united and free as a nation; it had also to become physically healthy and wealthy. This was to be effected through _min shêng_, the third of the three principles. CHAPTER IV. THE THEORY OF _MIN SHÊNG_. _Min Shêng_ in the Ideology. The principle of _min shêng_ has been the one most disputed. Sun Yat-sen made his greatest break with the old ideology in promulgating this last element in his triune doctrine; the original Chinese term carried little meaning that could be used in an approach to the new meaning that Sun Yat-sen gave it. He himself stated that the two words had become rather meaningless in their old usage, and that he intended to use them with reference to special conditions in the modern world.(142) He then went on to state the principle in terms so broad, so seemingly contradictory, that at times it appears possible for each man to read in it what he will, as he may in the Bible. The Communists and the Catholics each approve of the third principle, but translate it differently; the liberals render it by a term which is not only innocuous but colorless.(143) Had Sun Yat-sen lived to finish the lectures on _min shêng_, he might have succeeded in rounding off his discussion of the principle. There are two methods by means of which the principle of _min shêng_ may be examined. It might be described on the basis of the various definitions which Sun Yat-sen gave it in his four lectures and in other speeches and papers, and outlined, point by point, by means of the various functions and limits that he set for it. This would also permit some consideration of the relation of _min shêng_ to various other theories of political economy. The other approach may be a less academic one, but perhaps not altogether unprofitable. By means of a reconsideration of the first two principles, and of the structure and meaning of the three principles as a whole, it is possible to surmise, if not to establish, the meaning of _min shêng_, that is, to discover it through a sort of political triangulation: the first two principles being given, to what third principle do they lead?