But note how the practice of either of these virtues will make the
other easier to us. For if our wants are few, we shall have but
little chance of being driven by our wants into injustice; and if we
are fixed in the principle of giving every man his due, how can our
self-respect bear that we should give too much to ourselves?

And in art, and in that preparation for it without which no art that
is stable or worthy can be, the raising, namely, of those classes
which have heretofore been degraded, the practice of these virtues
would make a new world of it. For if you are rich, your simplicity
of life will both go towards smoothing over the dreadful contrast
between waste and want, which is the great horror of civilised
countries, and will also give an example and standard of dignified
life to those classes which you desire to raise, who, as it is
indeed, being like enough to rich people, are given both to envy and
to imitate the idleness and waste that the possession of much money
produces.

Nay, and apart from the morality of the matter, which I am forced to
speak to you of; let me tell you that though simplicity in art may
be costly as well as uncostly, at least it is not wasteful, and
nothing is more destructive to art than the want of it. I have
never been in any rich man's house which would not have looked the
better for having a bonfire made outside of it of nine-tenths of all
that it held. Indeed, our sacrifice on the side of luxury will, it
seems to me, be little or nothing: for, as far as I can make out,
what people usually mean by it, is either a gathering of possessions
which are sheer vexations to the owner, or a chain of pompous
circumstance, which checks and annoys the rich man at every step.
Yes, luxury cannot exist without slavery of some kind or other, and