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+*The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Theory of the Leisure Class*
+by Thorstein Veblen
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+The Theory of the Leisure Class*
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+by Thorstein Veblen
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+March, 1997  [Etext #833]
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+
+The Theory of the Leisure Class
+by Thorstein Veblen
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter One
+
+Introductory
+
+
+The institution of a leisure class is found in its best
+development at the higher stages of the barbarian culture; as,
+for instance, in feudal Europe or feudal Japan. In such
+communities the distinction between classes is very rigorously
+observed; and the feature of most striking economic significance
+in these class differences is the distinction maintained between
+the employments proper to the several classes. The upper classes
+are by custom exempt or excluded from industrial occupations, and
+are reserved for certain employments to which a degree of honour
+attaches. Chief among the honourable employments in any feudal
+community is warfare; and priestly service is commonly second to
+warfare. If the barbarian community is not notably warlike, the
+priestly office may take the precedence, with that of the warrior
+second. But the rule holds with but slight exceptions that,
+whether warriors or priests, the upper classes are exempt from
+industrial employments, and this exemption is the economic
+expression of their superior rank. Brahmin India affords a fair
+illustration of the industrial exemption of both these classes.
+In the communities belonging to the higher barbarian culture
+there is a considerable differentiation of sub-classes within
+what may be comprehensively called the leisure class; and there
+is a corresponding differentiation of employments between these
+sub-classes. The leisure class as a whole comprises the noble and
+the priestly classes, together with much of their retinue. The
+occupations of the class are correspondingly diversified; but
+they have the common economic characteristic of being
+non-industrial. These non-industrial upper-class occupations may
+be roughly comprised under government, warfare, religious
+observances, and sports.
+
+At an earlier, but not the earliest, stage of barbarism, the
+leisure class is found in a less differentiated form. Neither the
+class distinctions nor the distinctions between leisure-class
+occupations are so minute and intricate. The Polynesian islanders
+generally show this stage of the development in good form, with
+the exception that, owing to the absence of large game, hunting
+does not hold the usual place of honour in their scheme of life.
+The Icelandic community in the time of the Sagas also affords a
+fair instance. In such a community there is a rigorous
+distinction between classes and between the occupations peculiar
+to each class. Manual labour, industry, whatever has to do
+directly with the everyday work of getting a livelihood, is the
+exclusive occupation of the inferior class. This inferior class
+includes slaves and other dependents, and ordinarily also all the
+women. If there are several grades of aristocracy, the women of
+high rank are commonly exempt from industrial employment, or at
+least from the more vulgar kinds of manual labour. The men of the
+upper classes are not only exempt, but by prescriptive custom
+they are debarred, from all industrial occupations. The range of
+employments open to them is rigidly defined. As on the higher
+plane already spoken of, these employments are government,
+warfare, religious observances, and sports. These four lines of
+activity govern the scheme of life of the upper classes, and for
+the highest rank -- the kings or chieftains  these are the only
+kinds of activity that custom or the common sense of the
+community will allow. Indeed, where the scheme is well developed
+even sports are accounted doubtfully legitimate for the members
+of the highest rank. To the lower grades of the leisure class
+certain other employments are open, but they are employments that
+are subsidiary to one or another of these typical leisure-class
+occupations. Such are, for instance, the manufacture and care of
+arms and accoutrements and of war canoes, the dressing and
+handling of horses, dogs, and hawks, the preparation of sacred
+apparatus, etc. The lower classes are excluded from these
+secondary honourable employments, except from such as are plainly
+of an industrial character and are only remotely related to the
+typical leisure-class occupations.
+
+If we go a step back of this exemplary barbarian culture, into
+the lower stages of barbarism, we no longer find the leisure
+class in fully developed form. But this lower barbarism shows the
+usages, motives, and circumstances out of which the institution
+of a leisure class has arisen, and indicates the steps of its
+early growth. Nomadic hunting tribes in various parts of the
+world illustrate these more primitive phases of the
+differentiation. Any one of the North American hunting tribes may
+be taken as a convenient illustration. These tribes can scarcely
+be said to have a defined leisure class. There is a
+differentiation of function, and there is a distinction between
+classes on the basis of this difference of function, but the
+exemption of the superior class from work has not gone far enough
+to make the designation "leisure class" altogether applicable.
+The tribes belonging on this economic level have carried the
+economic differentiation to the point at which a marked
+distinction is made between the occupations of men and women, and
+this distinction is of an invidious character. In nearly all
+these tribes the women are, by prescriptive custom, held to those
+employments out of which the industrial occupations proper
+develop at the next advance. The men are exempt from these vulgar
+employments and are reserved for war, hunting, sports, and devout
+observances. A very nice discrimination is ordinarily shown in
+this matter.
+
+This division of labour coincides with the distinction between
+the working and the leisure class as it appears in the higher
+barbarian culture. As the diversification and specialisation of
+employments proceed, the line of demarcation so drawn comes to
+divide the industrial from the non-industrial employments. The
+man's occupation as it stands at the earlier barbarian stage is
+not the original out of which any appreciable portion of later
+industry has developed. In the later development it survives only
+in employments that are not classed as industrial, -- war,
+politics, sports, learning, and the priestly office. The only
+notable exceptions are a portion of the fishery industry and
+certain slight employments that are doubtfully to be classed as
+industry; such as the manufacture of arms, toys, and sporting
+goods. Virtually the whole range of industrial employments is an
+outgrowth of what is classed as woman's work in the primitive
+barbarian community.
+
+The work of the men in the lower barbarian culture is no less
+indispensable to the life of the group than the work done by the
+women. It may even be that the men's work contributes as much to
+the food supply and the other necessary consumption of the group.
+Indeed, so obvious is this "productive" character of the men's
+work that in the conventional economic writings the hunter's work
+is taken as the type of primitive industry. But such is not the
+barbarian's sense of the matter. In his own eyes he is not a
+labourer, and he is not to be classed with the women in this
+respect; nor is his effort to be classed with the women's
+drudgery, as labour or industry, in such a sense as to admit of
+its being confounded with the latter. There is in all barbarian
+communities a profound sense of the disparity between man's and
+woman's work. His work may conduce to the maintenance of the
+group, but it is felt that it does so through an excellence and
+an efficacy of a kind that cannot without derogation be compared
+with the uneventful diligence of the women.
+
+At a farther step backward in the cultural scale -- among savage
+groups -- the differentiation of employments is still less
+elaborate and the invidious distinction between classes and
+employments is less consistent and less rigorous. Unequivocal
+instances of a primitive savage culture are hard to find. Few of
+these groups or communities that are classed as "savage" show no
+traces of regression from a more advanced cultural stage. But
+there are groups -- some of them apparently not the result of
+retrogression -- which show the traits of primitive savagery with
+some fidelity. Their culture differs from that of the barbarian
+communities in the absence of a leisure class and the absence, in
+great measure, of the animus or spiritual attitude on which the
+institution of a leisure class rests. These communities of
+primitive savages in which there is no hierarchy of economic
+classes make up but a small and inconspicuous fraction of the
+human race. As good an instance of this phase of culture as may
+be had is afforded by the tribes of the Andamans, or by the Todas
+of the Nilgiri Hills. The scheme of life of these groups at the
+time of their earliest contact with Europeans seems to have been
+nearly typical, so far as regards the absence of a leisure class.
+As a further instance might be cited the Ainu of Yezo, and, more
+doubtfully, also some Bushman and Eskimo groups. Some Pueblo
+communities are less confidently to be included in the same
+class. Most, if not all, of the communities here cited may well
+be cases of degeneration from a higher barbarism, rather than
+bearers of a culture that has never risen above its present
+level. If so, they are for the present purpose to be taken with
+the allowance, but they may serve none the less as evidence to
+the same effect as if they were really "primitive" populations.
+
+These communities that are without a defined leisure class
+resemble one another also in certain other features of their
+social structure and manner of life. They are small groups and of
+a simple (archaic) structure; they are commonly peaceable and
+sedentary; they are poor; and individual ownership is not a
+dominant feature of their economic system. At the same time it
+does not follow that these are the smallest of existing
+communities, or that their social structure is in all respects
+the least differentiated; nor does the class necessarily include
+all primitive communities which have no defined system of
+individual ownership. But it is to be noted that the class seems
+to include the most peaceable -- perhaps all the
+characteristically peaceable -- primitive groups of men. Indeed,
+the most notable trait common to members of such communities is a
+certain amiable inefficiency when confronted with force or fraud.
+
+The evidence afforded by the usages and cultural traits of
+communities at a low stage of development indicates that the
+institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the
+transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more
+precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a
+consistently warlike habit of life. The conditions apparently
+necessary to its emergence in a consistent form are: (1) the
+community must be of a predatory habit of life (war or the
+hunting of large game or both); that is to say, the men, who
+constitute the inchoate leisure class in these cases, must be
+habituated to the infliction of injury by force and stratagem;
+(2) subsistence must be obtainable on sufficiently easy terms to
+admit of the exemption of a considerable portion of the community
+from steady application to a routine of labour. The institution
+of leisure class is the outgrowth of an early discrimination
+between employments, according to which some employments are
+worthy and others unworthy. Under this ancient distinction the
+worthy employments are those which may be classed as exploit;
+unworthy are those necessary everyday employments into which no
+appreciable element of exploit enters.
+
+This distinction has but little obvious significance in a modern
+industrial community, and it has, therefore, received but slight
+attention at the hands of economic writers. When viewed in the
+light of that modern common sense which has guided economic
+discussion, it seems formal and insubstantial. But it persists
+with great tenacity as a commonplace preconception even in modern
+life, as is shown, for instance, by our habitual aversion to
+menial employments. It is a distinction of a personal kind -- of
+superiority and inferiority. In the earlier stages of culture,
+when the personal force of the individual counted more
+immediately and obviously in shaping the course of events, the
+element of exploit counted for more in the everyday scheme of
+life. Interest centred about this fact to a greater degree.
+Consequently a distinction proceeding on this ground seemed more
+imperative and more definitive then than is the case to-day. As a
+fact in the sequence of development, therefore, the distinction
+is a substantial one and rests on sufficiently valid and cogent
+grounds.
+
+The ground on which a discrimination between facts is habitually
+made changes as the interest from which the facts are habitually
+viewed changes. Those features of the facts at hand are salient
+and substantial upon which the dominant interest of the time
+throws its light. Any given ground of distinction will seem
+insubstantial to any one who habitually apprehends the facts in
+question from a different point of view and values them for a
+different purpose. The habit of distinguishing and classifying
+the various purposes and directions of activity prevails of
+necessity always and everywhere; for it is indispensable in
+reaching a working theory or scheme of life. The particular point
+of view, or the particular characteristic that is pitched upon as
+definitive in the classification of the facts of life depends
+upon the interest from which a discrimination of the facts is
+sought. The grounds of discrimination, and the norm of procedure
+in classifying the facts, therefore, progressively change as the
+growth of culture proceeds; for the end for which the facts of
+life are apprehended changes, and the point of view consequently
+changes also. So that what are recognised as the salient and
+decisive features of a class of activities or of a social class
+at one stage of culture will not retain the same relative
+importance for the purposes of classification at any subsequent
+stage.
+
+But the change of standards and points of view is gradual only,
+and it seldom results in the subversion of entire suppression of
+a standpoint once accepted. A distinction is still habitually
+made between industrial and non-industrial occupations; and this
+modern distinction is a transmuted form of the barbarian
+distinction between exploit and drudgery. Such employments as
+warfare, politics, public worship, and public merrymaking, are
+felt, in the popular apprehension, to differ intrinsically from
+the labour that has to do with elaborating the material means of
+life. The precise line of demarcation is not the same as it was
+in the early barbarian scheme, but the broad distinction has not
+fallen into disuse.
+
+The tacit, common-sense distinction to-day is, in effect, that
+any effort is to be accounted industrial only so far as its
+ultimate purpose is the utilisation of non-human things. The
+coercive utilisation of man by man is not felt to be an
+industrial function; but all effort directed to enhance human
+life by taking advantage of the non-human environment is classed
+together as industrial activity. By the economists who have best
+retained and adapted the classical tradition, man's "power over
+nature" is currently postulated as the characteristic fact of
+industrial productivity. This industrial power over nature is
+taken to include man's power over the life of the beasts and over
+all the elemental forces. A line is in this way drawn between
+mankind and brute creation.
