for wealth, he substantially says, must be good because it stimulates
industry. When your lazy barbarian, who has no pleasure but gorging
himself with food, comes also to desire fine clothes, he is not only a
degree more refined in his tastes, but his increased industry leads him
to produce enough food to support his tailor, and provision is made for
two men instead of one. But desire for wealth, it is replied, is bad,
because it leads our barbarian not only to consume the product of his
own labour, but to consume that of somebody else. Mandeville gained
piquancy for his argument by confusing the two cases. Since the desire
is good, all its manifestations must be good. Extravagance, for example,
is good, and, as he put it, the fire of London was a benefit to industry
because it set up a greater demand for the services of carpenters and
bricklayers. I need not say how frequently an argument substantially the
same has been adopted by good writers, and simple extravagance been
praised because it was supposed to be "good for trade". Political
economists have been forced to labour the point that extravagant
consumption does not increase wealth; but the only curious thing is that
such a point should ever have required demonstration. The conclusion,
which is sufficient for our purpose, is simply that an absolute
denunciation or an absolute exaltation of the desire for wealth is
equally impossible; for the desire may have contrary effects. In one
shape it may stimulate to enjoyments which actually diminish wealth in
general, or, at any rate, to those which lead to the actual exploitation
of the many for the benefit of the few; and, on the other hand, to
denounce it, simply would be to denounce all the springs of action which
raise men above the barbarous state of society. When we look at the
contrasts between the rich and the poor, we must rightfully desire a
greater equality of distribution; but we may be tempted to approve too
easily any means which may lead to such equality. It is, indeed, obvious
that if all the national resources which are now applied to producing
superfluities could be turned to the production of necessaries, we could
support the same population in a greater comfort, or support a much
greater population at a point just above starvation level. But it does
not at all follow that a society in which every man's labour was devoted
entirely to the task of providing necessaries would in fact be either
more comfortable or more numerous. Historically speaking, the fact is
the very reverse. The only societies in which there is such an equality
are societies in which the level is one of uniform misery, and whose
total industrial efficiency is incomparably smaller than that of the
more civilised races. It has been only in so far as a nation has been
able to support classes with sufficient means to devote themselves to
science and art, and the cultivation of the higher faculties generally,
that it has acquired the vast powers of production which enable some to
be disproportionately rich, but which also enable numerous masses to
support themselves in tolerable comfort where there were once a few
wandering barbarians. That the more cultivated classes have sought only
their own advantage instead of the general benefit, may be too true; but
the conclusion is, not that they should cease to have the desires which
entitle a man to be called a civilised being, but that these desires
should be so regulated and moralised as to subserve directly and
necessarily the ends which they have only promoted indirectly and
accidentally. A society which has grown rich by mechanical discoveries
and industrious organisation has acquired the power of greatly raising
the average level of comfort. If, in point of fact, its power has been
greatly misused, if a great development of poverty has taken place side
by side with a great development of industrial efficiency, the proper
inference is not that we should denounce the desires from which the
efficiency is derived, but that we should direct them into such channels
as may lead to the more universal distribution of the advantages which
they create.
It is, I think, from this point of view that we can best judge of the
moral objection to 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. We know that the king who had the
reputation of being the wisest of mankind, after building a splendid
temple and a gorgeous palace, and filling them with vessels of gold, and
importing ivory and apes and peacocks, could find nothing better to do
with the rest than to take 700 wives and 300 concubines--a measure which
hardly increased his domestic felicity, but no doubt got rid of a good
deal of money. Although few men have Solomon's opportunities of
affording a typical instance of luxury, many of us show ourselves
capable of weakness similar at least in kind. I need not multiply
examples. The great mystery of fashion is perhaps a trifling but a
significant example. When people, instead of considering dress as a
means of displaying the beauty of the human frame, consider their bodies
as mere pegs upon which to display clothes, and are ready to distort
their own forms to fill arbitrary shapes, changed at short intervals to
increase the cost, they are clearly exemplifying the confusion between
means and ends. When a young gentleman spends a fortune upon the turf,
or upon gambling, he shows that he has no more conception than the poor
boy who plays pitch-and-toss with halfpence of the ways in which wealth
might be made conducive to undertakings worthy of absorbing human
energy. When, on pretence of cultivating society, we invent a whole
cumbrous social apparatus which makes all rational conversation
impossible, we know that the display of wealth has become an end to
which we are ready to sacrifice our ostensible purpose. Now, I suggest
that such luxury, such exaltation of the machinery above the ultimate
good, corresponds pretty nearly to the distinction between the desires
which lead to the rightful use and those which lead to the shameful
misuse of wealth in a social sense. Human nature, indeed, is singularly
complex, and it is impossible to deny that the hope of acquiring such
luxuries may incidentally lead to that increase of industry and
development of national resources which, as we have seen, is the ground
upon which it is defended. The industrious apprentice may have been
stimulated to become Lord Mayor by the odours from his master's
turtle-soup; Arkwright, perhaps, was induced to invent the machinery
which revolutionised the cotton manufactures by the hope of becoming Sir
Richard, and rivalling the coarse luxury of some stupid Squire Western.
