MORALS OF LUXURY. 669 



ence of public instruction. Should the glaciers once more descend 

 from the north and sweep before them all that makes us a great 

 people, leaving no vestige of civilization behind, would America be 

 known to future generations and handed down in history as the land 

 of the most expensive school system on the globe, or would it be 

 known as the birthplace of our Franklins, our Greeleys, our Lincolns, 

 whose school-days might be counted on the fingers ? 



I would not, however, be misunderstood. I do not wish to see the 

 whole system of state instruction destroyed at one fell swoop. Revo- 

 lutions, in educational as well as in political and religious systems, 

 should be gradual, lest the destruction of an institution so interwoven 

 with the various interests of men should prove too great a shock for 

 the ever-frail structure of society. Even at best we shall be compelled 

 to educate a portion of the community at public expense, so must we 

 also feed and clothe them. This, however, is no reason why all the 

 children of the land should be reduced to the same mental diet. 



I believe that the only way in which we. can hope to carry forward 

 our civilization, or even keep it from retrograding, is jealously to 

 guard the integrity of the individual, and to make the temple of the 

 mind so sacred that neither law nor custom shall be able to enter and 

 enslave. It is therefore high time to cry a halt in this rapid encroach- 

 ment of the state upon the domain of the individual. It now becomes 

 the imperative duty of every friend of America to strive to limit the 

 state to its true function, and thus avert, if possible, those evils which 

 have buried historic nations beneath their classic ruins. For the con- 

 clusion, however unpalatable it may be, is forced upon us, that the per- 

 fection of our system of state education implies the destruction of 

 individuality, and that the destruction of individuality means social, 

 political, intellectual stagnation, the last symptom of that fatal disease 

 to which China long ago fell a victim, which is even now gnawing at 

 the vitals of France and Germany, and of whose insidious approach 

 America may well beware. 







MOEALS OF LUXURY.* 



By EMILE DE LAVELEYE. 



THE real question to be considered in discussing the ethics of luxury 

 is, Is it useful ? This question has a bearing on living issues, for 

 it touches the foundation of the contentions which threaten civilized 

 societies. It is well considered in the " History of Luxury "f of M. 

 Baudrillart, who has brought to his work the result of twenty years of 



* Translated and adapted from the " Revue des Deux Mondes " by W. H. Larrabee. 

 f " Histoire du Luxe, prive et public." Par M. H. Baudrillart, de I'lnstitut. 4 vol Paris, 

 1878, 1880. 