+
+In other times and among men imbued with a different body of
+preconceptions this line is not drawn precisely as we draw it
+to-day. In the savage or the barbarian scheme of life it is drawn
+in a different place and in another way. In all communities under
+the barbarian culture there is an alert and pervading sense of
+antithesis between two comprehensive groups of phenomena, in one
+of which barbarian man includes himself, and in the other, his
+victual. There is a felt antithesis between economic and
+non-economic phenomena, but it is not conceived in the modern
+fashion; it lies not between man and brute creation, but between
+animate and inert things.
+
+It may be an excess of caution at this day to explain that the
+barbarian notion which it is here intended to convey by the term
+"animate" is not the same as would be conveyed by the word
+"living". The term does not cover all living things, and it does
+cover a great many others. Such a striking natural phenomenon as
+a storm, a disease, a waterfall, are recognised as "animate";
+while fruits and herbs, and even inconspicuous animals, such as
+house-flies, maggots, lemmings, sheep, are not ordinarily
+apprehended as "animate" except when taken collectively. As here
+used the term does not necessarily imply an indwelling soul or
+spirit. The concept includes such things as in the apprehension
+of the animistic savage or barbarian are formidable by virtue of
+a real or imputed habit of initiating action. This category
+comprises a large number and range of natural objects and
+phenomena. Such a distinction between the inert and the active is
+still present in the habits of thought of unreflecting persons,
+and it still profoundly affects the prevalent theory of human
+life and of natural processes; but it does not pervade our daily
+life to the extent or with the far-reaching practical
+consequences that are apparent at earlier stages of culture and
+belief.
+
+To the mind of the barbarian, the elaboration and utilisation of
+what is afforded by inert nature is activity on quite a different
+plane from his dealings with "animate" things and forces. The
+line of demarcation may be vague and shifting, but the broad
+distinction is sufficiently real and cogent to influence the
+barbarian scheme of life. To the class of things apprehended as
+animate, the barbarian fancy imputes an unfolding of activity
+directed to some end. It is this teleological unfolding of
+activity that constitutes any object or phenomenon an "animate"
+fact. Wherever the unsophisticated savage or barbarian meets with
+activity that is at all obtrusive, he construes it in the only
+terms that are ready to hand -- the terms immediately given in
+his consciousness of his own actions. Activity is, therefore,
+assimilated to human action, and active objects are in so far
+assimilated to the human agent. Phenomena of this character  --
+especially those whose behaviour is notably formidable or
+baffling -- have to be met in a different spirit and with
+proficiency of a different kind from what is required in dealing
+with inert things. To deal successfully with such phenomena is a
+work of exploit rather than of industry. It is an assertion of
+prowess, not of diligence.
+
+Under the guidance of this naive discrimination between the inert
+and the animate, the activities of the primitive social group
+tend to fall into two classes, which would in modern phrase be
+called exploit and industry. Industry is effort that goes to
+create a new thing, with a new purpose given it by the fashioning
+hand of its maker out of passive ("brute") material; while
+exploit, so far as it results in an outcome useful to the agent,
+is the conversion to his own ends of energies previously directed
+to some other end by an other agent. We still speak of "brute
+matter" which something of the barbarian's realisation of a
+profound significance in the term.
+
+The distinction between exploit and drudgery coincides with a
+difference between the sexes. The sexes differ, not only in
+stature and muscular force, but perhaps even more decisively in
+temperament, and this must early have given rise to a
+corresponding division of labour. The general range of activities
+that come under the head of exploit falls to the males as being
+the stouter, more massive, better capable of a sudden and violent
+strain, and more readily inclined to self assertion, active
+emulation, and aggression. The difference in mass, in
+physiological character, and in temperament may be slight among
+the members of the primitive group; it appears, in fact, to be
+relatively slight and inconsequential in some of the more archaic
+communities with which we are acquainted -- as for instance the
+tribes of the Andamans. But so soon as a differentiation of
+function has well begun on the lines marked out by this
+difference in physique and animus, the original difference
+between the sexes will itself widen. A cumulative process of
+selective adaptation to the new distribution of employments will
+set in, especially if the habitat or the fauna with which the
+group is in contact is such as to call for a considerable
+exercise of the sturdier virtues. The habitual pursuit of large
+game requires more of the manly qualities of massiveness,
+agility, and ferocity, and it can therefore scarcely fail to
+hasten and widen the differentiation of functions between the
+sexes. And so soon as the group comes into hostile contact with
+other groups, the divergence of function will take on the
+developed form of a distinction between exploit and industry.
+
+In such a predatory group of hunters it comes to be the
+able-bodied men's office to fight and hunt. The women do what
+other work there is to do -- other members who are unfit for
+man's work being for this purpose classed with women. But the
+men's hunting and fighting are both of the same general
+character. Both are of a predatory nature; the warrior and the
+hunter alike reap where they have not strewn. Their aggressive
+assertion of force and sagacity differs obviously from the
+women's assiduous and uneventful shaping of materials; it is not
+to be accounted productive labour but rather an acquisition of
+substance by seizure. Such being the barbarian man's work, in its
+best development and widest divergence from women's work, any
+effort that does not involve an assertion of prowess comes to be
+unworthy of the man. As the tradition gains consistency, the
+common sense of the community erects it into a canon of conduct;
+so that no employment and no acquisition is morally possible to
+the self respecting man at this cultural stage, except such as
+proceeds on the basis of prowess -- force or fraud. When the
+predatory habit of life has been settled upon the group by long
+habituation, it becomes the able-bodied man's accredited office
+in the social economy to kill, to destroy such competitors in the
+struggle for existence as attempt to resist or elude him, to
+overcome and reduce to subservience those alien forces that
+assert themselves refractorily in the environment. So tenaciously
+and with such nicety is this theoretical distinction between
+exploit and drudgery adhered to that in many hunting tribes the
+man must not bring home the game which he has killed, but must
+send his woman to perform that baser office. 
+
+As has already been indicated, the distinction between exploit
+and drudgery is an invidious distinction between employments.
+Those employments which are to be classed as exploit are worthy,
+honourable, noble; other employments, which do not contain this
+element of exploit, and especially those which imply subservience
+or submission, are unworthy, debasing, ignoble. The concept of
+dignity, worth, or honour, as applied either to persons or
+conduct, is of first-rate consequence in the development of
+classes and of class distinctions, and it is therefore necessary
+to say something of its derivation and meaning. Its psychological
+ground may be indicated in outline as follows.
+
+As a matter of selective necessity, man is an agent. He is, in
+his own apprehension, a centre of unfolding impulsive activity --
+"teleological" activity. He is an agent seeking in every act the
+accomplishment of some concrete, objective, impersonal end. By
+force of his being such an agent he is possessed of a taste for
+effective work, and a distaste for futile effort. He has a sense
+of the merit of serviceability or efficiency and of the demerit
+of futility, waste, or incapacity. This aptitude or propensity
+may be called the instinct of workmanship. Wherever the
+circumstances or traditions of life lead to an habitual
+comparison of one person with another in point of efficiency, the
+instinct of workmanship works out in an emulative or invidious
+comparison of persons. The extent to which this result follows
+depends in some considerable degree on the temperament of the
+population. In any community where such an invidious comparison
+of persons is habitually made, visible success becomes an end
+sought for its own utility as a basis of esteem. Esteem is gained
+and dispraise is avoided by putting one's efficiency in evidence.
+The result is that the instinct of workmanship works out in an
+emulative demonstration of force.
+
+During that primitive phase of social development, when the
+community is still habitually peaceable, perhaps sedentary, and
+without a developed system of individual ownership, the
+efficiency of the individual can be shown chiefly and most
+consistently in some employment that goes to further the life of
+the group. What emulation of an economic kind there is between
+the members of such a group will be chiefly emulation in
+industrial serviceability. At the same time the incentive to
+emulation is not strong, nor is the scope for emulation large.
+
+When the community passes from peaceable savagery to a predatory
+phase of life, the conditions of emulation change. The
+opportunity and the incentive to emulate increase greatly in
+scope and urgency. The activity of the men more and more takes on
+the character of exploit; and an invidious comparison of one
+hunter or warrior with another grows continually easier and more
+habitual. Tangible evidences of prowess -- trophies -- find a
+place in men's habits of thought as an essential feature of the
+paraphernalia of life. Booty, trophies of the chase or of the
+raid, come to be prized as evidence of pre-eminent force.
+Aggression becomes the accredited form of action, and booty
+serves as prima facie evidence of successful aggression. As
+accepted at this cultural stage, the accredited, worthy form of
+self-assertion is contest; and useful articles or services
+obtained by seizure or compulsion, serve as a conventional
+evidence of successful contest. Therefore, by contrast, the
+obtaining of goods by other methods than seizure comes to be
+accounted unworthy of man in his best estate. The performance of
+productive work, or employment in personal service, falls under
+the same odium for the same reason. An invidious distinction in
+this way arises between exploit and acquisition on the other
+hand. Labour acquires a character of irksomeness by virtue of the
+indignity imputed to it.
+
+With the primitive barbarian, before the simple content of the
+notion has been obscured by its own ramifications and by a
+secondary growth of cognate ideas, "honourable" seems to connote
+nothing else that assertion of superior force. "Honourable" is
+"formidable"; "worthy" is "prepotent". A honorific act is in the
+last analysis little if anything else than a recognised
+successful act of aggression; and where aggression means conflict
+with men and beasts, the activity which comes to be especially
+and primarily honourable is the assertion of the strong hand. The
+naive, archaic habit of construing all manifestations of force in
+terms of personality or "will power" greatly fortifies this
+conventional exaltation of the strong hand. Honorific epithets,
+in vogue among barbarian tribes as well as among peoples of a
+more advance culture, commonly bear the stamp of this
+unsophisticated sense of honour. Epithets and titles used in
+addressing chieftains, and in the propitiation of kings and gods,
+very commonly impute a propensity for overbearing violence and an
+irresistible devastating force to the person who is to be
+propitiated. This holds true to an extent also in the more
+civilised communities of the present day. The predilection shown
+in heraldic devices for the more rapacious beasts and birds of
+prey goes to enforce the same view.
+
+Under this common-sense barbarian appreciation of worth or
+honour, the taking of life -- the killing of formidable
+competitors, whether brute or human -- is honourable in the
+highest degree. And this high office of slaughter, as an
+expression of the slayer's prepotence, casts a glamour of worth
+over every act of slaughter and over all the tools and
+accessories of the act. Arms are honourable, and the use of them,
+even in seeking the life of the meanest creatures of the fields,
+becomes a honorific employment. At the same time, employment in
+industry becomes correspondingly odious, and, in the common-sense
+apprehension, the handling of the tools and implements of
+industry falls beneath the dignity of able-bodied men. Labour
+becomes irksome.
+
+It is here assumed that in the sequence of cultural
+evolution primitive groups of men have passed from an initial
+peaceable stage to a subsequent stage at which fighting is the
+avowed and characteristic employment of the group. But it is not
+implied that there has been an abrupt transition from unbroken
+peace and good-will to a later or higher phase of life in which
+the fact of combat occurs for the first time. Neither is it
+implied that all peaceful industry disappears on the transition
+to the predatory phase of culture. Some fighting, it is safe to
+say, would be met with at any early stage of social development.
+Fights would occur with more or less frequency through sexual
+competition. The known habits of primitive groups, as well as the
+habits of the anthropoid apes, argue to that effect, and the
+evidence from the well-known promptings of human nature enforces
+the same view.
+
+It may therefore be objected that there can have been no such
+initial stage of peaceable life as is here assumed. There is no
+point in cultural evolution prior to which fighting does not
+occur. But the point in question is not as to the occurrence of
+combat, occasional or sporadic, or even more or less frequent and
+habitual; it is a question as to the occurrence of an habitual;
+it is a question as to the occurrence of an habitual bellicose
+from of mind -- a prevalent habit of judging facts and events
+from the point of view of the fight. The predatory phase of
+culture is attained only when the predatory attitude has become
+the habitual and accredited spiritual attitude for the members of
+the group; when the fight has become the dominant note in the
+current theory of life; when the common-sense appreciation of men
+and things has come to be an appreciation with a view to combat.
