THE RELA TIVITY OF LUXURY 359 



same external things are luxuries or not luxuries Book iv 

 according to the way in which the mind regards 

 them. Thus a man will be called luxurious if his 

 house is of palatial proportions, if he lives under lofty the luxury, f 0r 

 ceilings and treads upon shining floors. But 

 luxury which the owner finds in existing amongst 

 these surroundings consists not in any physical 

 effect which they produce upon his senses as he 

 moves amongst them, but in a great variety of 

 complicated relations which exist between them and 

 his own life, past and future, and of which the senses 

 take no account at all. Were this not so the poorest 

 and most destitute might daily enjoy a luxury 

 superior to that of the millionaire by strolling 

 through the halls and corridors of our great public 

 institutions, of which many are far finer than the 

 most magnificent private houses. A man, again, or sleeping 

 will be thought, and will think himself, luxurious ifdation 

 he travels from Paris to Monte Carlo in a sleeping 

 compartment with sheets and pillows ; and passen- 

 gers who have ordinary places, if they are sensitive 

 to social contrasts, will glare through the windows 

 enviously at the occupant of this paradise, who has 

 probably had to pay a hundred francs to enter it. 

 But let us only imagine that the sleeping compartment 

 is taken off its wheels and is permanently planted by 

 the side of some street or road. It will then form 

 a bedroom which the owner of the pettiest villa 

 would hardly venture to assign to a maid-of-all- 

 work ; whilst if three workmen had to sleep in it 

 instead of three .first-class passengers, the agitator 



. accommo- 

 in a 

 train. 