But we cannot doubt that upon a large scale the love of the grosser
indulgences is bad, even from its purely economical point of view. If,
incidentally, it encourages industry, it far more directly and
necessarily encourages wasteful expenditure. If a rich man can only
spend his thousands at a gambling-table, the poorer man cannot be blamed
for gambling with a thimble-rigger. When Solomon set up his domestic
establishment, every shopkeeper in Jerusalem might be encouraged to
marry an extra wife. If a rich man, who has enough to saturate a healthy
appetite, tries how much money he can spend, like the old classical
epicures, upon new dishes of nightingales' tongues, you can hardly
expect the poorer man to refrain from an extra glass of gin. Briefly, so
far as the resources of a nation are spent upon the mere
ostentation--which we call vulgar, to imply that it is spending for the
sake of expense, foolishly trying to get more pleasure for an appetite
already gorged to excess, by simply increasing the stimulus--it is
encouraging all the forces which make rather for waste than increased
productiveness, and justifying the natural jealousy of the poorer. So
far, that is, as a desire for wealth means a desire to consume as much
as possible on supersaturating the lower appetites, the commonest
argument against private property in general is not only plausible but
justified. I should say, then, that luxury in a bad sense begins
wherever in expenditure it indicates an insufficient sense of the
responsibility which attaches to all wealth. This does not condemn an
expenditure which may seem, from some points of view, luxurious; though,
as I have said, I cannot profess to draw any distinct line in what is
essentially a question of degree and of actual possibilities, I can only
suggest in general that a man is _prima facie_ justified in all such
expenditure as tends to the highest possible cultivation of his
faculties and of the faculties of those dependent upon him. I hold it to
be a matter of the highest importance that there should be a thoroughly
civilised class--a class capable of all intellectual pleasures; loving
the beauties of art and nature; studying every possible department of
knowledge, scientific and historical; maintaining all such modes of
recreation and social enjoyment as are naturally appropriate to such a
class. And I do not call any man luxurious for maintaining his position
in such a sphere, or for enabling his children to follow in his steps. I
believe that, as things are, the existence of such a class is a
necessary condition of national welfare and of the preservation and
extension of the whole body of cultivation which we have received from
our ancestors. What is requisite is, that the class should be not only
capable of refined enjoyment, but of discharging its functions
relatively to the nation at large, and spreading a higher standard of
enjoyment through the whole community. So far as the richer class
maintains certain traditions, moral and intellectual--traditions of
personal honour and public spirit, of artistic and literary
cultivation--it may be discharging an invaluable function, and its
existence may be a necessary means of diffusing a higher civilisation
through the masses who have not the same advantage. Whatever employments
of wealth contribute to make a man more efficient as an individual
member of society, to strengthen his understanding and his perceptions,
to widen his intellectual horizon and interest his sympathies, and the
enjoyments which correspond to them, are not to be condemned as
luxurious. They are, at present, only within the reach of the richer
classes, ardently as we may hope that the power of partaking them may be
extended as rapidly and widely as possible. But the growth of luxury, in
the bad sense, is the indication that the class which should act as the
brain of the social organism is ceasing to discharge its functions, and
becoming what we call a survival. It is a kind of moral gout--an
aristocratic disease, showing that the secretions are becoming
disordered for want of a proper application of the energies. It was in
that sense, as I said before, that our grandfathers denounced the luxury
which proved that the ruling classes, especially in France, had retained
their privileges while abandoning the corresponding duties. If in
England we escaped so violent a catastrophe, it was because, with all
their luxuries and levities and shortsightedness, the aristocratic
classes were still playing an active part, and, if not governing well,
doing whatever was done in the way of governing. But every class, and
every member of a class, should always remember that he may be asked
whether, on the whole, he and his like can give any sufficient reason
for his or their existence, and that he ought to be prepared with a
satisfactory answer. When he has to admit that his indulgences are in
the main what may be called luxuries in the bad sense, he may consider
that he is receiving notice to quit.
