Functional socialism

104 FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

later, appraise the economic effects of its luxury trades; but the issue here raised cuts at the roots of national existence. For it is the spiritual quality of life that is imperilled. Our problem, therefore, is not primarily economic, but vitally concerns public policy. And since, by hypothesis, that is an affair of the political chamber, it becomes a political problem of the first magnitude, any political decision reached being loyally accepted by the economic or functional authority. A little serious thought instantly convinces us that the moral import of unrestrained luxury would compel us, as a people, to choose between a life of simplicity, of self-denial, of plain living and high thinking, or a life softened by luxury, by vice, by transient enjoyment. Disregarding Utopia or our occasional urge towards Arcadia we are, even to-day, invited to choose between the vision of Mr. de Valera, who would gladly see Ireland revert to a medieval simplicity under the religious guidance of Mother Church, and any phase of life we may fancy down to Tyre and Sidon, whose vices were virtues compared with the fruitful land of Scobellum, whose inhabitants ‘exceeded the cannibals for cruelty, the Persians for pride, the Egyptians for luxury, the Cretans for lying, the Germans for drunkenness, and all nations for a generality of vices.”

That evil flows out of unrestrained luxury can hardly be doubted; but we must not assume, without good reason, that luxury is, in itself, a vice and the primrose path to decadence. We are, perhaps, too