[224-2] Biblically determined: Romans, 13, 14.
[224-3] Plutarch, De Gloria Athen., 348. Athen., XIV, 623. Petit. Legg. Att., 385.
[224-4] Livy, XXXIV, 6 ff.
[224-5] 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.
THE HISTORY OF LUXURY.—IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
During the middle ages, industry and commerce had made as yet but little progress. Hence it was as difficult then for luxury to be ministered to by fine furniture as by the products of foreign countries. Individual ornamental pieces, especially arms and drinking cups,[225-1] were wont to be the only articles of luxury. We have inventories of the domains of Charlemagne from which we find that in one of them, the only articles of linen owned were two bed-sheets, a table-cloth and a pocket handkerchief.[225-2] Fashion is here very constant; because clothing was comparatively dearer than at present. And so now in the East. In the matter of dwellings, too, more regard was had to size and durability, than to elegance and convenience. The palaces of Alfred the Great were so frailly built that the walls had to be covered with curtains as a protection against the wind, and the lights to be inclosed in lanterns.[225-3]
Hence the disposition to use the products of the home soil as articles of luxury was all the greater, but more as to quantity than to quality.[225-4] Since the knight could personally neither eat nor drink a quantity beyond the capacity of his own stomach, he kept a numerous suite to consume his surplus. It is well known what a great part was played among the ancient Germans by their retinues of devoted servants (comitatus), which many modern writers have looked upon as constituting the real kernel of the migration of nations.