Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/201

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Use and Ornament
181

that he can do well enough without the assurance of personal immortality held out to him by the theologians. Whether that be or be not his reward hereafter, he will still strive to express himself; but for that end mere use alone will not satisfy him.

We have seen, then, how man, in his social surroundings, begins to secure something over and above the mere necessities of life; and so, after providing himself with a certain competence of food, clothing and shelter, has means and energy left for the supply of luxuries, ornaments, delights—call them what you will. And according to the direction in which he flings out for the acquisition of these superfluities—so will his whole manhood develop, or his type of racial culture be moulded.

Far back in the beginnings of civilization one of the first forms taken by this surplus of power and energy over mere necessity was the acquisition of slaves and wives. Civilization then began to ornament itself with two modes of body-service—the menial attendance of the slave upon his master, and the polygamous sexual attendance of the woman upon her lord.

To-day we think that both those things were, from a moral point of view, bad ornament. But you cannot look into the history of any civilization conducted on those lines without seeing that they decorated it—and that, out of their acceptance, came colour, pomp,