Note 224-5 — Chapter II

Most writers who have treated of luxury at all have generally confined themselves to inquiring whether it was salutary or reprehensible. Aristippus and Antisthenes, Diogenes, etc.; Epicureans and Stoics. The latter were reproached with being bad citizens, because their moderation in all things was a hindrance to trade. (Athen., IV, 163.) The Aristotelian Herakleides declared luxury to be the principal means to inspire men with noble-mindedness; inspired by luxury, the Athenians conquered at Marathon. (Athen., XII, 512.) Pliny was one of the most violent opponents of luxury. See Pliny, N. N., XXXIII, 1, 4, 13, and other places. The controversy has been renewed by the moderns, especially since the beginning of the 18th century, after luxury of every kind had previously (for the most part on theological grounds, but also by Hutten, for instance) been one-sidedly condemned. Among its defenders were Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, 1706, who, however, calls everything a luxury which exceeds the baldest necessities of life; Voltaire in Le Mondain, the Apologie du Luxe, and Sur L'Usage de la Vie; Mélon, Essai politique sur le Commerce, ch. 9; Hume, Discourses, No. 2, On Refinement in the Arts; Dumont, Théorie du Luxe, 1771; Filangieri, Delle Leggi politiche ed economiche, II, 37; and the majority of the Mercantile school and of the Physiocrates. Among the opponents of luxury, J. J. Rousseau towers over almost all others. Further, Fénélon, Télémaque, 1699, L. XXII; Pinto, Essai sur le Luxe, 1762.

The reasons and counter-reasons advanced by those writers apply not only to luxury but to the lights and shades of high civilization in general. When a political economist declares for or against luxury in general, he resembles a doctor who should declare for or against the nerves in general. There has been luxury in every country and in every age. Among a healthy people, luxury is also healthy, an essential element in the general health of the nation. Among an unhealthy people luxury is a disease, and disease-engendering.

For an impartial examination of the question, see Ferguson, History of Civil Society, towards the end; see also Beckmann, in Justis' Grundsätzen der Polizei, 1782, § 308; Rau, Ueber den Luxus, 1817; Roscher, Ueber den Luxus, in the Archiv der Politischen Oekonomie, 1843, and in his Ansichten der Volkswirthschaft, 1861, 399 ff.