120 philosophical essays you must read in your life

Chapter 61

Chapter 4 Insights into the sunspots of human nature

"Everything has a measure and a limit. Virtue can neither exceed nor fall short."

Section 1 On Luxury

[French] Voltaire

Luxury has been attacked eloquently in poetry for 2000 years, but it has always been loved.

The first Romans ravaged and destroyed the poor villages of the Volscians and Samnites, plundering their harvests to increase the wealth of their own poor villages.Everyone can tell a lot about these robbers.They are selfless, moral people!They have not yet stolen gold, silver and jewels, for they have not been found where they looted.Their groves and swamps are free of partridges and grouse, and their temperance is commended!

When they gradually plundered everything from the farthest reaches of the Adriatic to the Euphrates, and had enough sense to enjoy the fruits of their plunder for seven or eight hundred years; When such pleasures are brought upon even conquered peoples to taste them, they are said to cease to be wise and upright.

All these attacks are nothing more than to prove the truth that a thief cannot eat his stolen food, wear his stolen clothes, or put on his stolen ring.It is said that if a thief wants to be an honest man, he should throw all these into the river.It would be better to say that one should not steal.Condemn robbers when they rob, but don't call them mad when they enjoy their loot.Honestly, were the British sailors doing the wrong thing when they took Pondicherry and Havana and made their fortunes, and later enjoyed their hard work in Asia and Africa in London?

In fact, the bombast simply wants to bury the wealth accumulated through war, agriculture, trade, and industry.They cited the example of Restymonde.Why don't they cite the example of the Republic of San Marino?What use was Sparta to Greece?Did Sparta have Demosthenes, Sophocles, Apelles, or Phidias?The luxury of Athens produced all kinds of people.Sparta had some military strategists, but even fewer military strategists than other city-states.So be it!Let a small republic like Restymond retain its poverty.No matter whether you have nothing or enjoy all the wonderful things in life, no one can escape death anyway.A Canadian savage can live to old age like a British citizen with an income of fifty thousand guineas (old British gold coins) a year.But no one compares the country of the Iroquois with England.

Let the republic of Ragusa and the county of Zug enact laws against extravagance, waste, they are right, it is necessary that the poor cannot live beyond their means, but somewhere I read this:

"The first thing to understand is that luxury makes a great country rich, though it ruins a small one."

If you think extravagance is excess, everyone knows that any excess, whether it be excessive abstinence, gluttony, frugality, or generosity, is harmful.I don't know how this happened to my village: the land is barren, the taxes are heavy, and the ban on exporting the wheat we grow is intolerable.Yet nearly every farmer has good clothes of cloth and feels well fed.It must be the greatest and most inappropriate luxury of the peasantry, when he tills his fields, painted and painted, his hair curled, and his fine clothes of white linen.But the townspeople of Paris or London go to the theatre, dressed like peasants, and that is the wildest, most absurd miserliness.

"Everything has a measure and a limit. Virtue can neither exceed nor fall short."

Scissors are certainly not the oldest thing.When it was invented, when the nails were cut and part of the hair that hung down the nose was cut off, people blamed it, and what was not said?They will no doubt be called dandies and libertines, paying a high price for a useless instrument to destroy the labors of the Creator.What a sin to cut short the horny keratin which God has caused it to grow on our fingertips!This is an insult to God.Things got even worse when the shirt and socks were invented.How old magistrates, who had never worn socks and shirts, clamored in rage against young magistrates who succumbed to this fatal luxury, few could have imagined.

【Together with you】

Human beings admire luxury by nature, so that their behavior is always in a state of sway.Virtue and luxury we promote are inherently in conflict.In the early stages of human development, it is obviously incompatible with luxury, but with the high development of material civilization and spiritual civilization, the temptation is also increasing.As a result, the consciousness and concept of luxury will be invaded.Excessive pleasure-seeking is bound to breed extravagant fashion.Everything needs to be moderate, and if it exceeds the measure, it will go to the opposite side of the development of things.However, one thing that needs to be grasped is that it is not necessary to stifle the growth of new things because of restraint.We must not "spend our whole life in one sting of the enemy" like bees.

(End of this chapter)