Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/39

Rh be extravagant; but nearly all these people, servants and farmers, save; and a little luxury in their lives does no great harm. By virtue of the blending of these shades of luxury between one social stratum and another, the difference in the lives of men of the several classes is much less as to the real enjoyments they are all able to procure than as to the cost of what they possess.

External luxury is becoming less conspicuous. There are no more gilded carriages with footmen and outriders, except to mark the state of ambassadors. The simple carriages now in use, however elegant their forms may be and handsome the horses that draw them, are otherwise as democratic in appearance, without showy harness decorations or extraneous ornaments, as the old-fashioned post chaises.

Judicious investment in luxury constitutes a kind of revenue fund for emergencies and times of need. This is true for all classes and for the whole nation. Jewels, pretty pieces, tapestries, pictures, and choice collections may be sold in periods of misfortune without loss. Even among those in more moderate circumstances the watch, the chain, the clock, and the cheap jewels are adequate to procure in days of distress or illness, if not much, something that could not be had otherwise.

Such luxury as this, far from being immoral and deleterious, is legitimate, commendable, and useful, provided that with it allowance is made from the income for future emergencies, and for saving.

Quite different is it with the luxury of periods of decay and of corrupt classes; for morbid social groups may exist even in a country generally sound. This luxury becomes immoral and unintelligent when, instead of responding to natural and normal physical and intellectual wants, it consists solely in the seeking for costly pleasures and objects simply because they are costly, in systematic waste, and in the single satisfaction of an extravagant vanity. These features of social life were marked among the wealthy classes of the Roman Empire, but appear only in individual examples and a few narrow circles in modern life. It is not by such eccentricities, which have become rare among modern peoples, that luxury is to be judged. As we have described it, it is impossible to condemn it. Regarded in a general aspect, and apart from its abuses, luxury is one of the principal agents of human progress. Mankind has it to thank for nearly everything which to-day adorns and embellishes life, and for a large proportion of what makes life more pleasant and wholesome. It is the father of the arts. Neither painting nor sculpture nor music, nor their popular accompaniments, could ever have become so greatly developed and so widely diffused in a society that had declared war on luxury.