Editorial October 15, 1921 Issue

Covetousness

Frederick Dixon

That famous writer of mimes, Publilius Syrus, has summed up his conception of the greed of covetousness in a famous apothegm, "Effugere cupiditatem regnum est vincere," to escape covetousness is to conquer a kingdom. The words of the Tenth Commandment put the matter much more categorically, and, indeed, the Roman mimic, brought to the Tiber years before from Syria, may well have been acquainted with the Decalogue in its original form. The meaning of the Tenth Commandment, like that of all the other Commandments, is precisely as wide or as narrow as the individual chooses to make it. It is a command to eschew all wrongful desires, to avoid all excess; in a word, that the individual should confine himself to the demands of Principle.

That Principle is Spirit. Therefore, the command is a demand that the individual should strive for the atonement, for the atonement is the at-one-ment with Principle, and it is perfectly clear that as long as a man possesses a desire for material things the atonement is out of his reach, to the exact extent of his desire. The Commandment itself sets forth a list of certain typical forms of material indulgence or covetousness which the individual is directed to desist from. But it is obvious that these are only types of human possessions which summed up what Christ Jesus himself had in mind when he directed the rich young man to sell all that he had and to follow the Christ.

It must not for a moment be imagined that covetousness is anything but mental. It is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. Its gratification is, of course, merely the physical act which follows the mental desire. As a consequence, the possibility of obedience to the Tenth Commandment, like the First, and like every one in between, is summed up in seven words written by Mrs. Eddy, on page 392 of Science and Health, "Stand porter at the door of thought." Covetousness grows on what it feeds on, and what it feeds on is the incessant mental dwelling on a desire for material things. Some of these things are obviously obnoxious and deleterious, but many of them seem innocuous or even estimable. Evil, however, is most innocuous when its suggestions take an obnoxious form: it is most dangerous when they disguise themselves as good. Accordingly, temptation only becomes really acute when it proposes to its victim that he should do evil in the name of good, or when, what is even more dangerous, it suggests that he should do something which seems to the world good, but which speaking absolutely, is not. This is why so many of the worst crimes of humanity have been crimes committed in the name of religion.

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