+
+The substantial difference between the peaceable and the
+predatory phase of culture, therefore, is a spiritual difference,
+not a mechanical one. The change in spiritual attitude is the
+outgrowth of a change in the material facts of the life of the
+group, and it comes on gradually as the material circumstances
+favourable to a predatory attitude supervene. The inferior limit
+of the predatory culture is an industrial limit. Predation can
+not become the habitual, conventional resource of any group or
+any class until industrial methods have been developed to such a
+degree of efficiency as to leave a margin worth fighting for,
+above the subsistence of those engaged in getting a living. The
+transition from peace to predation therefore depends on the
+growth of technical knowledge and the use of tools. A predatory
+culture is similarly impracticable in early times, until weapons
+have been developed to such a point as to make man a formidable
+animal. The early development of tools and of weapons is of
+course the same fact seen from two different points of view.
+
+The life of a given group would be characterised as
+peaceable so long as habitual recourse to combat has not brought
+the fight into the foreground in men's every day thoughts, as a
+dominant feature of the life of man. A group may evidently attain
+such a predatory attitude with a greater or less degree of
+completeness, so that its scheme of life and canons of conduct
+may be controlled to a greater or less extent by the predatory
+animus. The predatory phase of culture is therefore conceived to
+come on gradually, through a cumulative growth of predatory
+aptitudes habits, and traditions this growth being due to a
+change in the circumstances of the group's life, of such a kind
+as to develop and conserve those traits of human nature and those
+traditions and norms of conduct that make for a predatory rather
+than a peaceable life.
+
+The evidence for the hypothesis that there has been such a
+peaceable stage of primitive culture is in great part drawn from 
+psychology rather than from ethnology, and cannot be detailed
+here. It will be recited in part in a later chapter, in
+discussing the survival of archaic traits of human nature under
+the modern culture.
+
+Chapter Two
+
+Pecuniary Emulation
+
+In the sequence of cultural evolution the emergence of a leisure
+class coincides with the beginning of ownership. This is
+necessarily the case, for these two institutions result from the
+same set of economic forces. In the inchoate phase of their
+development they are but different aspects of the same general
+facts of social structure.
+
+It is as elements of social structure -- conventional facts --
+that leisure and ownership are matters of interest for the
+purpose in hand. An habitual neglect of work does not constitute
+a leisure class; neither does the mechanical fact of use and
+consumption constitute ownership. The present inquiry, therefore,
+is not concerned with the beginning of indolence, nor with the
+beginning of the appropriation of useful articles to individual
+consumption. The point in question is the origin and nature of a
+conventional leisure class on the one hand and the beginnings of
+individual ownership as a conventional right or equitable claim
+on the other hand.
+
+The early differentiation out of which the distinction between a
+leisure and a working class arises is a division maintained
+between men's and women's work in the lower stages of barbarism.
+Likewise the earliest form of ownership is an
+ownership of the women by the able bodied men of the community.
+The facts may be expressed in more general terms. and truer to
+the import of the barbarian theory of life, by saying that it is
+an ownership of the woman by the man.
+
+There was undoubtedly some appropriation of useful articles
+before the custom of appropriating women arose. The usages of
+existing archaic communities in which there is no ownership of
+women is warrant for such a view. In all communities the members,
+both male and female, habitually appropriate to their individual
+use a variety of useful things; but these useful things are not
+thought of as owned by the person who appropriates and consumes
+them. The habitual appropriation and consumption of certain
+slight personal effects goes on without raising the question of
+ownership; that is to say, the question of a conventional,
+equitable claim to extraneous things.
+
+The ownership of women begins in the lower barbarian stages of
+culture, apparently with the seizure of female captives. The
+original reason for the seizure and appropriation of women seems
+to have been their usefulness as trophies. The practice of
+seizing women from the enemy as trophies, gave rise to a form of
+ownership-marriage, resulting in a household with a male head.
+This was followed by an extension of slavery to other captives
+and inferiors, besides women, and by an extension of
+ownership-marriage to other women than those seized from the
+enemy. The outcome of emulation under the circumstances of a
+predatory life, therefore, has been on the one hand a form of
+marriage resting on coercion, and on the other hand the custom of
+ownership. The two institutions are not distinguishable in the
+initial phase of their development; both arise from the desire of
+the successful men to put their prowess in evidence by exhibiting
+some durable result of their exploits. Both also minister to that
+propensity for mastery which pervades all predatory communities.
+From the ownership of women the concept of ownership extends
+itself to include the products of their industry, and so there
+arises the ownership of things as well as of persons.
+
+In this way a consistent system of property in goods is gradually
+installed. And although in the latest stages of the development,
+the serviceability of goods for consumption has come to be the
+most obtrusive element of their value, still, wealth has by no
+means yet lost its utility as a honorific evidence of the owner's
+prepotence. 
+
+Wherever the institution of private property is found, even in a
+slightly developed form, the economic process bears the character
+of a struggle between men for the possession of goods. It has
+been customary in economic theory, and especially among those
+economists who adhere with least faltering to the body of
+modernised classical doctrines, to construe this struggle for
+wealth as being substantially a struggle for subsistence. Such
+is, no doubt, its character in large part during the earlier and
+less efficient phases of industry. Such is also its character in
+all cases where the "niggardliness of nature" is so strict as to
+afford but a scanty livelihood to the community in return for
+strenuous and unremitting application to the business of getting
+the means of subsistence. But in all progressing communities an
+advance is presently made beyond this early stage of
+technological development. Industrial efficiency is presently
+carried to such a pitch as to afford something appreciably more
+than a bare livelihood to those engaged in the industrial
+process. It has not been unusual for economic theory to speak of
+the further struggle for wealth on this new industrial basis as a
+competition for an increase of the comforts of life, -- primarily
+for an increase of the physical comforts which the consumption of
+goods affords.
+
+The end of acquisition and accumulation is conventionally held to
+be the consumption of the goods accumulated -- whether it is
+consumption directly by the owner of the goods or by the
+household attached to him and for this purpose identified with
+him in theory. This is at least felt to be the economically
+legitimate end of acquisition, which alone it is incumbent on the
+theory to take account of. Such consumption may of course be
+conceived to serve the consumer's physical wants -- his physical
+comfort -- or his so-called higher wants -- spiritual, aesthetic,
+intellectual, or what not; the latter class of wants being served
+indirectly by an expenditure of goods, after the fashion familiar
+to all economic readers.
+
+But it is only when taken in a sense far removed from its naive
+meaning that consumption of goods can be said to afford the
+incentive from which accumulation invariably proceeds. The motive
+that lies at the root of ownership is emulation; and the same
+motive of emulation continues active in the further development
+of the institution to which it has given rise and in the
+development of all those features of the social structure which
+this institution of ownership touches. The possession of wealth
+confers honour; it is an invidious distinction. Nothing equally
+cogent can be said for the consumption of goods, nor for any
+other conceivable incentive to acquisition, and especially not
+for any incentive to accumulation of wealth.
+
+It is of course not to be overlooked that in a community where
+nearly all goods are private property the necessity of earning a
+livelihood is a powerful and ever present incentive for the
+poorer members of the community. The need of subsistence and of
+an increase of physical comfort may for a time be the dominant
+motive of acquisition for those classes who are habitually
+employed at manual labour, whose subsistence is on a precarious
+footing, who possess little and ordinarily accumulate little; but
+it will appear in the course of the discussion that even in the
+case of these impecunious classes the predominance of the motive
+of physical want is not so decided as has sometimes been assumed.
+On the other hand, so far as regards those members and classes of
+the community who are chiefly concerned in the accumulation of
+wealth, the incentive of subsistence or of physical comfort never
+plays a considerable part. Ownership began and grew into a human
+institution on grounds unrelated to the subsistence minimum. The
+dominant incentive was from the outset the invidious distinction
+attaching to wealth, and, save temporarily and by exception, no
+other motive has usurped the primacy at any later stage of the
+development.
+
+Property set out with being booty held as trophies of the
+successful raid. So long as the group had departed and so long as
+it still stood in close contact with other hostile groups, the
+utility of things or persons owned lay chiefly in an invidious
+comparison between their possessor and the enemy from whom they
+were taken. The habit of distinguishing between the interests of
+the individual and those of the group to which he belongs is
+apparently a later growth. Invidious comparison between the
+possessor of the honorific booty and his less successful
+neighbours within the group was no doubt present early as an
+element of the utility of the things possessed, though this was
+not at the outset the chief element of their value. The man's
+prowess was still primarily the group's prowess, and the
+possessor of the booty felt himself to be primarily the keeper of
+the honour of his group. This appreciation of exploit from the
+communal point of view is met with also at later stages of social
+growth, especially as regards the laurels of war.
+
+But as soon as the custom of individual ownership begins to gain
+consistency, the point of view taken in making the invidious
+comparison on which private property rests will begin to change.
+Indeed, the one change is but the reflex of the other. The
+initial phase of ownership, the phase of acquisition by naive
+seizure and conversion, begins to pass into the subsequent stage
+of an incipient organization of industry on the basis of private
+property (in slaves); the horde develops into a more or less
+self-sufficing industrial community; possessions then come to be
+valued not so much as evidence of successful foray, but rather as
+evidence of the prepotence of the possessor of these goods over
+other individuals within the community. The invidious comparison
+now becomes primarily a comparison of the owner with the other
+members of the group. Property is still of the nature of trophy,
+but, with the cultural advance, it becomes more and more a trophy
+of successes scored in the game of ownership carried on between
+the members of the group under the quasi-peaceable methods of
+nomadic life.
+
+Gradually, as industrial activity further displaced
+predatory activity in the community's everyday life and in men's
+habits of thought, accumulated property more and more replaces
+trophies of predatory exploit as the conventional exponent of
+prepotence and success. With the growth of settled industry,
+therefore, the possession of wealth gains in relative importance
+and effectiveness as a customary basis of repute and esteem. Not
+that esteem ceases to be awarded on the basis of other, more
+direct evidence of prowess; not that successful predatory
+aggression or warlike exploit ceases to call out the approval and
+admiration of the crowd, or to stir the envy of the less
+successful competitors; but the opportunities for gaining
+distinction by means of this direct manifestation of superior
+force grow less available both in scope and frequency. At the
+same time opportunities for industrial aggression, and for the
+accumulation of property, increase in scope and availability. And
+it is even more to the point that property now becomes the most
+easily recognised evidence of a reputable degree of success as
+distinguished from heroic or signal achievement. It therefore
+becomes the conventional basis of esteem. Its possession in some
+amount becomes necessary in order to any reputable standing in
+the community. It becomes indispensable to accumulate, to acquire
+property, in order to retain one's good name. When accumulated
+goods have in this way once become the accepted badge of
+efficiency, the possession of wealth presently assumes the
+character of an independent and definitive basis of esteem. The
+possession of goods, whether acquired aggressively by one's own
+exertion or passively by transmission through inheritance from
+others, becomes a conventional basis of reputability. The
+possession of wealth, which was at the outset valued simply as an
+evidence of efficiency, becomes, in popular apprehension, itself
+a meritorious act. Wealth is now itself intrinsically honourable
+and confers honour on its possessor. By a further refinement,
+wealth acquired passively by transmission from ancestors or other
+antecedents presently becomes even more honorific than wealth
+acquired by the possessor's own effort; but this distinction
+belongs at a later stage in the evolution of the pecuniary
+culture and will be spoken of in its place.
+
+Prowess and exploit may still remain the basis of award of the
+highest popular esteem, although the possession of wealth has
+become the basis of common place reputability and of a blameless
+social standing. The predatory instinct and the consequent
+approbation of predatory efficiency are deeply ingrained in the
+habits of thought of those peoples who have passed under the
+discipline of a protracted predatory culture. According to
+popular award, the highest honours within human reach may, even
+yet, be those gained by an unfolding of extraordinary predatory
+efficiency in war, or by a quasi-predatory efficiency in
+statecraft; but for the purposes of a commonplace decent standing
+in the community these means of repute have been replaced by the
+acquisition and accumulation of goods. In order to stand well in
+the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a
+certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth;
+just as in the earlier predatory stage it is necessary for the
+barbarian man to come up to the tribe's standard of physical
+endurance, cunning, and skill at arms. A certain standard of
+wealth in the one case, and of prowess in the other, is a
+necessary condition of reputability, and anything in excess of
+this normal amount is meritorious.