This may suggest the last remark that I need make. It is impossible, I
have said, to say definitely this is, and that is not, a luxury: and, in
general, that is not the way in which the question presents itself. We
have rather to decide upon our general standard of life, and to adopt a
certain scale of living more or less fixed for us by our social
surroundings. We can all do something towards rationalising the habitual
modes of expenditure, and adapting the machinery to such ends as are
worthy of intelligent and cultivated beings. So far as inclination is in
the direction of vulgarity, of ostentatious habits, of multiplying idle
ceremonies and cumbrous pomposities, we can protest by our own conduct,
at least, in favour of plain living and high thinking. But so far as
social life is really adapted to the advancement of intellect, the
humanising and refinement of our sympathies, it promotes an improvement
which cannot but spread beyond the immediate circle. Even such pursuits,
it is true, may incidentally become provocative of an objectionable
luxury. A man who is a lover of art, for example, occasionally shuts
himself out all the more from the average sympathies, and indulges in
pleasures, less gross but, perhaps, even more enervating than some which
we should call distinctly sensual. The art, whether literary or
plastic, which is only appreciable by the connoisseur, is an art which
is luxurious because it is on the way to corruption. Nothing is clearer
in the vague set of guesses which pass for aesthetic theory, than this:
that to be healthy and vigorous, art must spread beyond cliques and
studios, and express the strongest instincts and emotions of the society
in which it is developed. This, I think, is significant of a general
principle. Luxury is characteristic of a class with narrow outlook, and
devoted to such enjoyments as are, by their nature, incapable of
communication. Whenever the enjoyments are such as have an intrinsic
tendency to raise the general standard, as well as to heighten the
pleasure of a few, they cannot be simply stigmatised as luxurious. The
old view of the responsibilities of wealth was chiefly confined to the
doctrine that the rich man should give away as many of his superfluities
as possible, to be scrambled for by the poor, in order to appease the
Fates. We have come to see that charity, though at present a necessary,
should be regarded as a degrading necessity; and, therefore, not in the
long run a possible alternative to luxury. Too often it is itself a kind
of luxury as mischievous as selfish disregard to the natural
consequences of our expenditure. The true direction of our wishes should
rather be to direct social energies into such channels as have a
natural affinity to public spirit. A man who really loves art because he
has a keen sense of beauty, not because he wishes to have the reputation
of a skilful collector, would surely try to beautify the world in which
we all live, to get rid of the hideous deformities which meet us at
every turn, and not simply to make a little corner into which he may
retire for simple self-indulgence. A lover of truth should not be
content, as some philosophers were forced to be content, with discussion
in an esoteric circle, but should endeavour, now that thought is free,
to stimulate the intellectual activity of all men, confident that the
greater the number of investigators, the more rapid will be the advance
of truth. I do not venture to suggest what special direction should be
taken by those who have the privileges and responsibilities of great
wealth. I have never had to consider that problem in any practical
reference. Still, considering how vast a part they actually play in
social development, how great is their influence, and how many people
and enterprises seem to be in want of a little money, I cannot help
fancying that a rich man may find modes of expenditure other than
reckless charity or elaborate pampering of his personal wants, which
would be not only more useful to the world, but more interesting to
himself than many of the ordinary forms of indulgence. But I am only
speaking of general tendencies, and have disavowed any capacity for
laying down precise regulations. If I have stated rightly what is the
evil properly attacked when we speak of luxury as vicious, it will, I
think, come mainly to this: that the direction in which we should look
for improvement is not so much in directly prescribing any Spartan or
ascetic system of life, as in cultivating in every one who possesses
superfluities, the sense of his implicit responsibility to his fellows,
which should go with every increase of wealth, and the conviction, not
that he should regard pleasure as in itself bad, but that he should
train himself to find pleasures in such conduct as makes him a more
efficient member of the body corporate of Society. If, indeed, there
should be any man who feels that he has no right to superfluities at
all, while so many are wanting necessaries, and should resolve to devote
himself to the improvement of their elevation, I should say, in the
first place, I fully and heartily recognise him to be one of the very
large class which I regard as my superiors in morality; although, in the
next place, I should insinuate that he is one of those heroes who, while
they deserve all honour, cannot be taken as models for universal
imitation, inasmuch as I cannot help thinking that the ultimate end is
not the renunciation but the multiplication of all innocent happiness.
THE DUTIES OF AUTHORS.
I propose to speak to you to-day upon a subject which, though I may
perhaps be tempted to exaggerate its importance, possesses some real
importance. I have undertaken to speak upon the duties of the class to
which I belong. I make, however, no claims to the position of censor. I
have no such claim, except, indeed, the claim of possessing some
experience. There are two ways, I may observe, in which a man may
acquire a sense of the importance of any moral law. One is by keeping
the law, and the other is by breaking it. In some ways, perhaps, the
systematic offender has acquired the most valuable experience. No one
can speak more feelingly about the evils of intemperance than the
reformed drunkard, unless it be the drunkard who has not reformed. The
sober gentleman who has never exceeded can realise neither the force of
the temptation nor the severity of the penalty. On the other hand, I
must admit that some writers upon ethical questions have been men of
fair moral character. I only make the statement by way of explaining
that, in speaking of the duties of authors, I do not assert, even by the
most indirect implication, that I personally have either observed or
disregarded the principles which I shall discuss. Whether I am a model
for imitation or an example of the evils to be avoided, matters nothing
to this discourse; though the question to which of these classes I
belong has a certain interest for myself.
