Luxation

“ It is a well-established fact that luxury brings debauchery, and that debauchery occasions degeneration. All nations that have, heretofore, reached the zenith of their prosperity, have been engulfed, at some time or other, in the maelstrom of luxurious habits, and have fallen under the lethal influence of a degeneration occasioned solely by debauchery; for the luxury and debauchery [200] of one class brought increased poverty on, as well as excess in, other classes, and poverty and excess are prominent factors in the production of degeneration, as we shall see further on in this paper. ”

“ Such refinements, under the odious name of luxury, have been severely arraigned by the moralists of every age ; and it might perhaps be more conducive to the virtue, as well as happiness of mankind, if all possessed the necessaries, and none the superfluities of life. But in the present imperfect condition of society, luxury, though it may proceed from vice or folly, seems to be the only means that can cbrrect the unequal distribution of property. ”

“ But irrational impulses must be curbed, lest, carrying us away through excessive relaxation, they impel us to voluptuousness. For luxury, that has dashed on to surfeit, is prone to kick up its heels and toss its mane, and shake off the charioteer, the Instructor; who, pulling back the reins from far, leads and drives to salvation the human horse—that is, the irrational part of the soul—which is wildly bent on pleasures, and vicious appetites, and precious stones, and gold, and variety of dress, and other luxuries. ”

“ I want Dinky-Dunk all to myself. And the freedom of isolation like this is such a luxury! To be just one's self, in civilization, is a luxury, is the [Pg 42] greatest luxury in the world,—and also the most expensive, I've found to my sorrow. ”

“ No truth is more simple—none more firmly established by experience—none more universally disregarded—than, that the growth of luxury must work the overthrow of a republic. As the largest masses are made up of the smallest particles, so the characteristic luxury of a whole people consists of individual extravagance and folly. ”

“ I have demonstrated, in the three instances of history just cited, that degeneration has invariably followed luxury, and that a social and political cataclysm has been, invariably, the result of this degeneration. That certain classes of the Old World, and of the New World, also, are living in inordinate luxury ”

“ For, as I previously suggested, luxury begins when a man becomes the slave instead of the master of his wealth; when that which ought to be a mere machinery becomes an end in itself; and when, therefore, there is a tendency to cultivate and stimulate to excess those lower passions which, though necessary within limits, may beyond those limits distort and lower the whole character, and make the pursuit of worthy objects impossible. ”

“ Some idea of its splendor has already been given—and, it is here that we shall find that height of luxury which is the opposite of that depth of poverty and physical wretchedness that we have just now been contemplating. ”

“ When, then, we see that this detestable vice of luxury is dominant far and wide over the human race, so that all flesh has corrupted its way no less at this day than of old, we should have a strong fear of this pestiferous head of the Beast ”

“ But, without insisting on the necessity of sumptuary laws, can it be denied that rectitude of morals is essential to the duration of empires, and that luxury is diametrically opposed to such rectitude? Let it be admitted that luxury is a certain indication of wealth; that it even serves, if you will, to increase such wealth: what conclusion is to be drawn from this paradox, so worthy of the times? ”

“ A person may consume great quantities of superfluity from a principle of ostentation, or even with a political view to encourage industry; him I call luxurious. Sensuality may be indulged in a cottage, as well as in a palace; and excess is purely relative to circumstances. Luxury, therefore, as well as sensuality, or any other passion, may be carried to excess, and so become vicious. Now excess in consumption is vicious in proportion as it affects our moral, physical, domestic, or political interests ”

“ And it is monstrous for one to live in luxury, while many are in want. ”

“ I therefore measure the excess by the bad effects it produces on the mind, the body, the fortune, and the state: and when we speak of luxury as a vice, it is requisite to point out the particular bad effects it produces, to one, more, or all the interests which may be affected by it: when this is neglected, ambiguities ensue, which involve people in inextricable disputes. ”

“ Even now when part of our food passes into ordure, part into blood, part into spurious and useless phlegm, we are nevertheless so addicted to luxury, that we spend perhaps whole estates on a meal. What should we not do, if this were not the end of luxury? The more luxuriously we live, the more noisome are the odors with which we are filled. The body is like a swollen bottle, running out every way. ”

“ When, therefore, the sleeping compartment is admitted—as it is admitted—to be a luxury, it is admitted to be so because it is regarded in relation to a variety of circumstances to which the senses are quite blind, and which are realised by acts of the mind and the imagination only. And with all wealth and luxury the case is just the same. Like comfort and competence, they have material things for their foundation ”

“ Why are you nursed in the lap of luxury? Why do you enjoy comforts, a civilization that we knew nothing of? It is not just It is cruel on us. We had nothing, nothing, literally nothing, not even lucifer matches! ”

“ Could Luxury be confined to the Palaces of the Great, the Society would not perhaps be much affected with it; at least, the Mischiefs, which I am now intending to obviate can never be the Consequence. ”

“ In this sense, luxury is a necessary concomitant of property, without which no society can exist, and of a great inequality in fortunes, which is the result, not of the right of property, but of bad laws. ”

“ It is the taste for luxury which in our day, in the absence of religious principles, sustains the social movement and reveals to the lower classes their dignity. The Academy of Moral and Political Sciences clearly understood this when it chose luxury as the subject of one of its essays, and I applaud its wisdom from the bottom of my heart. ”

“ Luxury, therefore, considered as a predilection in favour of the objects of vanity, and the costly materials of pleasure, is ruinous to the human character; considered as the mere use of accommodations and conveniencies which the age has procured, rather depends on the progress which the mechanical arts have made, and on the degree in which the fortunes of men are unequally parcelled, than on the dispositions of particular men either to vice or to virtue. ”