+
+Those members of the community who fall short of this, somewhat
+indefinite, normal degree of prowess or of property suffer in the
+esteem of their fellow-men; and consequently they suffer also in
+their own esteem, since the usual basis of self-respect is the
+respect accorded by one's neighbours. Only individuals with an
+aberrant temperament can in the long run retain their self-esteem
+in the face of the disesteem of their fellows. Apparent
+exceptions to the rule are met with, especially among people with
+strong religious convictions. But these apparent exceptions are
+scarcely real exceptions, since such persons commonly fall back
+on the putative approbation of some supernatural witness of their
+deeds.
+
+So soon as the possession of property becomes the basis of
+popular esteem, therefore, it becomes also a requisite to the
+complacency which we call self-respect. In any community where
+goods are held in severalty it is necessary, in order to his own
+peace of mind, that an individual should possess as large a
+portion of goods as others with whom he is accustomed to class
+himself; and it is extremely gratifying to possess something more
+than others. But as fast as a person makes new acquisitions, and
+becomes accustomed to the resulting new standard of wealth, the
+new standard forthwith ceases to afford appreciably greater
+satisfaction than the earlier standard did. The tendency in any
+case is constantly to make the present pecuniary standard the
+point of departure for a fresh increase of wealth; and this in
+turn gives rise to a new standard of sufficiency and a new
+pecuniary classification of one's self as compared with one's
+neighbours. So far as concerns the present question, the end
+sought by accumulation is to rank high in comparison with the
+rest of the community in point of pecuniary strength. So long as
+the comparison is distinctly unfavourable to himself, the normal,
+average individual will live in chronic dissatisfaction with his
+present lot; and when he has reached what may be called the
+normal pecuniary standard of the community, or of his class in
+the community, this chronic dissatisfaction will give place to a
+restless straining to place a wider and ever-widening pecuniary
+interval between himself and this average standard. The invidious
+comparison can never become so favourable to the individual
+making it that he would not gladly rate himself still higher
+relatively to his competitors in the struggle for pecuniary
+reputability.
+
+In the nature of the case, the desire for wealth can scarcely be
+satiated in any individual instance, and evidently a satiation of
+the average or general desire for wealth is out of the question.
+However widely, or equally, or "fairly", it may be distributed,
+no general increase of the community's wealth can make any
+approach to satiating this need, the ground of which approach to
+satiating this need, the ground of which is the desire of every
+one to excel every one else in the accumulation of goods.  If, as
+is sometimes assumed, the incentive to accumulation were the want
+of subsistence or of physical comfort, then the aggregate
+economic wants of a community might conceivably be satisfied at
+some point in the advance of industrial efficiency; but since the
+struggle is substantially a race for reputability on the basis of
+an invidious comparison, no approach to a definitive attainment
+is possible.
+
+What has just been said must not be taken to mean that there are
+no other incentives to acquisition and accumulation than this
+desire to excel in pecuniary standing and so gain the esteem and
+envy of one's fellow-men. The desire for added comfort and
+security from want is present as a motive at every stage of the
+process of accumulation in a modern industrial community;
+although the standard of sufficiency in these respects is in turn
+greatly affected by the habit of pecuniary emulation. To a great
+extent this emulation shapes the methods and selects the objects
+of expenditure for personal comfort and decent livelihood.
+
+Besides this, the power conferred by wealth also affords a motive
+to accumulation. That propensity for purposeful activity and that
+repugnance to all futility of effort which belong to man by
+virtue of his character as an agent do not desert him when he
+emerges from the naive communal culture where the dominant note
+of life is the unanalysed and undifferentiated solidarity of the
+individual with the group with which his life is bound up. When
+he enters upon the predatory stage, where self-seeking in the
+narrower sense becomes the dominant note, this propensity goes
+with him still, as the pervasive trait that shapes his scheme of
+life. The propensity for achievement and the repugnance to
+futility remain the underlying economic motive. The propensity
+changes only in the form of its expression and in the proximate
+objects to which it directs the man's activity. Under the regime
+of individual ownership the most available means of visibly
+achieving a purpose is that afforded by the acquisition and
+accumulation of goods; and as the self-regarding antithesis
+between man and man reaches fuller consciousness, the propensity
+for achievement -- the instinct of workmanship -- tends more and
+more to shape itself into a straining to excel others in
+pecuniary achievement. Relative success, tested by an invidious
+pecuniary comparison with other men, becomes the conventional end
+of action. The currently accepted legitimate end of effort
+becomes the achievement of a favourable comparison with other
+men; and therefore the repugnance to futility to a good extent
+coalesces with the incentive of emulation. It acts to accentuate
+the struggle for pecuniary reputability by visiting with a
+sharper disapproval all shortcoming and all evidence of
+shortcoming in point of pecuniary success. Purposeful effort
+comes to mean, primarily, effort directed to or resulting in a
+more creditable showing of accumulated wealth. Among the motives
+which lead men to accumulate wealth, the primacy, both in scope
+and intensity, therefore, continues to belong to this motive of
+pecuniary emulation.
+
+In making use of the term "invidious", it may perhaps be
+unnecessary to remark, there is no intention to extol or
+depreciate, or to commend or deplore any of the phenomena which
+the word is used to characterise. The term is used in a technical
+sense as describing a comparison of persons with a view to rating
+and grading them in respect of relative worth or value -- in an
+aesthetic or moral sense -- and so awarding and defining the
+relative degrees of complacency with which they may legitimately
+be contemplated by themselves and by others. An invidious
+comparison is a process of valuation of persons in respect of
+worth.
+
+Chapter Three
+
+Conspicuous Leisure
+
+If its working were not disturbed by other economic forces or
+other features of the emulative process, the immediate effect of
+such a pecuniary struggle as has just been described in outline
+would be to make men industrious and frugal. This result actually
+follows, in some measure, so far as regards the lower classes,
+whose ordinary means of acquiring goods is productive labour.
+This is more especially true of the labouring classes in a
+sedentary community which is at an agricultural stage of
+industry, in which there is a considerable subdivision of
+industry, and whose laws and customs secure to these classes a
+more or less definite share of the product of their industry.
+These lower classes can in any case not avoid labour, and the
+imputation of labour is therefore not greatly derogatory to them,
+at least not within their class. Rather, since labour is their
+recognised and accepted mode of life, they take some emulative
+pride in a reputation for efficiency in their work, this being
+often the only line of emulation that is open to them. For those
+for whom acquisition and emulation is possible only within the
+field of productive efficiency and thrift, the struggle for
+pecuniary reputability will in some measure work out in an
+increase of diligence and parsimony. But certain secondary
+features of the emulative process, yet to be spoken of, come in
+to very materially circumscribe and modify emulation in these
+directions among the pecuniary inferior classes as well as among
+the superior class.
+
+But it is otherwise with the superior pecuniary class, with which
+we are here immediately concerned. For this class also the
+incentive to diligence and thrift is not absent; but its action
+is so greatly qualified by the secondary demands of pecuniary
+emulation, that any inclination in this direction is practically
+overborne and any incentive to diligence tends to be of no
+effect. The most imperative of these secondary demands of
+emulation, as well as the one of widest scope, is the requirement
+of abstention from productive work. This is true in an especial
+degree for the barbarian stage of culture. During the predatory
+culture labour comes to be associated in men's habits of thought
+with weakness and subjection to a master. It is therefore a mark
+of inferiority, and therefore comes to be accounted unworthy of
+man in his best estate. By virtue of this tradition labour is
+felt to be debasing, and this tradition has never died out. On
+the contrary, with the advance of social differentiation it has
+acquired the axiomatic force due to ancient and unquestioned
+prescription.
+
+In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not
+sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power
+must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence.
+And not only does the evidence of wealth serve to impress one's
+importance on others and to keep their sense of his importance
+alive and alert, but it is of scarcely less use in building up
+and preserving one's self-complacency. In all but the lowest
+stages of culture the normally constituted man is comforted and
+upheld in his self-respect by "decent surroundings" and by
+exemption from "menial offices". Enforced departure from his
+habitual standard of decency, either in the paraphernalia of life
+or in the kind and amount of his everyday activity, is felt to be
+a slight upon his human dignity, even apart from all conscious
+consideration of the approval or disapproval of his fellows.
+
+The archaic theoretical distinction between the base and the
+honourable in the manner of a man's life retains very much of its
+ancient force even today. So much so that there are few of the
+better class who are no possessed of an instinctive repugnance
+for the vulgar forms of labour. We have a realising sense of
+ceremonial uncleanness attaching in an especial degree to the
+occupations which are associated in our habits of thought with
+menial service. It is felt by all persons of refined taste that a
+spiritual contamination is inseparable from certain offices that
+are conventionally required of servants. Vulgar surroundings,
+mean (that is to say, inexpensive) habitations, and vulgarly
+productive occupations are unhesitatingly condemned and avoided.
+They are incompatible with life on a satisfactory spiritual plane
+__ with "high thinking". From the days of the Greek philosophers
+to the present, a degree of leisure and of exemption from contact
+with such industrial processes as serve the immediate everyday
+purposes of human life has ever been recognised by thoughtful men
+as a prerequisite to a worthy or beautiful, or even a blameless,
+human life. In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure
+is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
+
+This direct, subjective value of leisure and of other evidences
+of wealth is no doubt in great part secondary and derivative. It
+is in part a reflex of the utility of leisure as a means of
+gaining the respect of others, and in part it is the result of a
+mental substitution. The performance of labour has been accepted
+as a conventional evidence of inferior force; therefore it comes
+itself, by a mental short-cut, to be regarded as intrinsically
+base.
+
+During the predatory stage proper, and especially during the
+earlier stages of the quasi-peaceable development of industry
+that follows the predatory stage, a life of leisure is the
+readiest and most conclusive evidence of pecuniary strength, and
+therefore of superior force; provided always that the gentleman
+of leisure can live in manifest ease and comfort. At this stage
+wealth consists chiefly of slaves, and the benefits accruing from
+the possession of riches and power take the form chiefly of
+personal service and the immediate products of personal service.
+Conspicuous abstention from labour therefore becomes the
+conventional mark of superior pecuniary achievement and the
+conventional index of reputability; and conversely, since
+application to productive labour is a mark of poverty and
+subjection, it becomes inconsistent with a reputable standing in
+the community. Habits of industry and thrift, therefore, are not
+uniformly furthered by a prevailing pecuniary emulation. On the
+contrary, this kind of emulation indirectly discountenances
+participation in productive labour. Labour would unavoidably
+become dishonourable, as being an evidence indecorous under the
+ancient tradition handed down from an earlier cultural stage. The
+ancient tradition of the predatory culture is that productive
+effort is to be shunned as being unworthy of able-bodied men. and
+this tradition is reinforced rather than set aside in the passage
+from the predatory to the quasi-peaceable manner of life.
+
+Even if the institution of a leisure class had not come in with
+the first emergence of individual ownership, by force of the
+dishonour attaching to productive employment, it would in any
+case have come in as one of the early consequences of ownership.
+And it is to be remarked that while the leisure class existed in
+theory from the beginning of predatory culture, the institution
+takes on a new and fuller meaning with the transition from the
+predatory to the next succeeding pecuniary stage of culture. It
+is from this time forth a "leisure class" in fact as well as in
+theory. From this point dates the institution of the leisure
+class in its consummate form.
+
+During the predatory stage proper the distinction between the
+leisure and the labouring class is in some degree a ceremonial
+distinction only. The able bodied men jealously stand aloof from
+whatever is in their apprehension, menial drudgery; but their
+activity in fact contributes appreciably to the sustenance of the
+group. The subsequent stage of quasi-peaceable industry is
+usually characterised by an established chattel slavery, herds of
+cattle, and a servile class of herdsmen and shepherds; industry
+has advanced so far that the community is no longer dependent for
+its livelihood on the chase or on any other form of activity that
+can fairly be classed as exploit. From this point on, the
+characteristic feature of leisure class life is a conspicuous
+exemption from all useful employment.
+
+The normal and characteristic occupations of the class in this
+mature phase of its life history are in form very much the same
+as in its earlier days. These occupations are government, war,
+sports, and devout observances. Persons unduly given to difficult
+theoretical niceties may hold that these occupations are still
+incidentally and indirectly "productive"; but it is to be noted
+as decisive of the question in hand that the ordinary and
+ostensible motive of the leisure class in engaging in these
+occupations is assuredly not an increase of wealth by productive
+effort. At this as at any other cultural stage, government and
+war are, at least in part, carried on for the pecuniary gain of
+those who engage in them; but it is gain obtained by the
+honourable method of seizure and conversion. These occupations
+are of the nature of predatory, not of productive, employment.
