It is easy to see that all these efforts at definition are imperfect, because the idea of luxury implies such a mode of life as does not contribute to the total welfare, and each one’s idea of total welfare enters into his definition of luxury. It is an evident fact that the so-called luxuries of one generation become the actual necessities of the next. This is because the life of the race means more and includes more with each succeeding generation. To live in the twentieth century will mean, as it has always meant in the past, to have such exercise of every ability as circumstances permit. Luxury is therefore always relative to the duties one has to perform, as well as to the society in which one moves. Moreover, luxury is relative to individual abilities and individual plans. It would be luxury for a farmer to go without a needed plow for the sake of buying a lawn mower. It would be luxury for a student to own two coats, if he must go without a dictionary to buy the second. It is easy to settle the luxuries of others, but less easy to so define luxury that the public can agree in the definition. In general, it is described to be a meeting of fanciful rather than real wants. Any individual in society is spending his wealth in luxury if he allows his imagination to conjure up adornments of person or household which contribute chiefly to display rather than to comfort or enlightenment. All such adornments of person, or home, or the public streets, as cultivate genuine taste and inspire to more of energy contribute to the general welfare far more than mere expenditure for food can do. Yet in times of starvation the food must come first. The world sometimes sneers at the desire among very poor people to cultivate flowers and maintain a canary or other pets; yet every philanthropist knows that these desires are among the strongest incentives to greater thrift and keener exertion. _Legal restrictions upon luxury._—With all this difficulty in definition and the certainty of change from age to age, there is nevertheless a disposition on the part of society to restrict actual luxury. Again and again this has led to enactment of laws prohibiting expenditure in certain definite forms. The dress of ladies of rank has been restricted as to style and quantity of material and ways of making. The variety upon a dinner table has been limited to a certain number of dishes and certain kinds of food. All of these have been egregious failures, from the impossibility of measuring results upon the general progress of civilization. The indirect effects of ingenuity in dress and cooking have been on the whole so beneficial that the world cannot afford to hinder it. The intricacies of French cooking seem to an ordinary household extreme luxury, yet that very ingenuity has cheapened the cost of living, to a large portion of the world, by rendering palatable the coarser vegetables and cheaper meats which lie within the reach of the poor.