There is one other matter which I can deal with very briefly. I have
said that the subject has a certain importance. Upon that it is needless
to dilate; for, in the first place, authors have been engaged for
generations, and never more industriously than in this generation, in
preaching the vast importance of authors to mankind. I could not hope to
add anything to their eloquence upon a topic with which they are so
familiar. We may, however, assume that the enormous mass of literature
which is daily produced, whether its abundance be a matter of regret or
exultation, is at least a proof that a vast number of people read
something, and are, we may suppose, more or less affected by what they
read. It cannot be indifferent to inquire what are the duties of those
who undertake to provide for this ever-growing demand.
One matter has been lately discussed which may serve as a starting-point
for what I have to say. A French author who came the other day to
observe our manners and customs, was impressed by the fact that so much
of our writing is anonymous. The public, that is, reads without knowing
who are its instructors, and the instructors write without incurring any
definite personal responsibility. The problem is naturally suggested,
whether such a system be not morally objectionable. Ought not a man who
undertakes to speak as an authority let us know who he is, and therefore
with what authority he speaks? The question could hardly be answered
satisfactorily without some study of the facts; and especially of the
way in which the system has grown up. I can only notice one or two
obvious reflections. A century ago we boasted--and we had reason to
boast--that the English Press was the freest in Europe. It was already a
very important factor in political life. But at that period the
profession of letters was still regarded as more or less disreputable.
The great author--the poet, divine, or historian--was indeed fully as
much respected as he is now; but to write for money or to write in
periodicals was held to be not quite worthy of a gentleman. Byron, for
example, refused to take money for his poetry, and taunted others for
taking money, until so much money was offered to him that he swallowed
his scruples. Burns, though as much in need of money, had shortly
before refused to write for money; and Wordsworth held that his high
calling imposed upon him the duty of rather repelling than seeking the
popularity by which money is to be won. We have changed all this, and
the greatest modern authors are less apt to disavow a desire for pay,
than to complain that their pay is insufficient. The employment--it can
hardly be called the profession--of periodical writing, again--the only
kind of writing which could make literature a source of a regular
income--was long regarded as a kind of poor relation of the respectable
or so-called learned professions, clerical, legal, and medical. Jeffrey,
whose fame now rests upon his position as the editor of _The Edinburgh
Review_, was for a long time anxious to conceal his employment as not
exactly creditable. In the year 1809 the benchers of Lincoln's Inn
passed a resolution that no one should be called to the Bar who had
written for money in a newspaper. Writers in newspapers since that time
have frequently risen to the Bench, and have been not the least honoured
of Cabinet Ministers. Yet the sentiment which involved a certain stigma
has only disappeared in this generation. And the historical cause seems
to be obvious. The newspaper Press had gradually grown up in spite of
authority. It had first been persecuted, and writers had escaped
persecution by consenting to be spies or dependants upon great men.
Half the hack-authors aspired to subsidies from the secret-service
money, and the other half were looking for a reward when their patrons
should have a turn in the distribution of good things. The Press was
freer than elsewhere, for the English system of government gave
importance to public discussion. Both Ministers and Opposition wished to
influence voters through the papers. But the authors were in the
position of dependent auxiliaries, prosecuted for libel if they went too
far, and recompensed by pensions for the risks they had to run; they
were despised, even by those who used them, as a set of mercenary
guerillas, employed to do dirty work and insinuate charges which could
not be made by responsible people, and ready, as was supposed, to serve
on whichever side would pay them best. According to a well-known
anecdote, two writers of the eighteenth century decided by the toss of a
halfpenny which should write for Walpole and which should write for his
adversary Pulteney; but the choice was generally decided by less
reputable motives. Now, so long as the Press meant such a class it was
of course natural that the trade should be regarded as discreditable,
and should be carried on by men who had less care for their character
than for their pockets. In England, where our development has been
continuous and traditions linger long, the sentiment long survived; and
the practice which corresponded to it--the practice, that is, of
anonymity--has itself survived the sentiment which gave it birth.
I do not, indeed, mean to insinuate that the practice may not have
better reasons than that which led to its first adoption. The mask was
formerly worn by men who were ashamed of their employment, and who had
the same reasons for anonymity as a thief or an anarchist may have for a
disguise. It may now be worn even by men who are proud of their
profession, because the mask has a different significance. When a
journalist calls himself "we" instead of "I," the word really represents
a fact: the fact that he speaks not simply as an individual, but as the
mouthpiece of a corporation, which itself claims to be the organ of a
party. The plural covers whatever additional weight may be due to this
representative character. To consider the value of this justification
would take me too far. I have spoken of this historical fact because I
think that it illustrates a more general problem.