In civilised countries the minimum of goods desired is practically not limited to the bare necessaries of existence, and it is difficult to define it with anything like absolute precision. But without any formal definition of it, it is at all events sufficiently distinct to enable us to place in contrast with it those obviously unnecessary goods which make up wealth and luxury. Now luxury is very commonly supposed, in contradiction to what has just been asserted, to represent materialism in its most exaggerated form, and thus to offer a contrast to competence or modest comfort. And it does, no doubt, rest on a material basis; but competence and modest comfort do so likewise. An arm-chair which costs perhaps thirty shillings is as material as one which, on account of its artistic workmanship, costs four or five times that number of pounds. But so far as wealth and luxury transcend comfort and competence, and possess those peculiar qualities which are held to render them enviable, what they appeal to, and what they are measured by, is not their effect upon the senses, but their appeal to the imagination and the mind. We can easily see this by considering very simple examples, which will show us that the {359} same external things are luxuries or not luxuries according to the way in which the mind regards them. Thus a man will be called luxurious if his house is of palatial proportions, if he lives under lofty ceilings and treads upon shining floors. But the luxury which the owner finds in existing amongst these surroundings consists not in any physical effect which they produce upon his senses as he moves amongst them, but in a great variety of complicated relations which exist between them and his own life, past and future, and of which the senses take no account at all. Were this not so the poorest and most destitute might daily enjoy a luxury superior to that of the millionaire by strolling through the halls and corridors of our great public institutions, of which many are far finer than the most magnificent private houses. A man, again, will be thought, and will think himself, luxurious if he travels from Paris to Monte Carlo in a sleeping compartment with sheets and pillows; and passengers who have ordinary places, if they are sensitive to social contrasts, will glare through the windows enviously at the occupant of this paradise, who has probably had to pay a hundred francs to enter it. But let us only imagine that the sleeping compartment is taken off its wheels and is permanently planted by the side of some street or road. It will then form a bedroom which the owner of the pettiest villa would hardly venture to assign to a maid-of-all-work; whilst if three workmen had to sleep in it instead of three first-class passengers, the agitator {360} would point to it as an example of the horrors of overcrowding. When, therefore, the sleeping compartment is admitted—as it is admitted—to be a luxury,