+Something similar may be said of the chase, but with a
+difference. As the community passes out of the hunting stage
+proper, hunting gradually becomes differentiated into two
+distinct employments. On the one hand it is a trade, carried on
+chiefly for gain; and from this the element of exploit is
+virtually absent, or it is at any rate not present in a
+sufficient degree to clear the pursuit of the imputation of
+gainful industry. On the other hand, the chase is also a sport
+-ªan exercise of the predatory impulse simply. As such it does
+not afford any appreciable pecuniary incentive, but it contains a
+more or less obvious element of exploit. It is this latter
+development of the chase -- purged of all imputation of
+handicraft -- that alone is meritorious and fairly belongs in the
+scheme of life of the developed leisure class.
+
+Abstention from labour is not only a honorific or meritorious
+act, but it presently comes to be a requisite of decency. The
+insistence on property as the basis of reputability is very naive
+and very imperious during the early stages of the accumulation of
+wealth. Abstention from labour is the convenient evidence of
+wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing;
+and this insistence on the meritoriousness of wealth leads to a
+more strenuous insistence on leisure. Nota notae est nota rei
+ipsius. According to well established laws of human nature,
+prescription presently seizes upon this conventional evidence of
+wealth and fixes it in men's habits of thought as something that
+is in itself substantially meritorious and ennobling; while
+productive labour at the same time and by a like process becomes
+in a double sense intrinsically unworthy. Prescription ends by
+making labour not only disreputable in the eyes of the community,
+but morally impossible to the noble, freeborn man, and
+incompatible with a worthy life.
+
+This tabu on labour has a further consequence in the industrial
+differentiation of classes. As the population increases in
+density and the predatory group grows into a settled industrial
+community, the constituted authorities and the customs governing
+ownership gain in scope and consistency. It then presently
+becomes impracticable to accumulate wealth by simple seizure,
+and, in logical consistency, acquisition by industry is equally
+impossible for high minded and impecunious men. The alternative
+open to them is beggary or privation. Wherever the canon of
+conspicuous leisure has a chance undisturbed to work out its
+tendency, there will therefore emerge a secondary, and in a sense
+spurious, leisure class -- abjectly poor and living in a
+precarious life of want and discomfort, but morally unable to
+stoop to gainful pursuits. The decayed gentleman and the lady who
+has seen better days are by no means unfamiliar phenomena even
+now. This pervading sense of the indignity of the slightest
+manual labour is familiar to all civilized peoples, as well as to
+peoples of a less advanced pecuniary culture. In persons of a
+delicate sensibility who have long been habituated to gentle
+manners, the sense of the shamefulness of manual labour may
+become so strong that, at a critical juncture, it will even set
+aside the instinct of self-preservation. So, for instance, we are
+told of certain Polynesian chiefs, who, under the stress of good
+form, preferred to starve rather than carry their food to their
+mouths with their own hands. It is true, this conduct may have
+been due, at least in part, to an excessive sanctity or tabu
+attaching to the chief's person. The tabu would have been
+communicated by the contact of his hands, and so would have made
+anything touched by him unfit for human food. But the tabu is
+itself a derivative of the unworthiness or moral incompatibility
+of labour; so that even when construed in this sense the conduct
+of the Polynesian chiefs is truer to the canon of honorific
+leisure than would at first appear. A better illustration, or at
+least a more unmistakable one, is afforded by a certain king of
+France, who is said to have lost his life through an excess of
+moral stamina in the observance of good form. In the absence of
+the functionary whose office it was to shift his master's seat,
+the king sat uncomplaining before the fire and suffered his royal
+person to be toasted beyond recovery. But in so doing he saved
+his Most Christian Majesty from menial contamination.  Summum
+crede nefas animam praeferre pudori, Et propter vitam vivendi
+perdere causas. 
+
+It has already been remarked that the term "leisure", as here
+used, does not connote indolence or quiescence. What it connotes
+is non-productive consumption of time. Time is consumed
+non-productively (1) from a sense of the unworthiness of
+productive work, and (2) as an evidence of pecuniary ability to
+afford a life of idleness. But the whole of the life of the
+gentleman of leisure is not spent before the eyes of the
+spectators who are to be impressed with that spectacle of
+honorific leisure which in the ideal scheme makes up his life.
+For some part of the time his life is perforce withdrawn from the
+public eye, and of this portion which is spent in private the
+gentleman of leisure should, for the sake of his good name, be
+able to give a convincing account. He should find some means of
+putting in evidence the leisure that is not spent in the sight of
+the spectators. This can be done only indirectly, through the
+exhibition of some tangible, lasting results of the leisure so
+spent -- in a manner analogous to the familiar exhibition of
+tangible, lasting products of the labour performed for the
+gentleman of leisure by handicraftsmen and servants in his
+employ.
+
+The lasting evidence of productive labour is its material product
+-- commonly some article of consumption. In the case of exploit
+it is similarly possible and usual to procure some tangible
+result that may serve for exhibition in the way of trophy or
+booty. at a later phase of the development it is customary to
+assume some badge of insignia of honour that will serve as a
+conventionally accepted mark of exploit, and which at the same
+time indicates the quantity or degree of exploit of which it is
+the symbol. As the population increases in density, and as human
+relations grow more complex and numerous, all the details of life
+undergo a process of elaboration and selection; and in this
+process of elaboration the use of trophies develops into a system
+of rank, titles, degrees and insignia, typical examples of which
+are heraldic devices, medals, and honorary decorations.
+
+As seen from the economic point of view, leisure,
+considered as an employment, is closely allied in kind with the
+life of exploit; and the achievements which characterise a life
+of leisure, and which remain as its decorous criteria, have much
+in common with the trophies of exploit. But leisure in the
+narrower sense, as distinct from exploit and from any ostensibly
+productive employment of effort on objects which are of no
+intrinsic use, does not commonly leave a material product. The
+criteria of a past performance of leisure therefore commonly take
+the form of "immaterial" goods. Such immaterial evidences of past
+leisure are quasi-scholarly or quasi-artistic accomplishments and
+a knowledge of processes and incidents which do not conduce
+directly to the furtherance of human life. So, for instance, in
+our time there is the knowledge of the dead languages and the
+occult sciences; of correct spelling; of syntax and prosody; of
+the various forms of domestic music and other household art; of
+the latest properties of dress, furniture, and equipage; of
+games, sports, and fancy-bred animals, such as dogs and
+race-horses. In all these branches of knowledge the initial
+motive from which their acquisition proceeded at the outset, and
+through which they first came into vogue, may have been something
+quite different from the wish to show that one's time had not
+been spent in industrial employment; but unless these
+accomplishments had approved themselves as serviceable evidence
+of an unproductive expenditure of time, they would not have
+survived and held their place as conventional accomplishments of
+the leisure class.
+
+These accomplishments may, in some sense, be classed as branches
+of learning. Beside and beyond these there is a further range of
+social facts which shade off from the region of learning into
+that of physical habit and dexterity. Such are what is known as
+manners and breeding, polite usage, decorum, and formal and
+ceremonial observances generally. This class of facts are even
+more immediately and obtrusively presented to the observation,
+and they therefore more widely and more imperatively insisted on
+as required evidences of a reputable degree of leisure. It is
+worth while to remark that all that class of ceremonial
+observances which are classed under the general head of manners
+hold a more important place in the esteem of men during the stage
+of culture at which conspicuous leisure has the greatest vogue as
+a mark of reputability, than at later stages of the cultural
+development. The barbarian of the quasi-peaceable stage of
+industry is notoriously a more high-bred gentleman, in all that
+concerns decorum, than any but the very exquisite among the men
+of a later age. Indeed, it is well known, or at least it is
+currently believed, that manners have progressively deteriorated
+as society has receded from the patriarchal stage. Many a
+gentleman of the old school has been provoked to remark
+regretfully upon the under-bred manners and bearing of even the
+better classes in the modern industrial communities; and the
+decay of the ceremonial code -- or as it is otherwise called, the
+vulgarisation of life -- among the industrial classes proper has
+become one of the chief enormities of latter-day civilisation in
+the eyes of all persons of delicate sensibilities. The decay
+which the code has suffered at the hands of a busy people
+testifies -- all depreciation apart -- to the fact that decorum
+is a product and an exponent of leisure class life and thrives in
+full measure only under a regime of status.
+
+The origin, or better the derivation, of manners is no doubt, to
+be sought elsewhere than in a conscious effort on the part of the
+well-mannered to show that much time has been spent in acquiring
+them. The proximate end of innovation and elaboration has been
+the higher effectiveness of the new departure in point of beauty
+or of expressiveness. In great part the ceremonial code of
+decorous usages owes its beginning and its growth to the desire
+to conciliate or to show goodwill, as anthropologists and
+sociologists are in the habit of assuming, and this initial
+motive is rarely if ever absent from the conduct of well-mannered
+persons at any stage of the later development. Manners, we are
+told, are in part an elaboration of gesture, and in part they are
+symbolical and conventionalised survivals representing former
+acts of dominance or of personal service or of personal contact.
+In large part they are an expression of the relation of status,
+-- a symbolic pantomime of mastery on the one hand and of
+subservience on the other. Wherever at the present time the
+predatory habit of mind, and the consequent attitude of mastery
+and of subservience, gives its character to the accredited scheme
+of life, there the importance of all punctilios of conduct is
+extreme, and the assiduity with which the ceremonial observance
+of rank and titles is attended to approaches closely to the ideal
+set by the barbarian of the quasi-peaceable nomadic culture. Some
+of the Continental countries afford good illustrations of this
+spiritual survival. In these communities the archaic ideal is
+similarly approached as regards the esteem accorded to manners as
+a fact of intrinsic worth.
+
+Decorum set out with being symbol and pantomime and with having
+utility only as an exponent of the facts and qualities
+symbolised; but it presently suffered the transmutation which
+commonly passes over symbolical facts in human intercourse.
+Manners presently came, in popular apprehension, to be possessed
+of a substantial utility in themselves; they acquired a
+sacramental character, in great measure independent of the facts
+which they originally prefigured. Deviations from the code of
+decorum have become intrinsically odious to all men, and good
+breeding is, in everyday apprehension, not simply an adventitious
+mark of human excellence, but an integral feature of the worthy
+human soul. There are few things that so touch us with
+instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum; and so far have we
+progressed in the direction of imputing intrinsic utility to the
+ceremonial observances of etiquette that few of us, if any, can
+dissociate an offence against etiquette from a sense of the
+substantial unworthiness of the offender. A breach of faith may
+be condoned, but a breach of decorum can not. "Manners maketh
+man."
+
+None the less, while manners have this intrinsic utility, in the
+apprehension of the performer and the beholder alike, this sense
+of the intrinsic rightness of decorum is only the proximate
+ground of the vogue of manners and breeding. Their ulterior,
+economic ground is to be sought in the honorific character of
+that leisure or non-productive employment of time and effort
+without which good manners are not acquired. The knowledge and
+habit of good form come only by long-continued use. Refined
+tastes, manners, habits of life are a useful evidence of
+gentility, because good breeding requires time, application and
+expense, and  can therefore not be compassed by those whose time
+and energy are taken up with work. A knowledge of good form is
+prima facie evidence that that portion of the well-bred person's
+life which is not spent under the observation of the spectator
+has been worthily spent in acquiring accomplishments that are of
+no lucrative effect. In the last analysis the value of manners
+lies in the fact that they are the voucher of a life of leisure.
+Therefore, conversely, since leisure is the conventional means of
+pecuniary repute, the acquisition of some proficiency in decorum
+is incumbent on all who aspire to a modicum of pecuniary decency.
+
+So much of the honourable life of leisure as is not spent in the
+sight of spectators can serve the purposes of reputability only
+in so far as it leaves a tangible, visible result that can be put
+in evidence and can be measured and compared with products of the
+same class exhibited by competing aspirants for repute. Some such
+effect, in the way of leisurely manners and carriage, etc.,
+follows from simple persistent abstention from work, even where
+the subject does not take thought of the matter and
+studiously acquire an air of leisurely opulence and mastery.
+Especially does it seem to be true that a life of leisure in this
+way persisted in through several generations will leave a
+persistent, ascertainable effect in the conformation of the
+person, and still more in his habitual bearing and demeanour. But
+all the suggestions of a cumulative life of leisure, and all the
+proficiency in decorum that comes by the way of passive
+habituation, may be further improved upon by taking thought and
+assiduously acquiring the marks of honourable leisure, and then
+carrying the exhibition of these adventitious marks of exemption
+from employment out in a strenuous and systematic discipline.
