672 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



refined, it has become the aesthetic sentiment, the love of the beau- 

 tiful, which has created all the arts. Instead of condemning it, it is 

 proper to encourage it and exalt it, for in public monuments it becomes 

 an agent of civilization and a source of pure, disinterested enjoyments 

 accessible to the whole people. Applied in private life to the decora- 

 tion of houses, furniture, and articles of use, and in everything to the 

 choice of beautiful forms, as was done in anticjuity, it purifies the taste 

 and becomes an instrument of progress. The love of the beautiful 

 and the instinct for adornment are good in themselves, and do not ne- 

 cessarily urge to luxury, for it is not in the dearness of the material but 

 in the harmony of the colors and the purity of the lines that they 

 should be manifested. The difference between luxury and art is thus 

 indicated by M. Baudrillart : "Art pursues the realization of the beau- 

 tiful, or the reproduction of certain forms. Luxury has only one aim 

 to seem. The object of art is essentially disinterested ; that of luxury 

 is egotistical. In the eye of luxury, the beautiful itself, the object of 

 the passionate pursuit of the true artist charmed with perfection, is 

 only something that glitters. Luxury pays for art as it pays for mat- 

 ter, and buys great works just as it spends money for jewels and fine 

 goods." These incentives to luxury are reenforced by the love of 

 change, which is revealed principally in the caprices of fashion. 

 E'ashion is one of the j^lagues of the times, and produces evils of 

 various kinds. First, according to the M. Baudrillart, it makes the 

 mind frivolous by diverting it from the things that ought to occupy 

 it. "Those who make a point of elegance are obliged to employ 

 themselves considerably with their clothes, and to devote to them a 

 degree of study which certainly can not elevate their minds or make 

 them capable of great things." This is the moral evil. The economi- 

 cal evil is well described by M. J. B. Say : " Fashion has the privilege 

 of throwing things away before they have lost their usefulness, fre- 

 quently even before they have lost their freshness ; it multiplies con- 

 sumption and condemns what is still good, neat, and becoming to be 

 good for nothing. Thus the rapid succession of fashions impoverishes 

 a state both as to what it consumes and what it does not consume." 

 To make a goods of silk, wool, or cotton, of a new pattern, the ex- 

 pense of designs, models, printing-rollers, etc., must be incurred. 

 What is not sold during the year becomes a remnant which is dis- 

 posed of at a discount. Certain styles are not to the taste of the pub- 

 lic, and are left to be sold at half price. All of the advances and 

 losses must be covered by the total of sales, or the ruined manufac- 

 turer will have to cease proditcing. The changes of fashion thus con- 

 siderably augment the price of all the objects to which they apply. 

 If the costume were not so changing, the current manufacture of the 

 goods which it requires would be carried on at better advantage than 

 that of the thousands of different styles that arise in the different 

 seasons of every year. 



