— ee Tt. 
TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 925 
A historic survey is first necessary, dealing with consumption in early and 
simple civilisations and in barbarism, and then, following the main line of Western 
civilisation, e.g., interpreting the rise of Greek civilisation to the age of Pericles, 
its private simplicity and public magnificence (one-third revenue spent on public 
buildings). The rise of Roman luxury and subsequent exaggeration of this (as in 
bath and dwelling, in feast or drama) is associated with corresponding progress 
and decadence, private magnificence and public poverty, naturally culminating in 
private orgies and public ruin. The historic recurrences of the same evolution 
may be well illustrated in France, eg., the periods of Henri IV., Louis XIV., 
and Louis XV., or the history of the Second Empire. This decay of art and 
luxury explains the recurrence of sumptuary laws of the Spartan or Puritan 
criticism of art as efforts after simplification and purification of life by material 
or moral compulsion towards asceticism. 
These results of different forms of consumption may be viewed, not only in 
societies, but in individual detail. A demand for commodities being a command 
of labour (see Carlyle’s well-known passage on the possessor of a sixpence as to 
Fia. 1. Fia. 2. 
Self- Species- Self- Species- 
regarding. regarding. regarding. regarding. 
Niatzon 
Clty 
sa 
pear ae 
Licltvedita : 
Bitola Se 
that extent sovereign over all men), this determines (a) the function. of the con- 
sumer, (6) the enveronment of the consumer, and so ultimately the duration and 
the quality of the life of both. Hence the pressing necessity of the theory of con- 
sumption to social improvement, and the necessity of co-operation between the 
economist ancl the moralist for the criticism and counsel of the consumer. 
The different types of consumption, zc. the ‘standards of comfort’ which 
become broadly fixed in each age and country are capable of more precise classi- 
fication in grades and degrades above and below the (physiological) necessaries of 
life. The central question of practical economics may now be stated as that of 
adjusting these standards of comfort towards the evolution of the species, the 
society, and the individual. The co-operation of the cultivators of the allied 
Sciences is thus required; and the more familiar problems of what and how to 
produce, and of how to distribute, are thus also prepared for solution upon a less 
uncertain basis. 
Returning to the processes of consumption, we see, as fundamental, that of 
food, and next of the individual necessaries of clothing, shelter, &c., with all their 
associated rise of quantity and quality. Above this comes the consumption for 