+Plainly, this is a point at which a diligent application of
+effort and expenditure may materially further the attainment of a
+decent proficiency in the leisure-class properties. Conversely,
+the greater the degree of proficiency and the more patent the
+evidence of a high degree of habituation to observances which
+serve no lucrative or other directly useful purpose, the greater
+the consumption of time and substance impliedly involved in their
+acquisition, and the greater the resultant good repute. Hence
+under the competitive struggle for proficiency in good manners,
+it comes about that much pains in taken with the cultivation of
+habits of decorum; and hence the details of decorum develop into
+a comprehensive discipline, conformity to which is required of
+all who would be held blameless in point of repute. And hence, on
+the other hand, this conspicuous leisure of which decorum is a
+ramification grows gradually into a laborious drill in deportment
+and an education in taste and discrimination as to what articles
+of consumption are decorous and what are the decorous methods of
+consuming them.
+
+In this connection it is worthy of notice that the
+possibility of producing pathological and other idiosyncrasies of
+person and manner by shrewd mimicry and a systematic drill have
+been turned to account in the deliberate production of a cultured
+class -- often with a very happy effect. In this way, by the
+process vulgarly known as snobbery, a syncopated evolution of
+gentle birth and breeding is achieved in the case of a goodly
+number of families and lines of descent. This syncopated gentle
+birth gives results which, in point of serviceability as a
+leisure-class factor in the population, are in no wise
+substantially inferior to others who may have had a longer but
+less arduous training in the pecuniary properties.
+
+There are, moreover, measureable degrees of conformity to the
+latest accredited code of the punctilios as regards decorous
+means and methods of consumption. Differences between one person
+and another in the degree of conformity to the ideal in these
+respects can be compared, and persons may be graded and scheduled
+with some accuracy and effect according to a progressive scale of
+manners and breeding. The award of reputability in this regard is
+commonly made in good faith, on the ground of conformity to
+accepted canons of taste in the matters concerned, and without
+conscious regard to the pecuniary standing or the degree of
+leisure practised by any given candidate for reputability; but
+the canons of taste according to which the award is made are
+constantly under the surveillance of the law of conspicuous
+leisure, and are indeed constantly undergoing change and revision
+to bring them into closer conformity with its requirements. So
+that while the proximate ground of discrimination may be of
+another kind, still the pervading principle and abiding test of
+good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent
+waste of time. There may be some considerable range of variation
+in detail within the scope of this principle, but they are
+variations of form and expression, not of substance.
+
+Much of the courtesy of everyday intercourse is of course a
+direct expression of consideration and kindly good-will, and this
+element of conduct has for the most part no need of being traced
+back to any underlying ground of reputability to explain either
+its presence or the approval with which it is regarded; but the
+same is not true of the code of properties. These latter are
+expressions of status. It is of course sufficiently plain, to any
+one who cares to see, that our bearing towards menials and other
+pecuniary dependent inferiors is the bearing of the superior
+member in a relation of status, though its manifestation is often
+greatly modified and softened from the original expression of
+crude dominance. Similarly, our bearing towards superiors, and in
+great measure towards equals, expresses a more or less
+conventionalised attitude of subservience. Witness the masterful
+presence of the high-minded gentleman or lady, which testifies to
+so much of dominance and independence of economic circumstances,
+and which at the same time appeals with such convincing force to
+our sense of what is right and gracious. It is among this highest
+leisure class, who have no superiors and few peers, that decorum
+finds its fullest and maturest expression; and it is this highest
+class also that gives decorum that definite formulation which
+serves as a canon of conduct for the classes beneath. And there
+also the code is most obviously a code of status and shows most
+plainly its incompatibility with all vulgarly productive work. A
+divine assurance and an imperious complaisance, as of one
+habituated to require subservience and to take no thought for the
+morrow, is the birthright and the criterion of the gentleman at
+his best; and it is in popular apprehension even more than that,
+for this demeanour is accepted as an intrinsic attribute of
+superior worth, before which the base-born commoner delights to
+stoop and yield. 
+
+As has been indicated in an earlier chapter, there is reason to
+believe that the institution of ownership has begun with the
+ownership of persons, primarily women. The incentives to
+acquiring such property have apparently been: (1) a propensity
+for dominance and coercion; (2) the utility of these persons as
+evidence of the prowess of the owner; (3) the utility of their
+services.
+
+Personal service holds a peculiar place in the economic
+development. During the stage of quasi-peaceable industry, and
+especially during the earlier development of industry within the
+limits of this general stage, the utility of their services seems
+commonly to be the dominant motive to the acquisition of property
+in persons. Servants are valued for their services. But the
+dominance of this motive is not due to a decline in the absolute
+importance of the other two utilities possessed by servants. It
+is rather that the altered circumstance of life accentuate the
+utility of servants for this last-named purpose. Women and other
+slaves are highly valued, both as an evidence of wealth and as a
+means of accumulating wealth. Together with cattle, if the tribe
+is a pastoral one, they are the usual form of investment for a
+profit. To such an extent may female slavery give its character
+to the economic life under the quasi-peaceable culture that the
+women even comes to serve as a unit of value among peoples
+occupying this cultural stage -- as for instance in Homeric
+times. Where this is the case there need be little question but
+that the basis of the industrial system is chattel slavery and
+that the women are commonly slaves. The great, pervading human
+relation in such a system is that of master and servant. The
+accepted evidence of wealth is the possession of many women, and
+presently also of other slaves engaged in attendance on their
+master's person and in producing goods for him.
+
+A division of labour presently sets in, whereby personal service
+and attendance on the master becomes the special office of a
+portion of the servants, while those who are wholly employed in
+industrial occupations proper are removed more and more from all
+immediate relation to the person of their owner. At the same time
+those servants whose office is personal service, including
+domestic duties, come gradually to be exempted from productive
+industry carried on for gain.
+
+This process of progressive exemption from the common run of
+industrial employment will commonly begin with the exemption of
+the wife, or the chief wife. After the community has advanced to
+settled habits of life, wife-capture from hostile tribes becomes
+impracticable as a customary source of supply. Where this
+cultural advance has been achieved, the chief wife is ordinarily
+of gentle blood, and the fact of her being so will hasten her
+exemption from vulgar employment. The manner in which the concept
+of gentle blood originates, as well as the place which it
+occupies in the development of marriage, cannot be discussed in
+this place. For the purpose in hand it will be sufficient to say
+that gentle blood is blood which has been ennobled by protracted
+contact with accumulated wealth or unbroken prerogative. The
+women with these antecedents is preferred in marriage, both for
+the sake of a resulting alliance with her powerful relatives and
+because a superior worth is felt to inhere in blood which has
+been associated with many goods and great power. She will still
+be her husband's chattel, as she was her father's chattel before
+her purchase, but she is at the same time of her father's gentle
+blood; and hence there is a moral incongruity in her occupying
+herself with the debasing employments of her fellow-servants.
+However completely she may be subject to her master, and however
+inferior to the male members of the social stratum in which her
+birth has placed her, the principle that gentility is
+transmissible will act to place her above the common slave; and
+so soon as this principle has acquired a prescriptive authority
+it will act to invest her in some measure with that prerogative
+of leisure which is the chief mark of gentility. Furthered by
+this principle of transmissible gentility the wife's exemption
+gains in scope, if the wealth of her owner permits it, until it
+includes exemption from debasing menial service as well as from
+handicraft. As the industrial development goes on and property
+becomes massed in relatively fewer hands, the conventional
+standard of wealth of the upper class rises. The same tendency to
+exemption from handicraft, and in the course of time from menial
+domestic employments, will then assert itself as regards the
+other wives, if such there are, and also as regards other
+servants in immediate attendance upon the person of their master.
+The exemption comes more tardily the remoter the relation in
+which the servant stands to the person of the master.
+
+If the pecuniary situation of the master permits it, the
+development of a special class of personal or body servants is
+also furthered by the very grave importance which comes to attach
+to this personal service. The master's person, being the
+embodiment of worth and honour, is of the most serious
+consequence. Both for his reputable standing in the community and
+for his self-respect, it is a matter of moment that he should
+have at his call efficient specialised servants, whose attendance
+upon his person is not diverted from this their chief office by
+any by-occupation. These specialised servants are useful more for
+show than for service actually performed. In so far as they are
+not kept for exhibition simply, they afford gratification to
+their master chiefly in allowing scope to his propensity for
+dominance. It is true, the care of the continually increasing
+household apparatus may require added labour; but since the
+apparatus is commonly increased in order to serve as a means of
+good repute rather than as a means of comfort, this qualification
+is not of great weight. All these lines of utility are better
+served by a larger number of more highly specialised servants.
+There results, therefore, a constantly increasing differentiation
+and multiplication of domestic and body servants, along with a
+concomitant progressive exemption of such servants from
+productive labour. By virtue of their serving as evidence of
+ability to pay, the office of such domestics regularly tends to
+include continually fewer duties, and their service tends in the
+end to become nominal only. This is especially true of those
+servants who are in most immediate and obvious attendance upon
+their master. So that the utility of these comes to consist, in
+great part, in their conspicuous exemption from productive labour
+and in the evidence which this exemption affords of their
+master's wealth and power.
+
+After some considerable advance has been made in the practice of
+employing a special corps of servants for the performance of a
+conspicuous leisure in this manner, men begin to be preferred
+above women for services that bring them obtrusively into view.
+Men, especially lusty, personable fellows, such as footmen and
+other menials should be, are obviously more powerful and more
+expensive than women. They are better fitted for this work, as
+showing a larger waste of time and of human energy. Hence it
+comes about that in the economy of the leisure class the busy
+housewife of the early patriarchal days, with her retinue of
+hard-working handmaidens, presently gives place to the lady and
+the lackey.
+
+In all grades and walks of life, and at any stage of the economic
+development, the leisure of the lady and of the lackey differs
+from the leisure of the gentleman in his own right in that it is
+an occupation of an ostensibly laborious kind. It takes the form,
+in large measure, of a painstaking attention to the service of
+the master, or to the maintenance and elaboration of the
+household paraphernalia; so that it is leisure only in the sense
+that little or no productive work is performed by this class, not
+in the sense that all appearance of labour is avoided by them.
+The duties performed by the lady, or by the household or domestic
+servants, are frequently arduous enough, and they are  also
+frequently directed to ends which are considered extremely
+necessary to the comfort of the entire household. So far as these
+services conduce to the physical efficiency or comfort of the
+master or the rest of the household, they are to be accounted
+productive work. Only the residue of employment left after
+deduction of this effective work is to be classed as a
+performance of leisure.
+
+But much of the services classed as household cares in modern
+everyday life, and many of the "utilities" required for a
+comfortable existence by civilised man, are of a ceremonial
+character. They are, therefore, properly to be classed as a
+performance of leisure in the sense in which the term is here
+used. They may be none the less imperatively necessary from the
+point of view of decent existence: they may be none the less
+requisite for personal comfort even, although they may be chiefly
+or wholly of a ceremonial character. But in so far as they
+partake of this character they are imperative and requisite
+because we have been taught to require them under pain of
+ceremonial uncleanness or unworthiness. We feel discomfort in
+their absence, but not because their absence results directly in
+physical discomfort; nor would a taste not trained to
+discriminate between the conventionally good and the
+conventionally bad take offence at their omission. In so far as
+this is true the labour spent in these services is to be classed
+as leisure; and when performed by others than the economically
+free and self-directed head of the establishment, they are to be
+classed as vicarious leisure.
+
+The vicarious leisure performed by housewives and menials, under
+the head of household cares, may frequently develop into
+drudgery, especially where the competition for reputability is
+close and strenuous. This is frequently the case in modern life.
+Where this happens, the domestic service which comprises the
+duties of this servant class might aptly be designated as wasted
+effort, rather than as vicarious leisure. But the latter term has
+the advantage of indicating the line of derivation of these
+domestic offices, as well as of neatly suggesting the substantial
+economic ground of their utility; for these occupations are
+chiefly useful as a method of imputing pecuniary reputability to
+the master or to the household on the ground that a given amount
+of time and effort is conspicuously wasted in that behalf.
