urpose
are honorific. The marks of superfluous costliness in the goods are
therefore marks of worth--of high efficency for the indirect, invidious
end to be served by their consumption; and conversely, goods are
humilific, and therefore unattractive, if they show too thrifty an
adaptation to the mechanical end sought and do not include a margin of
expensiveness on which to rest a complacent invidious comparison. This
indirect utility gives much of their value to the "better" grades of
goods. In order to appeal to the cultivated sense of utility, an article
must contain a modicum of this indirect utility.

While men may have set out with disapproving an inexpensive manner of
living because it indicated inability to spend much, and so indicated
a lack of pecuniary success, they end by falling into the habit of
disapproving cheap things as being intrinsically dishonorable or
unworthy because they are cheap. As time has gone on, each succeeding
generation has received this tradition of meritorious expenditure from
the generation before it, and has in its turn further elaborated and
fortified the traditional canon of pecuniary reputability in goods
consumed; until we have finally reached such a degree of conviction as
to the unworthiness of all inexpensive things, that we have no
longer any misgivings in formulating the maxim, "Cheap and nasty." So
thoroughly has the habit of approving the expensive and disapproving
the inexpensive been ingrained into our thinking that we instinctively
insist upon at least some measure of wasteful expensiveness in all our
consumption, even in the case of goods which are consumed in strict
privacy and without the slightest thought of display. We all feel,
sincerely and without misgiving, that we are the more lifted up in
spirit for having, even in the privacy of our own household, eaten
our daily meal by the help of hand-wrought silver utensils, from
hand-painted china (often of dubious artistic value) laid on high-priced
table linen. Any retrogression from the standard of living which we are
accustomed to regard as worthy in this respect is felt to be a grievous
violation of our human dignity. So, also, for the last dozen years
candles have been a more pleasing source of light at dinner than any
other. Candlelight is now softer, less distressing to well-bred eyes,
than oil, gas, or electric light. The same could not have been said
thirty years ago, when candles were, or recently had been, th