Professor Sidgwick has been discussing the ethics of luxury, and, according to his wont, has been giving fresh interest to a well-worn topic. I do not wish to dispute anything that he has said, nor do I hope to clear up problems which he professedly left unsolved. In one sense, they obviously cannot be solved precisely. Luxury is a relative term, which cannot be defined in absolute terms. A luxury, in the first place, is distinguished from a necessary. But, then, one man's necessary may be another man's luxury. My very existence depends upon conditions with which another man can dispense. If, again, we admit that there are many things which, though not absolutely necessary, may rightly be used, if they can be used without injuring others, we see that we must also take into account the varying social conditions. If we use luxury, in what Bentham called the dyslogistic sense, we must distinguish between necessaries and superfluities, and then divide superfluities into comforts which may be rightfully enjoyed, and luxuries which cannot be enjoyed without incurring some degree of moral censure. But the dividing lines are always shifting. Scott tells somewhere of a Highlander sleeping on the open moor in a winter night. When he tried to roll the snow into a pillow his companion kicked it away, as a proof of disgraceful effeminacy. Most of us would come to a speedy end if we lived in a social state where such a standard of hardiness was rigidly enforced. We admit that some kind of pillow may be permitted, if not as absolutely necessary, as, at least, a pardonable comfort. We shall probably agree, also, that nobody is to be blamed for using clean sheets and securing a certain amount of warmth and softness--as much, at least, as is desirable for sanitary reasons. But if we endeavour to prescribe precisely how much may be allowed in excess of the necessary, how often we are to send our sheets to the wash, whether it is right to have lace upon our pillows, and so forth, we get into problems where any attempt at precision is obviously illusory. We are the more perplexed by the question, whether the provision of a bed for ourselves causes other people to go without a bed, and, perhaps, without supper, or how far we are bound to take such consequences into account. Without aiming, therefore, at an impossible precision, I shall try to consider--not what objects should be called luxuries, or comforts, or necessaries, but what are the really relevant considerations by which we should endeavour to guide our judgments.