+
+In this way, then, there arises a subsidiary or derivative
+leisure class, whose office is the performance of a vicarious
+leisure for the behoof of the reputability of the primary or
+legitimate leisure class. This vicarious leisure class is
+distinguished from the leisure class proper by a characteristic
+feature of its habitual mode of life. The leisure of the master
+class is, at least ostensibly, an indulgence of a proclivity for
+the avoidance of labour and is presumed to enhance the master's
+own well-being and fulness of life; but the leisure of the
+servant class exempt from productive labour is in some sort a
+performance exacted from them, and is not normally or primarily
+directed to their own comfort. The leisure of the servant is not
+his own leisure. So far as he is a servant in the full sense, and
+not at the same time a member of a lower order of the leisure
+class proper, his leisure normally passes under the guise of
+specialised service directed to the furtherance of his master's
+fulness of life. Evidence of this relation of subservience is
+obviously present in the servant's carriage and manner of life.
+The like is often true of the wife throughout the protracted
+economic stage during which she is still primarily a servant --
+that is to say, so long as the household with a male head remains
+in force. In order to satisfy the requirements of the leisure
+class scheme of life, the servant should show not only an
+attitude of subservience, but also the effects of special
+training and practice in subservience. The servant or wife should
+not only perform certain offices and show a servile disposition,
+but it is quite as imperative that they should show an acquired
+facility in the tactics of subservience -- a trained conformity
+to the canons of effectual and conspicuous subservience. Even
+today it is this aptitude and acquired skill in the formal
+manifestation of the servile relation that constitutes the chief
+element of utility in our highly paid servants, as well as one of
+the chief ornaments of the well-bred housewife.
+
+The first requisite of a good servant is that he should
+conspicuously know his place. It is not enough that he knows how
+to effect certain desired mechanical results; he must above all,
+know how to effect these results in due form. Domestic service
+might be said to be a spiritual rather than a mechanical
+function. Gradually there grows up an elaborate system of good
+form, specifically regulating the manner in which this vicarious
+leisure of the servant class is to be performed. Any departure
+from these canons of form is to be depreciated, not so much
+because it evinces a shortcoming in mechanical efficiency, or
+even that it shows an absence of the servile attitude and
+temperament, but because, in the last analysis, it shows the
+absence of special training. Special training in personal service
+costs time and effort, and where it is obviously present in a
+high degree, it argues that the servant who possesses it, neither
+is nor has been habitually engaged in any productive occupation.
+It is prima facie evidence of a vicarious leisure extending far
+back in the past. So that trained service has utility, not only
+as gratifying the master's instinctive liking for good and
+skilful workmanship and his propensity for conspicuous dominance
+over those whose lives are subservient to his own, but it has
+utility also as putting in evidence a much larger consumption of
+human service than would be shown by the mere present conspicuous
+leisure performed by an untrained person. It is a serious
+grievance if a gentleman's butler or footman performs his duties
+about his master's table or carriage in such unformed style as to
+suggest that his habitual occupation may be ploughing or
+sheepherding. Such bungling work would imply inability on the
+master's part to procure the service of specially trained
+servants; that is to say, it would imply inability to pay for the
+consumption of time, effort, and instruction required to fit a
+trained servant for special service under the exacting code of
+forms. If the performance of the servant argues lack of means on
+the part of his master, it defeats its chief substantial end; for
+the chief use of servants is the evidence they afford of the
+master's ability to pay.
+
+What has just been said might be taken to imply that the offence
+of an under-trained servant lies in a direct suggestion of
+inexpensiveness or of usefulness. Such, of course, is not the
+case. The connection is much less immediate. What happens here is
+what happens generally. Whatever approves itself to us on any
+ground at the outset, presently comes to appeal to us as a
+gratifying thing in itself; it comes to rest in our habits of
+though as substantially right. But in order that any specific
+canon of deportment shall maintain itself in favour, it must
+continue to have the support of, or at least not be incompatible
+with, the habit or aptitude which constitutes the norm of its
+development. The need of vicarious leisure, or conspicuous
+consumption of service, is a dominant incentive to the keeping of
+servants. So long as this remains true it may be set down without
+much discussion that any such departure from accepted usage as
+would suggest an abridged apprenticeship in service would
+presently be found insufferable. The requirement of an expensive
+vicarious leisure acts indirectly, selectively, by guiding the
+formation of our taste, -- of our sense of what is right in these
+matters, -- and so weeds out unconformable departures by
+withholding approval of them.
+
+As the standard of wealth recognized by common consent advances,
+the possession and exploitation of servants as a means of showing
+superfluity undergoes a refinement. The possession and
+maintenance of slaves employed in the production of goods argues
+wealth and prowess, but the maintenance of servants who produce
+nothing argues still higher wealth and position. Under this
+principle there arises a class of servants, the more numerous the
+better, whose sole office is fatuously to wait upon the person of
+their owner, and so to put in evidence his ability unproductively
+to consume a large amount of service. There supervenes a division
+of labour among the servants or dependents whose life is spent in
+maintaining the honour of the gentleman of leisure. So that,
+while one group produces goods for him, another group, usually
+headed by the wife, or chief, consumes for him in conspicuous
+leisure; thereby putting in evidence his ability to sustain large
+pecuniary damage without impairing his superior opulence.
+
+This somewhat idealized and diagrammatic outline of the
+development and nature of domestic service comes nearest being
+true for that cultural stage which was here been named the
+"quasi-peaceable" stage of industry. At this stage personal
+service first rises to the position of an economic institution,
+and it is at this stage that it occupies the largest place in the
+community's scheme of life. In the cultural sequence, the
+quasiªpeaceable stage follows the predatory stage proper, the two
+being successive phases of barbarian life. Its characteristic
+feature is a formal observance of peace and order, at the same
+time that life at this stage still has too much of coercion and
+class antagonism to be called peaceable in the full sense of the
+word. For many purposes, and from another point of view than the
+economic one, it might as well be named the stage of status. The
+method of human relation during this stage, and the spiritual
+attitude of men at this level of culture, is well summed up under
+the term. But as a descriptive term to characterise the
+prevailing methods of industry, as well as to indicate the trend
+of industrial development at this point in economic evolution,
+the term "quasi-peaceable" seems preferable. So far as concerns
+the communities of the Western culture, this phase of economic
+development probably lies in the past; except for a numerically
+small though very conspicuous fraction of the community in whom
+the habits of thought peculiar to the barbarian culture have
+suffered but a relatively slight disintegration.
+
+Personal service is still an element of great economic
+importance, especially as regards the distribution and
+consumption of goods; but its relative importance even in this
+direction is no doubt less than it once was. The best development
+of this vicarious leisure lies in the past rather than in the
+present; and its best expression in the present is to be found in
+the scheme of life of the upper leisure class. To this class the
+modern culture owes much in the way of the conservation of
+traditions, usages, and habits of thought which belong on a more
+archaic cultural plane, so far as regards their widest acceptance
+and their most effective development.
+
+In the modern industrial communities the mechanical
+contrivances available for the comfort and convenience of
+everyday life are highly developed. So much so that body
+servants, or, indeed, domestic servants of any kind, would now
+scarcely be employed by anybody except on the ground of a canon
+of reputability carried over by tradition from earlier usage. The
+only exception would be servants employed to attend on the
+persons of the infirm and the feeble-minded. But such servants
+properly come under the head of trained nurses rather than under
+that of domestic servants, and they are, therefore, an apparent
+rather than a real exception to the rule.
+
+The proximate reason for keeping domestic servants, for instance,
+in the moderately well-to-do household of to-day, is (ostensibly)
+that the members of the household are unable without discomfort
+to compass the work required by such a modern
+establishment. And the reason for their being unable to
+accomplish it is (1) that they have too many "social duties", and 
+(2) that the work to be done is too severe and that there is too
+much of it. These two reasons may be restated as follows: (1)
+Under the mandatory code of decency, the time and effort of the
+members of such a household are required to be ostensibly all
+spent in a performance of conspicuous leisure, in the way of
+calls, drives, clubs, sewing-circles, sports, charity
+organisations, and other like social functions. Those persons
+whose time and energy are employed in these matters privately
+avow that all these observances, as well as the incidental
+attention to dress and other conspicuous consumption, are very
+irksome but altogether unavoidable. (2) Under the requirement of
+conspicuous consumption of goods, the apparatus of living has
+grown so elaborate and cumbrous, in the way of dwellings,
+furniture, bric-a-brac, wardrobe and meals, that the consumers of
+these things cannot make way with them in the required manner
+without help. Personal contact with the hired persons whose aid
+is called in to fulfil the routine of decency is commonly
+distasteful to the occupants of the house, but their presence is
+endured and paid for, in order to delegate to them a share in
+this onerous consumption of household goods. The presence of
+domestic servants, and of the special class of body servants in
+an eminent degree, is a concession of physical comfort to the
+moral need of pecuniary decency.
+
+The largest manifestation of vicarious leisure in modern life is
+made up of what are called domestic duties. These duties are fast
+becoming a species of services performed, not so much for the
+individual behoof of the head of the household as for the
+reputability of the household taken as a corporate unit -- a
+group of which the housewife is a member on a footing of
+ostensible equality. As fast as the household for which they are
+performed departs from its archaic basis of ownership-marriage,
+these household duties of course tend to fall out of the category
+of vicarious leisure in the original sense; except so far as they
+are performed by hired servants. That is to say, since vicarious
+leisure is possible only on a basis of status or of hired
+service, the disappearance of the relation of status from human
+intercourse at any point carries with it the disappearance of
+vicarious leisure so far as regards that much of life. But it is
+to be added, in qualification of this qualification, that so long
+as the household subsists, even with a divided head, this class
+of non-productive labour performed for the sake of the household
+reputability must still be classed as vicarious leisure, although
+in a slightly altered sense. It is now leisure performed for the
+quasi-personal corporate household, instead of, as formerly, for
+the proprietary head of the household.
+
+Chapter Four
+
+Conspicuous Consumption
+
+In what has been said of the evolution of the vicarious leisure
+class and its differentiation from the general body of the
+working classes, reference has been made to a further
+division of labour, -- that between the different servant
+classes. One portion of the servant class, chiefly those persons
+whose occupation is vicarious leisure, come to undertake a new,
+subsidiary range of duties -- the vicarious consumption of goods.
+The most obvious form in which this consumption occurs is seen in
+the wearing of liveries and the occupation of spacious servants'
+quarters. Another, scarcely less obtrusive or less effective form
+of vicarious consumption, and a much more widely prevalent one,
+is the consumption of food, clothing, dwelling, and furniture by
+the lady and the rest of the domestic establishment.
+
+But already at a point in economic evolution far antedating the
+emergence of the lady, specialised consumption of goods as an
+evidence of pecuniary strength had begun to work out in a more or
+less elaborate system. The beginning of a differentiation in
+consumption even antedates the appearance of anything that can
+fairly be called pecuniary strength. It is traceable back to the
+initial phase of predatory culture, and there is even a
+suggestion that an incipient differentiation in this respect lies
+back of the beginnings of the predatory life. This most primitive
+differentiation in the consumption of goods is like the later
+differentiation with which we are all so intimately familiar, in
+that it is largely of a ceremonial character, but unlike the
+latter it does not rest on a difference in accumulated wealth.
+The utility of consumption as an evidence of wealth is to be
+classed as a derivative growth. It is an adaption to a new end,
+by a selective process, of a distinction previously existing and
+well established in men's habits of thought.
+
+In the earlier phases of the predatory culture the only economic
+differentiation is a broad distinction between an honourable
+superior class made up of the able-bodied men on the one side,
+and a base inferior class of labouring women on the other.
+According to the ideal scheme of life in force at the time it is
+the office of the men to consume what the women produce. Such
+consumption as falls to the women is merely incidental to their
+work; it is a means to their continued labour, and not a
+consumption directed to their own comfort and fulness of life.
+Unproductive consumption of goods is honourable, primarily as a
+mark of prowess and a perquisite of human dignity; secondarily it
+becomes substantially honourable to itself, especially the
+consumption of the more desirable things. The consumption of
+choice articles of food, and frequently also of rare articles of
+adornment, becomes tabu to the women and children; and if there
+is a base (servile) class of men, the tabu holds also for them.
