In the history of any individual people, it may be shown with approximate certainty at what point luxury exceeded its salutary limits. But in the case of two different nations, it is quite possible that what was criminal prodigality with the one, may have been a salutary enjoyment of life with the other; in case their economic (_wirthschaftlichen_) powers are different. Precisely as in the case of individuals, where for instance, the daily drinking of table wine may be simplicity in the rich and immoral luxury in the case of a poor father of a family.[224-4] Healthy reason has this peculiarity, that where people will not listen to it, it never hesitates to make itself felt. (_Benjamin Franklin._)[224-5] However, the luxury of a period always throws itself, by way of preference, on those branches of commodities which are cheapest. [Footnote 224-1: _Stuart_, Principles, II, ch. 30, _Ferguson_, History of Civil Society, VI, 2. Thus _Dandolus_, Chron. Venet., 247, tells of the wife of a doge at Constantinople who was so given to luxury that she ate with a golden fork instead of her fingers. But she was punished for this outrage upon nature: her body began to stink even while she was alive. In the introduction to _Hollinshed's_ Chronicon, 1557, there is a bitter complaint that, a short time previous, so many chimneys had been erected in England, that so many earthen and tin dishes had been introduced in the place of wooden ones. Another author finds fault that oak was then used in building instead of willow, and adds that formerly the men were of oak but now of willow. _Slaney_, On rural Expenditure, 41. Compare _Xenoph._, Cyrop., VIII, 8, 17.] [Footnote 224-2: Biblically determined: _Romans_, 13, 14.] [Footnote 224-3: _Plutarch_, De Gloria Athen., 348. _Athen._, XIV, 623. Petit. Legg. Att., 385.] [Footnote 224-4: _Livy_, XXXIV, 6 ff.]