They are of the nature of
productive goods, and serve a useful, often a lucrative end;
therefore beauty is not readily imputed to them. The case is
different with those domestic animals which ordinarily serve no
industrial end; such as pigeons, parrots and other cage-birds,
cats, dogs, and fast horses. These commonly are items of
conspicuous consumption, and are therefore honorific in their
nature and may legitimately be accounted beautiful. This class of
animals are conventionally admired by the body of the upper
classes, while the pecuniarily lower classes -- and that select
minority of the leisure class among whom the rigorous canon that
abjures thrift is in a measure obsolescent -- find beauty in one
class of animals as in another, without drawing a hard and fast
line of pecuniary demarcation between the beautiful and the ugly.
In the case of those domestic animals which are honorific and are
reputed beautiful, there is a subsidiary basis of merit that
should be spokes of. Apart from the birds which belong in the
honorific class of domestic animals, and which owe their place in
this class to their non-lucrative character alone, the animals
which merit particular attention are cats, dogs, and fast horses.
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