When we are disposed, therefore, under the appellation of _luxury_, to rank
the enjoyment of these things among the vices, we either tacitly refer to
the habits of sensuality, debauchery, prodigality, vanity, and arrogance,
with which the possession of high fortune is sometimes attended; or we
apprehend a certain measure of what is necessary to human life, beyond
which all enjoyments are supposed to be excessive and vicious. When, on
the contrary, luxury is made an article of national lustre and felicity, we
only think of it as an innocent consequence of the unequal distribution of
wealth, and as a method by which different ranks are rendered mutually
dependent, and mutually useful. The poor are made to practise arts, and
the rich to reward them. The public itself is made a gainer by what seems
to waste its stock, and it receives a perpetual increase of wealth, from
the influence of those growing appetites, and delicate tastes, which seem
to menace consumption and ruin.

It is certain, that we must either, together with the commercial arts,
suffer their fruits to be enjoyed, and even in some measure admired; or,
like the Spartans, prohibit the art itself, while we are afraid of its
consequences, or while we think that the conveniencies it brings exceed
what nature requires. But we may propose to stop the advancement of arts at
any stage of their progress, and still incur the censure of luxury from
those who are not advanced so far. The housebuilder and the carpenter at
Sparta were limited to the use of the axe and the saw; but a Spartan
cottage might have passed for a palace in Thrace: and if the dispute were
to turn on the knowledge of what is physically necessary to the
preservation of human life, as the standard of what is morally lawful, the
faculties of physic, as well as of morality, would probably divide on the
subject, and leave every individual, as at present, to find some rule for
himself. The casuist, for the most part, considers the practice of his own