piness, to the life and death, of the protagonist of the novel. It is all the same whether the novel deals with Don Quixote de la Mancha, the altruist, or with Sir Willoughby Patterne, the egoist. Every hero of a novel is like a ship which, on leaving port, bears in her hull the torpedo which is going to sink her. But there is a difference between Don Quixote and Sir Willoughby. When Don Quixote dies, Quixotism remains in the air, a cultural value that we have to serve; when Sir Willoughby leaves the scene his egoism carries with it a portion of our own. In both cases the imaginative ideal of happiness within us has received a shock. We have learnt to rejoice and to suffer with the joys and sufferings of the hero of the work without suffering or enjoying wholly, but as if the succession of joys and sufferings were inevitable. And, as the hero of the novel is but a part of ourselves, we have also learnt a little to see our own joys and sufferings fading away before our eyes, as if they were the joys and sufferings of another person. We have learnt, that is to say, to rise a little above ourselves. And this is the catharsis" of the novel.

66

THE IDEAL OF LUXURY

A VISITOR to England has remarked that English women, amid the stress of war, have effected a complete revolution in fashion. The traveller meant by his observation that neither had the Germans been able to frighten Englishmen nor had Englishmen begun to realize the importance of the war, since after nine months of the most sanguinary campaign in history, frivolous women went on being as frivolous as before.

Nevertheless, the feminine frivolity which it reveals is not the most important feature of this observation. What is important is that this revolution of fashions points to the fact that in the large cities there are hundreds of thousands of people engaged, in time of war, in spinning, weaving, cutting out, designing, trimming, and distributing clothing for women who still have their wardrobes crammed with garments. Many of these elegant women are not frivolous. Some of them are working hard at organizing and conducting hospitals and attending to poor refugees. Did they fully realize what they were doing when they got unnecessary clothing made for themselves by people whose time would at that moment be more profitably occupied, for instance, in making uniforms for soldiers?

The war has taught one periodical, which is certainly not a revolutionary organ, the Statist, that "the real wealth of the world consists of the skill of the inhabitants of the world." "It is the labour,

the industry, the skill, the intelligence, and the experience of the men which really make the wealth, and therefore is the wealth." This "journal of practical finance and trade" has learnt this lesson because it has seen that "the supply of labour in the great factories that turn out munitions of war is not able to cope with the emergency. . . It is the want of men that is really felt. An abundance of what is called wealth is of practically no use without the men to turn it into the forms in which it is specially useful.” "Our Navy has control of the seas; our imports and exports are practically up to the normal; we can obtain food, raw materials, and everything we want in any quantities we please; and yet, while all materials are in plenty, the chiefs of the Army are calling out that the operations of the war are being protracted simply because of the want of abundant supplies of munitions."

Every reader of these words will rejoice to think that even City papers have begun to understand that true economics is that which interprets figures of production and consumption, or imports and exports, in human terms, and not human activities in figures of employers' profits. The statement is true: Real wealth lies in the capacity to direct human activities into the moulds in which they are especially useful. Only, this capacity is obstructed by capitalism. It is, perhaps, necessary for England, in time of war, that all women who work in factories should be making uniforms or bandages, or tending the wounded, or cultivating the gardens of England. But capitalism says that these things must not be; insists that these women shall devote their energies to making unnecessary garments; decrees that their activity shall be dissipated in the production of luxuries; and, in obedience to the will of capitalism, the labour of hundreds of

thousands of women is still wasted in producing luxuries.

The worst of capitalism is that it grants to private individuals the right to spend as they like accumulated capital. A nobleman in the Middle Ages was as much bound to his land as his own serfs. He could not sell it; he could not spoil it, or give over arable land to pasturage and hunting. He was a functionary. But a modern rich man

may spend in a few years, if it please him, the capital accumulated by three hard-working generations; and it is even possible for him to demoralize a fourth generation in the process of spending his money on luxuries and vices. But if this personal liberty is bad, the existence of capital is good. The savings of one generation are the tools of the next. Although capital may be in incompetent hands, its existence is preferable to its non-existence, because it is always possible for a Chancellor of the Exchequer to make it pass into better hands. The existence of capital enabled England to buy from other countries the munitions and food she needed for her great war. That shows us that Ruskin exaggerated when he said, "There is no wealth but life." This is one of those paradoxes which ought to be destroyed by the truism of "Wealth is wealth and life is life." Wealth is not life. Wealth is power, and power is an instrument for life, but not life. In the same way as in the individualistic societies of the past, socialistic societies of the future will have to devote part of their efforts to accumulating wealth for coming generations. Thrift will be a virtue in socialistic societies as it is now. The only truth in Ruskin's paradox is that wealth ought not to be accumulated at the expense of life, for human life is a higher value than wealth. Between thrift

and life there is a permanent conflict which only wisdom can go on solving. But this does not mean that there is harmony between life and luxury. Luxury is precisely the destruction of wealth without profiting life. Luxury is, then, an evil. And not only so in this society, but in every conceivable society.

Well, then, the thesis of this chapter is that the production of articles of luxury is a waste of human energy which should not be tolerated in a wellregulated society. From this thesis it is to be deduced that no man or woman (apart, of course, from invalids, old people, and children) should have the right to consume any material objects other than those strictly necessary for their health and for the efficacy of the social function they fulfil. But modern economists answer these old attacks on waste by saying that the conception of luxury is relative, and one that cannot be determined objectively, for, they say: "It is not a luxury at all if a rich man drinks a glass of wine at his meals, while this consumption would mean a luxury on the table of a poor man." Are they right?

As has been indicated, everything is an article of luxury that does not benefit the health or the efficiency of producers. With this definition it is admitted that those economists are right who speak of the relativity of luxury. The books in my study are not a luxury for me, for I use them in my production. But in the study of a rich man who did not read them, such books would be an unnecessary luxury. A Stradivarius is not a luxury in the hands of Ysaye; but the ten or twelve Stradivariuses which hung idly on the walls of the late Mr. Morgan's room were certainly luxuries. That luxury is relative does not mean that it is indefinable. The operation of defining is carried