Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/694

676 foolish expenditures even when they are incurred by those who can afford them.

We may consider luxury from three points of view: First, from the moral point, as concerning the individual; within what limits is the perfect satisfaction of wants useful in the normal development of the human faculties? Second, from the economical point; to what extent is luxury a help or a hindrance to the increase of wealth? Third, from the point of right and justice; is luxury compatible with the equitable division of products, and with the general principle that the remuneration of each person ought to be proportional to the amount of useful labor that he has performed? The third aspect of the problem has hardly been appreciated, because it has never been clearly seen that juridical principles should be applied to the economical repartition of products. We should not forget, however; that Christianity, having made charity a duty, has always condemned luxury because it devotes to superfluous and therefore immoral expenditure that which ought, according to its principles, to be given to the poor.

Putting aside the consideration of what man owes to his fellows, and what charity and justice expect of him, let us see whether luxury is good or injurious to the individual. The end to be pursued by man in his life is the normal development of all his faculties and the happiness that should result from it. It includes the perfection of his physical and intellectual forces, of his sentiments, of his affections in the family and toward his race, and the enjoyment of the beautiful in nature and art. Modern luxury, with the multitude of efforts required to satisfy its demands, opposes a double inconvenience against the attainment of these objects. Time has to be consumed in gaining the money that its futilities require, and the leisure that is left after the money is got is employed in expending it upon them. The whole man is thus entangled in a wheel-work of material pursuits, and can afford nothing for the life of the mind and the heart. Consider the life of that financier who counts his millions by the hundred: his transactions, his calculations, his business associates, take up his whole day; and even in the evening, among pleasures which he seeks and does not enjoy, he is still thinking about operations that may increase that fortune the revenue of which already surpasses by many times the cost of all the wants that he can dream of. He may be said to be loaded down under the mass of his property. He may be without doubt a useful wheel in the general work of production, but is he on the road that leads to perfection and happiness? The man without wants is without cares, and may be gay as the lark all the day. By help of the gifts of science and art we are able to produce so much wealth that we are confounded at the sight of the figures by which it is measured in the statistical tables; and still our age is preoccupied, tense, and melancholy.