For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & CO. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. SPRING. As sometime after deathlike swound Flows out and slowly wins again Along the nerve-way's tangled track, Till he that in the silent room With hot hands chafes her finger-tips, And lays his warm lips on the lips Whose cold hath quenched his life in gloom, Feels all at once a fluttering breath, And in her hands an answering heat, Feels the faint, far-off pulses beat, And knows that this is life from death So in the arterial, profound Mysterious pathways of the earth, New life is yearning to its birth, New pulses beat along the ground. A rosy mist is o'er the trees, The first faint flush of life's return, Where late the plough with coulter keen A milk-white crest, a sudden spear, New wakening from their winter sleep, Breathe softly on my spirit's ear, A PROTEST. BECAUSE you see me light and gay, From The National Review. BY LESLIE STEPHEN. necessary, how often we are to send our sheets to the wash, whether it is right to have lace upon our pillows, PROFESSOR SIDGWICK has been dis- and so forth, we get into problems cussing the ethics of luxury, and ac- where any attempt at precision is obvicording to his wont, has been giving ously illusory. We are the more perfresh interest to a well-worn topic. I plexed by the question whether the do not wish to dispute anything that he provision of a bed for ourselves causes has said, nor do I hope to clear up other people to go without a bed, and problems which he professedly left un- perhaps without supper, or how far we solved. In one sense, they obviously are bound to take such consequences cannot be solved precisely. Luxury is into account. Without aiming, therea relative term which cannot be defined fore, at an impossible precision, I shall in absolute terms. A luxury, in the try to consider not what objects first place, is distinguished from a nec- should be called luxuries or comforts essary. But then, one man's neces- or necessaries, but what are the really sary may be another man's luxury. relevant considerations by which we My very existence depends upon con- should endeavor to guide our judgditions with which another man can ments. dispense. If, again, we admit that Luxury is, as I have said, a wellthere are many things which, though worn topic. Saints and philosophers not absolutely necessary, may rightly in all ages have denounced the excesbe used if they can be used without sive love of material enjoyments, and injuring others, we see that we must set examples of a more or less thoroughalso take into account the varying so- going asceticism. It was to go no Icial conditions. If we use luxury, in further back one of the favorite topwhat Bentham called the dyslogistic ics of our ancestors in such papers as sense, we must distinguish between "The Spectator" and "The Ramnecessaries and superfluities, and then bler." Addison, in his "Cato," dedivide superfluities into comforts which scribed the simple Numidian, whose may be rightfully enjoyed, and luxuries standard appears to have resembled which cannot be enjoyed without incur- that of Scott's Highlander. The Nuring some degree of moral censure. midian, he says, rests his head upon But the dividing lines are always shift- a rock at night, and if next day he ing. Scott tells somewhere of a High-chances to find a new repast or an unlander sleeping on the open moor in a tasted spring "blesses his stars and winter night. When he tried to roll calls it luxury." General Oglethorpe the snow into a pillow his companion kicked it away as a proof of disgraceful effeminacy. Most of us would come to a speedy end if we lived in a social state where such a standard of hardiness was rigidly enforced. We admit that some kind of pillow may be permitted, if not as absolutely necessary as at least a pardonable comfort. We shall probably agree also that nobody is to be blamed for using clean sheets and securing a certain amount of warmth and softness as much at least as is desirable for sanitary reasons. But if we endeavor to prescribe precisely how much may be allowed in excess of the 1 A lecture delivered to the West London Ethical Society on 11th February. quoted this passage, in an argument 66 The next shops could serve the whole kingdom; | monplaces of our great-grandfathers. secondly, that no harm was done to The language has changed its form ; anybody either by making pickles or but the discontent at a misuse of wealth by eating pickles. I will not go into in various forms has certainly not dithe ethics of pickles. I only quote this minished since that time. to remind you that this was one of the stock questions of the period; and not without reason. The denunciation of luxury was in fact the mark of a very significant tendency. Goldsmith had expressed the prevalent sentiment in the "Deserted Village," as in the familiar passage beginning:— Obviously, then, the question of luxury is connected with very wide and deep problems as to what is the proper use of wealth, and might lead us into ultimate questions as to the justification. of the right to private property at all. I shall try, however, to keep as closely as may be to the particular aspect of such problems which is immediately And for this purpose I think it will be relevant to this particular question. Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay. And Goldsmith, like many contempora- convenient to take two points separies, was only versifying the senti-rately. The objections to luxury may ments uttered most powerfully by be stated either with reference to the Rousseau in his famous exaltation of individual or with reference to the socithe ideal man of nature above the man ety. That is to say, that if we consider of a corrupt civilization. The theory a man by himself, we may ask with has some affinity to the ancient doc- Johnson whether expenditure upon trine already expounded by classical pickles is injurious to the constitution, writers, according to which each form or at what point it becomes injurious. of government includes a principle of And, in the next place, we may ask decay as well as of life. One stage in whether, if we set to our way to decide the process of corruption of Plato's that pickles are wholesome as well as ideal republic is marked by the appear- agreeable, some of us may not be getance of the drones, people who take a ting more than our fair share of them, surfeit of unnecessary pleasures, and, and so diminishing the total sum of to obtain satisfaction, associate them- pleasure, by inordinate consumption. selves with the fierce and rapacious. First, then, I discard for the moment In Rousseau's time, this view became all social considerations. I take for connected with the growing belief in granted, for the sake of argument, that progress and "perfectibility." It was my indulgence does no harm to any one a symptom of warning to the drones of else; that I am not depriving others of his day. It showed that the thought- a means of enjoyment, but simply addful classes were becoming dimly sen- ing to my own; or, at any rate, that I sible that something was wrong in the am not, for the moment, to take into social organization; and that a selfish account that set of consequences. and indolent aristocracy should be How far, on this hypothesis, or, say, called upon to put its house in order. setting aside all question of duty to my The denunciation of luxury meant, in neighbor, should I be prudent in accushort, that the rich and powerful were mulating wealth? I sometimes amuse accused of indulgence in pleasures myself with the problem, How rich which they had not earned by services, should I like to be, supposing that I but by simply (as Beaumarchais put were perfectly wise in that sense in it) taking the trouble to be born. Con- which wisdom is compatible with thorsidered from this point of view, as the oughgoing egoism, or with what is muttering of a coming storm, as the called enlightened self-interest? The expression of a vague foreboding that obvious answer is that in that case the world was somehow out of joint, there would be no limits to my desires. we may see more meaning than appears An imaginative American, we are told, at first sight in the old-fashioned com-defined competence as a million a 66 minute and all your expenses paid." If we want more food after our appeThe suggestion is fascinating, but not, tites are satisfied, it must either be to my mind, quite satisfactory. It re- with a view to our future consumption, calls a doctrine which used to be put which is still strictly finite, or else with forward by the old political economists. a view to exchanging the food for someThey had to meet the theory a pre-thing else, in which case it is desired, posterous theory enough—of the danger of a universal glut; the danger, that is, that a nation might produce so much that nothing would have any value, and, therefore, that we should all be ruined by all becoming enormously rich. To meet this, it was often urged-along with more satisfactory arguments-that human desires were illimitable; and, therefore, that however rich a man might be come he would always wish to become a little richer. not as food but as the means of satisfying some other desire. If, then, Pope's doctrine were really sound, which really amounts to saying, if our desires were really limited to the physical conditions necessary to life, we should very soon reach the state in which they would be completely glutted or saturated. It may be worth while to note the circumstance which rather obscures our recognition of this fact. We may distinguish between the wealth which a man actually uses and that which remains, as I may say, only potential. A man may desire an indefinite quantity of wealth, because he may wish to have rights which he may yet never turn to actual account. There is a certain satisfaction, no doubt, in knowing that I have a vast balance at my banker's though I have no desire to use it. I may want it some time or other; and, even if I never want it, I may enjoy the sense of having even a disproportionate barrier of money-bags piled up between me and the yawning gulf of actual poverty. Therefore, though a very limited amount may be enough to saturate all our existing desires, we may like to know that there is more at our disposal. If possession carried with it the necessity of using our property, if we could not have potential as distinguished from actual wealth, should be so far from desiring an indefinite increase of wealth that we should regard the increase beyond a certain limit as only one of two intolerable alternatives. According to this doctrine, the desire for wealth cannot be satiated. The millionaire would still choose an extra half-crown rather than refuse it, although the half-crown brings him incomparably less additional pleasure than it brought him when his pockets were empty. But it is also true that long before we are millionaires the pleasure obtainable by additional wealth may be infinitesimal or absolutely nonexistent. The simple desires may be easily saturated. Pope asks, "What riches give us, let us then enquire." And he replies, "Meat, fire, and clothes what more? Meat, clothes, and fire?" This is, in fact, a pithy summary of our most elementary and necessary wants. Now, our demand for meat is obviously strictly limited. As soon as we have eaten, say, a pound of beefsteak, we do not want more; by the time we have eaten, say, three pounds we do not only not want more, we loathe the very thought of eating. So when we are clothed sufficiently for comfort and decency, more clothing is The question, therefore, How rich simply a burden; and we wish only should I wish to be? requires an anfor so much fire as will keep our ther-swer to the previous question, How mometer within certain limits. a heat rich can I be? A man, even if on the above or below would mean death intellectual level of a savage, can be either by burning or by freezing. Our indefinitely rich in potential wealth; ultimate aim, therefore, in regard to desires of this class is not to increase the stimulus indefinitely, but to preserve a certain balance, or equilibrium. we he may, that is, have a right to millions of pounds or be the owner of thousands of acres; but in order to use them he must have certain capacities |