The case of the spoons is typical. The superior
gratification derived from the use and contemplation of costly
and supposedly beautiful products is, commonly, in great measure
a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the
name of beauty. Our higher appreciation of the superior article
is an appreciation of its superior honorific character, much more
frequently than it is an unsophisticated appreciation of its
beauty. The requirement of conspicuous wastefulness is not
commonly present, consciously, in our canons of taste, but it is
none the less present as a constraining norm selectively shaping
and sustaining our sense of what is beautiful, and guiding our
discrimination with respect to what may legitimately be approved
as beautiful and what may not.
It is at this point, where the beautiful and the honorific meet
and blend, that a discrimination between serviceability and
wastefulness is most difficult in any concrete case. It
frequently happens that an article which serves the honorific
purpose of conspicuous waste is at the same time a beautiful
object; and the same application of labor to which it owes its
utility for the former purpose may, and often does, give beauty
of form and color to the article.
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