SECTION CCVII.. Nature and Kind of Consumption.--the Most Usual Kind.

NATURE AND KIND OF CONSUMPTION.--THE MOST USUAL KIND.

The commonest kind of consumption is that caused by the use of a thing, or by the employing of it for the purpose of acquisition or of enjoyment.[207-1] From time immemorial, enjoyment-consumption has been, preponderantly, the affair of women, as acquisition-consumption has been the business of men.[207-2] Other circumstances being equal, the degree or extent of consumption by use (use-consumption) is determined by national character. Thus, for instance, the cleanliness and love of order characteristic of the Dutch have contributed greatly to the long preservation in good condition of their dwellings and household articles.[207-3]

In the higher stages of civilization, the use of goods is wont to be divided more and more into special branches, according to the different peculiarities of the goods themselves, and of the different wants of men; a course of things which is, both as cause and effect, intimately related to the division of labor. I here speak of a principle of division of use (differentiation and specialization). Thus, for instance, Lorenz Lange, in 1722, found only one kind of tea in the trade between Russia and China; Müller, in 1750, found seven; Pallas, in 1772, ten; and Erman, in 1829, about seven hundred.[207-4] As the number of gradations of different kinds of the same goods increases with civilization, there is, in times of war, a retrogression in this respect, to a lower economic stage.[207-5]

Opposed to this, we have the principle of the combination of use. There are numberless kinds of goods which may serve a great many just as well as they can one exclusive user; and this either successively or simultaneously, inasmuch as there is no necessity why, with the increasing use of the object, the size of the object itself should increase in an equal proportion. (According to Marlo: wealth usable by one; wealth usable by many; wealth usable by all.) Thus, for instance, a public library may be incomparably more complete, and accessible in a still higher degree than ten private libraries which together cost as much as it did. And so, a restaurant-keeper may serve a hundred guests at the same time, with a much greater table-variety, more to their taste, and at a more convenient time, than if each person made the same outlay for his private kitchen.[207-6] While formerly, only the great could travel rapidly, combination of use has enabled even the lower classes to do so in our own days. There is, doubtless, a dark side to this picture, too. Combination of use requires frequently great sacrifices of personal independence, which should not be underestimated when they affect individuality of character, or threaten the intimacy and closeness of family life. It is, however, a bad symptom when the division of use increases without any corresponding combination of use.[207-7] [207-8]

And so precisely in ancient times. While the earlier Greeks speak of but one oinos, even at the most sumptuous feasts (compare, however, Homer, Il. XI, 641;) and while even in the time of Demosthenes only very few kinds of wine were known (Becker, Charicles, I, 455), Pliny, H. N. XIV, 13, was acquainted with about 80. In this respect the moderns have never returned to ancient simplicity; at least the fabliau, La Bataille des Vins, introduces us to 47 kinds of French wine in the 13th century. (Compare also Wackernagel in Haupt's Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterth., VI. 261 ff., and Henderson, History of ancient and modern Wines, 1824.) The Lacedemonians, with their intentional persistence in a lower stage of civilization, used the same garment in winter and summer (Xenoph., De Rep. Laced., II, 4); while the contemporaries of Athenæos (III, 78 ff.) were acquainted with 72 kinds of bread. With what a delicate sense for good living the Romans in Caesar's time had discovered the best supply places for chickens, peacocks, cranes, thunny-fish, muraena, oysters and other shell-fish, chestnuts, dates, etc., may be seen in Gellius, N. A., VII, 16. Compare Athen., XII, 540.

In the middle age of Italy, the houses had almost always three rooms: domus (kitchen), thalamus, solarium. (Cibrario, E. P. del medio Evo, III, 45.) The manors or masters' houses built on the estates of Charlemagne had 3 and 2 rooms, sometimes only 1, and sometimes 2 rooms and 2 bedrooms. According to an old document of 895, a shed was worth 5 sols, a well-built manor 12. (Anthon, Geschichte der deutschen Landwirth., I, 249 ff., 311.) The Lex Alamanorum, tit. 92, provided that a child, in order to be considered capable of living, should have seen the roof and four walls of the house! See an able essay, capable of being still further developed, by E. Herrmann, in which he endeavors to explain the division of use and of labor on Darwin's hypothesis of the origin of species in the D. Vierteljahrsschrift, Januar., 1867.]