“ By our unhappy pair at any rate the luxury in question—the little luxury of plainer folk—was not to be purchased, and in the comedy of their despair and the tragedy of their recovery nothing is more striking than their convulsive effort either to reach up to it or to do without it. They would have given for it all else they possessed, but they only meet in their struggle the inexorable never. They strain and pant and gasp, they beat the air in vain for the cup of cold water of their hell. ”

“ What is a ruinous luxury in one country, would perhaps be useful or indifferent in another. A destructive and indecent luxury in one order of society, is honorable, indispensable and useful in another; and in short, in a country where a certain degree of luxury is necessary, there may be times, when sumptuary laws would be useful. If we proceed to analyze its principles, we shall see that though abstractedly, luxury may appear to produce certain advantages, yet in general it is the cause of the greatest disorders. ”

“ And so at last, when the muscles of our thighs refused to strengthen our legs for the ascent of another foot, we would turn our backs to the slant and sink gratefully into the only real luxury in the world.
For be it known that real luxury cannot be bought; it must be worked for. I refer to luxury as the exquisite savour of a pleasant sensation. The keenest sense-impressions are undoubtedly those of contrast. ”

“ Such as I am, to my own amazement, I stand—so far as I can discern—alone in conviction, in hope, and in resolution, in the wilderness of this modern world. Bred in luxury, which I perceive to have been unjust to others, and destructive to myself ”

“ Our poet might have been startled at the reply of our political economist. If the nobility, in follies such as these, only preserved their “titles,” while their “lands” were dispersed among the industrious classes, the people were not sufferers. The silly victims ruining themselves by their excessive luxury, or their costly dress, as it appears some did, was an evil which, left to its own course, must check itself; if the rich did not spend, the poor would starve. Luxury is the cure of that unavoidable evil in society—great inequality of fortune! ”

“ For there is truly an air of something weird about luxury; and it is by this that healthy human nature has always smelt and suspected it. All romances that deal in extreme luxury, from the "Arabian Nights" to the novels of Ouida and Disraeli, have, it may be noted, a singular air of dream and occasionally of nightmare. ”

“ It is easy to reproach luxury. The day would now fail me if I were to attempt to state the things which are able to be said on this topic; there is endless speech about corruptions, adulteries, impudence, and expenses. ”

“ Of too frequent and expensive Diversions among the Lower Kind of People.
First then, I think that the vast Torrent of Luxury which of late Years hath poured itself into this Nation, hath greatly contributed to produce, among many others, the Mischief I here complain of. I am not here to satirize the Great, among who Luxury is probably rather a moral than a political Evil. But Vices no more than Diseases will stop with them; for bad Habits are as infectious by Example, as the Plague itself by Contact. ”

“ Who would not despise the vanities of luxury, on beholding the simple and modest attire which, from the lustre it derives from you, seems the most favourable to beauty? It is your task to perpetuate, by your insinuating influence and your innocent and amiable rule, a respect for the laws of the State, and harmony among the citizens. ”

“ In regretting the depopulation of the country, I inveigh against the increase of our luxuries; and here also I expect the shout of modern politicians against me. For twenty or thirty years past, it has been the fashion to consider luxury as one of the greatest national advantages, and all the wisdom of antiquity, in that particular, as erroneous. ”

“ It is an historical and invariable truth, that excessive luxury has always been the harbinger of the destruction of a state. I may add, it has always been the fatal cause. Labor and economy are the principles of true prosperity—the eclat of pomp and magnificence without them, is only a false splendor, which conceals inward misery. ”

“ For such is the despotism of luxury, it makes us endure things which we do not think proper even to mention....
“‘She that lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.’ Hear this, ye women [95] who pass your time in revels and intemperance, and who neglect the poor, pining and perishing with hunger, whilst you are destroying yourselves with continual luxury. Thus you are the cause of two deaths—of those who are dying of want and of your own, both through ill-measure. If, out of your fulness, you tempered their want, you would save two lives. ”

“ It has contributed to our material comfort in various ways, but it has not done much for the federation of the world. The great growth of luxury is not a good, but an evil, if it rob us of our belief in our great destiny and if it weaken our endeavour. ”

“ When we are disposed, therefore, under the appellation of luxury, to rank the enjoyment of these things among the vices, we either tacitly refer to the habits of sensuality, debauchery, prodigality, vanity, and arrogance, with which the possession of high fortune is sometimes attended; or we apprehend a certain measure of what is necessary to human life, beyond which all enjoyments are supposed to be excessive and vicious. ”

“ To such an extreme had luxury been carried that nothing was too sacred, nothing too costly to be enjoyed. Digestion had become a science, courtship an art, sleep a nightmare, comfort an accomplishment, and the very act of living an industry. ”

“ In the midst of poverty that means hunger and nakedness, disease and death, we have the shameless flaunting of insane luxury. And to what purpose? To challenge the envy of the vain and the foolish, to dazzle the minds of the poor and inflame the lusts of the criminal. ”

“ Yet the desire of such things insensibly becomes immoderate, and the use of them almost of course, degenerates into luxury; which, in every age, has been the dissipation of riches, and, in every sense, the ruin of those who were possessed of them; and therefore cannot be too much guarded against by all opulent cities. And as men sink into luxury, as much from fashion as direct inclination, the richer sort together may easily restrain this vice, in almost what degree they please ”

“ I asked, “are hurtful?” “Every act of a man which he performs with pleasure,” he replied, “is an act of luxury; for the sharp-tempered man, when gratifying his tendency, indulges in luxury; and the adulterer, and the drunkard, and the back-biter, and the liar, and the covetous man, and the thief, and he who does things like these, gratifies his peculiar propensity, and in so doing indulges in luxury. All these acts of luxury are hurtful to the servants of God. ”