Functional socialism

LUXURY I0$

apt to judge it summarily because of its historic associations. There are, of course, luxuries and luxuries. I certainly would not condemn a man for preferring a silk to a hair shirt. In my boyhood’s days, in the North of Ireland, I had frequently on rising to break the ice in the water-jug ; to-day we use warm water and think nothing of it. Life was harder fifty years ago, and no doubt we of that generation were ourselves hardened. But the death-rate was higher. To-day, I find myself enjoying what the gods have bestowed to a degree that must surely disturb my Quaker ancestors, unless, as 1 hope, they now have more enchanting preoccupations. We can, in fact, go through a whole gamut of modern comforts and luxuries that ease or even enrich life. Our business is so to govern our instincts and appetites that luxury shall not enervate when our destiny calls for physical vigour and moral resilience.

There is, at the present time, an easy optimism in regard to luxury which is surely disquieting. It is based on the growing delusion that this is the age of plenty. Therefore, so runs the argument, why not enjoy the good things that plenty brings? Who are we, again we hear the wearisome chorus, to pick and choose? Let everyone have what he most desires; there’s enough for all. Apart from the obvious fact that there is a long distance to traverse between the conquest of economic scarcity and the social distribution of plenty, this bastard Hedonism may easily defeat itself. It pictures our land flowing with milk and honey. That we can have too much of it never