Secondly, dynamic change may take the form of the de crease of luxury, expenditure being limited to necessities, and cumulative abstinence being carried to its maximum. The question of the effect of abandoning luxury should this dy namic change occur suddenly, is most difficult. What would happen if everybody at once began to live on the bare neces sities of life ? If this almost unthinkable change took place, all the factories and agents used for nonessentials would at once lose much of their value. A great industrial crisis would follow, as industry would have to adjust itself abruptly to a greatly altered standard of desires. What would happen, if that standard continued, would vary as human nature varied. There might follow an increase of population, as a result of earlier marriages and larger families; or a great improvement in machinery and other equipment, or an increase of chari table giving, or more probable than all else, a progressive lightening of labor, a use of the surplus resources and energy in study, rest, and recreation. It is well-nigh impossible to suppose that with limited desires for the objective goods of the world there would continue undiminished efforts to pro duce goods and to save them. That would be miserliness become universal. In actual life changes of standard occur gradually. Economizing in material things by simpler living makes possible not only the increased efficiency of productive agents but the increased enjoyment of immaterial goods, a union of plain living, easy living, and high thinking.
§ 11. Happiness and the simple life. We are concerned here with the economic not with the moral issues involved in luxury, but the line between the two is sometimes hard to draw. Particularly hard is it in answering the question, Does luxury enhance the man's true psychic income? Does a greater expenditure on oneself give a larger life than a moderate expenditure would give? Surely, it is partly a mat ter of individual temperament and somewhat a matter of degree. Ostentation has its penalties. Undue striving after effect defeats its own purpose. Happiness results from a har monious relation between man and the world. Life loaded with too much luggage staggers under the burden. The mere spending of a large income in selfish indulgence absorbs all the energies and interests of some men and women. Not only happiness in the narrow sense, but self-realization, is to such lives impossible. The tired faculties of the Sybarite cease at length to respond to natural pleasures. When the senses are robbed of their fineness, youth grows blase, mature manhood is ennuied, life is empty. With the growth of incomes grows the strain to reach the self-imposed standards of frivolity. Insanity and suicide are on the increase. The stress of mod
ern life often makes men yearn for the simpler joys. From the days of the Stoics to our own time, philosophers and preachers in times of great material prosperity have risen to praise the simple life, and to declare that happiness dwells not outside of men, that they must seek it within.
Wise consumption depends not alone on physical pleasures, but on the spiritual unity of the uses made of goods. Happi ness and character are akin in the qualities of simplicity and unity. Happiness, so far as it depends on wealth, is a har mony of gratifications. Character is a harmony of actions. A successful life is a group of complementary deeds. There can be no harmony, without a central, simple, guiding prin ciple. The wise and moral use of goods and the economic use of them have much in common. The results of the choice of goods are reflected in the health, intelligence, happiness, moral ity, and progress of society.
The spending of income for display has never been very successfully forbidden by law. The Middle Ages are full of futile sumptuary laws which sprang from the envy the nobles had for the wealthy merchants. The growth of good taste may do what formal law found impossible. In these days even when luxury in some respects is increasing, the use of great wealth takes more social directions. It turns from dress to ward education, art, music, and travel ; then ceases to be ap plied merely to self and family, and benefits the community. Nowhere else and never before has this movement gone so far as in America with the gifts of millions annually for edu cation, libraries, art, scientific and medical research, and for social betterment.
§ 12. The question of justice. We leave untouched here the larger moral problem involved in luxury. It concerns the justice of large incomes rather than their spending. Most of the enemies of luxury c9ndemn all expenditure of wealth above a very moderate sum, declaring that it is "unjust" for one man to have much while others are in poverty. This com munistic doctrine pervades the teaching of many moral teachers, pagan and Christian. The question of luxury leads back to the question of distribution : Has the man honestly gained his wealth ? If so, he may spend it with good judgment or poor, with good taste or bad, but, so long as he does not injure others in the spending of it, there is much vagueness and confusion in the talk of "justice" or "injustice." Each must in large measure be his own judge of the wisdom of ex penditure. If expenditures were regulated by the public, few persons would be within the law. But whatever the goods that are bought, if large incomes are acquired without social serv ice, there may well be talk of injustice.