THE OFFICE OF LUXURY. 27 



in physical exercises and acts of courage, at least as much vigor 

 and resolution as men of other social grades. Civilized peoples 

 have during the past three centuries obtained most brilliant 

 advantages over barbarians. If civilization is threatened, it is 

 much less by the taste for elegance in living than by the poison 

 of certain doctrines, and by a mental and moral dilettanteism 

 that has no necessary relation, in its adepts, to an enlightened 

 taste for objects of luxury. 



When we read most of the criticisms that have been uttered 

 against luxury, even by great writers, we find that they are in- 

 spired by a thought as inexact as it is superficial ; by the mistake 

 of supposing that the superfluous luxuries enjoyed by the wealthy 

 are acquired at the expense of the necessaries of the poor. If no 

 fine shoes were made, it is said, everybody would have good shoes ; 

 but all men in civilized countries have got their good shoes with- 

 out the manufacture of fine boots for men and women being 

 diminished. Again, we hear, would the world not be better off 

 if, instead of ten or twenty thousand objects of luxury, ten or 

 twenty thousand useful things were made ? 



The question can not be put in this way. The conception of 

 social activity that lies at the bottom of this reasoning is false. 

 It regards social activity as a factor fixed once and forever ; and 

 it imagines that if we take five hundred thousand days' work for 

 superfluities, this five hundred thousand days' work will be lack- 

 ing for necessaries. We should ask whether man's productive 

 capacity, his inventive force, his energy in working, and the 

 progress of the arts and sciences have not been kept up and 

 extended by the constant seeking for a more embellished life and 

 the satisfaction of more diversified wants ; if a society that does 

 not condemn and proscribe luxury has not, even in the matter 

 of common objects, an infinitely greater productive force than a 

 society that does condemn and proscribe it. We should inquire 

 if the taste for novelty and change that characterizes luxury does 

 not contribute to keep the general spirit of a society more on the 

 alert, more ready to institute better industrial conditions and 

 make discoveries and improvements ; and if, on the other hand, a 

 society always held down to the same kind of monotonous, insipid 

 life would be as productive, even in agriculture and the common 

 arts, as another, excited to incessant activity by luxurious tastes. 



Industrial progress and the extension of general wealth make 

 common many articles once regarded as luxuries. Sugar, spices, 

 and coffee were once luxuries ; drinking glasses, window panes and 

 curtains, and carpets. Watches and clocks were grand luxuries 

 till they could be made for eight or ten dollars. In articles of 

 clothing, shirts, stockings, shoes, pocket-handkerchiefs (even in 

 Montaigne's time), ribbons, and lace were regarded as super- 