+With a further advance in culture this tabu may change into
+simple custom of a more or less rigorous character; but whatever
+be the theoretical basis of the distinction which is maintained,
+whether it be a tabu or a larger conventionality, the features of
+the conventional scheme of consumption do not change easily. When
+the quasi-peaceable stage of industry is reached, with its
+fundamental institution of chattel slavery, the general
+principle, more or less rigorously applied, is that the base,
+industrious class should consume only what may be necessary to
+their subsistence. In the nature of things, luxuries and the
+comforts of life belong to the leisure class. Under the tabu,
+certain victuals, and more particularly certain beverages, are
+strictly reserved for the use of the superior class.
+
+The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the
+use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of
+consumption are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific.
+Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an
+enforced continence with respect to these stimulants, except in
+countries where they are obtainable at a very low cost. From
+archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal
+regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and
+administer these luxuries, and it has been the perquisite of the
+men of gentle birth and breeding to consume them. Drunkenness and
+the other pathological consequences of the free use of stimulants
+therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a
+mark, at the second remove, of the superior status of those who
+are able to afford the indulgence. Infirmities induced by
+over-indulgence are among some peoples freely recognised as manly
+attributes. It has even happened that the name for certain
+diseased conditions of the body arising from such an origin has
+passed into everyday speech as a synonym for "noble" or "gentle".
+It is only at a relatively early stage of culture that the
+symptoms of expensive vice are conventionally accepted as marks
+of a superior status, and so tend to become virtues and command
+the deference of the community; but the reputability that
+attaches to certain expensive vices long retains so much of its
+force as to appreciably lesson the disapprobation visited upon
+the men of the wealthy or noble class for any excessive
+indulgence. The same invidious distinction adds force to the
+current disapproval of any indulgence of this kind on the part of
+women, minors, and inferiors. This invidious traditional
+distinction has not lost its force even among the more advanced
+peoples of today. Where the example set by the leisure class
+retains its imperative force in the regulation of the
+conventionalities, it is observable that the women still in great
+measure practise the same traditional continence with regard to
+stimulants.
+
+This characterisation of the greater continence in the use of
+stimulants practised by the women of the reputable classes may
+seem an excessive refinement of logic at the expense of common
+sense. But facts within easy reach of any one who cares to know
+them go to say that the greater abstinence of women is in some
+part due to an imperative conventionality; and this
+conventionality is, in a general way, strongest where the
+patriarchal tradition -- the tradition that the woman is a
+chattel -- has retained its hold in greatest vigour. In a sense
+which has been greatly qualified in scope and rigour, but which
+has by no means lost its meaning even yet, this tradition says
+that the woman, being a chattel, should consume only what is
+necessary to her sustenance, -- except so far as her further
+consumption contributes to the comfort or the good repute of her
+master. The consumption of luxuries, in the true sense, is a
+consumption directed to the comfort of the consumer himself, and
+is, therefore, a mark of the master. Any such consumption by
+others can take place only on a basis of sufferance. In
+communities where the popular habits of thought have been
+profoundly shaped by  the patriarchal tradition we may
+accordingly look for survivals of the tabu on luxuries at least
+to the extent of a conventional deprecation of their use by the
+unfree and dependent class. This is more particularly true as
+regards certain luxuries, the use of which by the dependent class
+would detract sensibly from the comfort or pleasure of their
+masters, or which are held to be of doubtful legitimacy on other
+grounds. In the apprehension of the great conservative middle
+class of Western civilisation the use of these various stimulants
+is obnoxious to at least one, if not both, of these objections;
+and it is a fact too significant to be passed over that it is
+precisely among these middle classes of the Germanic culture,
+with their strong surviving sense of the patriarchal proprieties,
+that the women are to the greatest extent subject to a qualified
+tabu on narcotics and alcoholic beverages. With many
+qualifications -- with more qualifications as the patriarchal
+tradition has gradually weakened -- the general rule is felt to
+be right and binding that women should consume only for the
+benefit of their masters. The objection of course presents itself
+that expenditure on women's dress and household paraphernalia is
+an obvious exception to this rule; but it will appear in the
+sequel that this exception is much more obvious than substantial.
+During the earlier stages of economic development,
+consumption of goods without stint, especially consumption of the
+better grades of goods, -- ideally all consumption in excess of
+the subsistence minimum, -- pertains normally to the leisure
+class. This restriction tends to disappear, at least formally,
+after the later peaceable stage has been reached, with private
+ownership of goods and an industrial system based on wage labour
+or on the petty household economy. But during the earlier
+quasiªpeaceable stage, when so many of the traditions through
+which the institution of a leisure class has affected the
+economic life of later times were taking form and consistency,
+this principle has had the force of a conventional law. It has
+served as the norm to which consumption has tended to conform,
+and any appreciable departure from it is to be regarded as an
+aberrant form, sure to be eliminated sooner or later in the
+further course of development.
+
+The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes
+of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence
+and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a
+specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He
+consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics,
+shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements,
+amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities. In the process of
+gradual amelioration which takes place in the articles of his
+consumption, the motive principle and proximate aim of innovation
+is no doubt the higher efficiency of the improved and more
+elaborate products for personal comfort and well-being. But that
+does not remain the sole purpose of their consumption. The canon
+of reputability is at hand and seizes upon such innovations as
+are, according to its standard, fit to survive. Since the
+consumption of these more excellent goods is an evidence of
+wealth, it becomes honorific; and conversely, the failure to
+consume in due quantity and quality becomes a mark of inferiority
+and demerit.
+
+This growth of punctilious discrimination as to qualitative
+excellence in eating, drinking, etc. presently affects not only
+the manner of life, but also the training and intellectual
+activity of the gentleman of leisure. He is no longer simply the
+successful, aggressive male, -- the man of strength, resource,
+and intrepidity. In order to avoid stultification he must also
+cultivate his tastes, for it now becomes incumbent on him to
+discriminate with some nicety between the noble and the ignoble
+in consumable goods. He becomes a connoisseur in creditable
+viands of various degrees of merit, in manly beverages and
+trinkets, in seemly apparel and architecture, in weapons, games,
+dancers, and the narcotics. This cultivation of aesthetic faculty
+requires time and application, and the demands made upon the
+gentleman in this direction therefore tend to change his life of
+leisure into a more or less arduous application to the business
+of learning how to live a life of ostensible leisure in a
+becoming way. Closely related to the requirement that the
+gentleman must consume freely and of the right kind of goods,
+there is the requirement that he must know how to consume them in
+a seemly manner. His life of leisure must be conducted in due
+form. Hence arise good manners in the way pointed out in an
+earlier chapter. High-bred manners and ways of living are items
+of conformity to the norm of conspicuous leisure and conspicuous
+consumption.
+
+Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of
+reputability to the gentleman of leisure. As wealth accumulates
+on his hands, his own unaided effort will not avail to
+sufficiently put his opulence in evidence by this method. The aid
+of friends and competitors is therefore brought in by resorting
+to the giving of valuable presents and expensive feasts and
+entertainments. Presents and feasts had probably another origin
+than that of naive ostentation, but they required their utility
+for this purpose very early, and they have retained that
+character to the present; so that their utility in this respect
+has now long been the substantial ground on which these usages
+rest. Costly entertainments, such as the potlatch or the ball,
+are peculiarly adapted to serve this end. The competitor with
+whom the entertainer wishes to institute a comparison is, by this
+method, made to serve as a means to the end. He consumes
+vicariously for his host at the same time that he is witness to
+the consumption of that excess of good things which his host is
+unable to dispose of single-handed, and he is also made to
+witness his host's facility in etiquette.
+
+In the giving of costly entertainments other motives, of more
+genial kind, are of course also present. The custom of festive
+gatherings probably originated in motives of conviviality and
+religion; these motives are also present in the later
+development, but they do not continue to be the sole motives. The
+latter-day leisure-class festivities and entertainments may
+continue in some slight degree to serve the religious need and in
+a higher degree the needs of recreation and conviviality, but
+they also serve an invidious purpose; and they serve it none the
+less effectually for having a colorable non-invidious ground in
+these more avowable motives. But the economic effect of these
+social amenities is not therefore lessened, either in the
+vicarious consumption of goods or in the exhibition of difficult
+and costly achievements in etiquette.
+
+As wealth accumulates, the leisure class develops further in
+function and structure, and there arises a differentiation within
+the class. There is a more or less elaborate system of rank and
+grades. This differentiation is furthered by the inheritance of
+wealth and the consequent inheritance of gentility. With the
+inheritance of gentility goes the inheritance of obligatory
+leisure; and gentility of a sufficient potency to entail a life
+of leisure may be inherited without the complement of wealth
+required to maintain a dignified leisure. Gentle blood may be
+transmitted without goods enough to afford a reputably free
+consumption at one's ease. Hence results a class of impecunious
+gentlemen of leisure, incidentally referred to already. These
+half-caste gentlemen of leisure fall into a system of
+hierarchical gradations. Those who stand near the higher and the
+highest grades of the wealthy leisure class, in point of birth,
+or in point of wealth, or both, outrank the remoter-born and the
+pecuniarily weaker. These lower grades, especially the
+impecunious, or marginal, gentlemen of leisure, affiliate
+themselves by a system of dependence or fealty to the great ones;
+by so doing they gain an increment of repute, or of the means
+with which to lead a life of leisure, from their patron. They
+become his courtiers or retainers, servants; and being fed and
+countenanced by their patron they are indices of his rank and
+vicarious consumer of his superfluous wealth. Many of these
+affiliated gentlemen of leisure are at the same time lesser men
+of substance in their own right; so that some of them are
+scarcely at all, others only partially, to be rated as vicarious
+consumers. So many of them, however, as make up the retainer and
+hangers-on of the patron may be classed as vicarious consumer
+without qualification. Many of these again, and also many of the
+other aristocracy of less degree, have in turn attached to their
+persons a more or less comprehensive group of vicarious consumer
+in the persons of their wives and children, their servants,
+retainers, etc.
+
+Throughout this graduated scheme of vicarious leisure and
+vicarious consumption the rule holds that these offices must be
+performed in some such manner, or under some such circumstance or
+insignia, as shall point plainly to the master to whom this
+leisure or consumption pertains, and to whom therefore the
+resulting increment of good repute of right inures. The
+consumption and leisure executed by these persons for their
+master or patron represents an investment on his part with a view
+to an increase of good fame. As regards feasts and largesses this
+is obvious enough, and the imputation of repute to the host or
+patron here takes place immediately, on the ground of common
+notoriety . Where leisure and consumption is performed
+vicariously by henchmen and retainers, imputation of the
+resulting repute to the patron is effected by their residing near
+his person so that it may be plain to all men from what source
+they draw. As the group whose good esteem is to be secured in
+this way grows larger, more patent means are required to indicate
+the imputation of merit for the leisure performed, and to this
+end uniforms, badges, and liveries come into vogue. The wearing
+of uniforms or liveries implies a considerable degree of
+dependence, and may even be said to be a mark of servitude, real
+or ostensible. The wearers of uniforms and liveries may be
+roughly divided into two classes-the free and the servile, or the
+noble and the ignoble. The services performed by them are
+likewise divisible into noble and ignoble. Of course the
+distinction is not observed with strict consistency in practice;
+the less debasing of the base services and the less honorific of
+the noble functions are not infrequently merged in the same
+person. But the general distinction is not on that account to be
+overlooked. What may add some perplexity is the fact that this
+fundamental distinction between noble and ignoble, which rests on
+the nature of the ostensible service performed, is traversed by a
+secondary distinction into honorific and humiliating, resting on
+the rank of the person for whom the service is performed or whose
+livery is worn. So, those offices which are by right the proper
+employment of the leisure class are noble; such as government,
+fighting, hunting, the care of arms and accoutrements, and the
+like -- in short, those which may be classed as ostensibly
+predatory employments. On the other hand, those employments which
+properly fall to the industrious class are ignoble; such as
+handicraft or other productive labor, menial services and the
+like. But a base service performed for a person of very high
+degree may become a very honorific office; as for instance the
+office of a Maid of Honor or of a Lady in Waiting to the Queen,
+or the King's Master of the Horse or his Keeper of the Hounds.
+The two offices last named suggest a principle of some general
+bearing. Whenever, as in these cases, the menial service in
+question has to do directly with the primary leisure employments
+of fighting and hunting, it easily acquires a reflected honorific
+character. In this way great honor may come to attach to an
+employment which in its own nature belongs to the baser sort.
+In the later development of peaceable industry, the usage of
+employing an idle corps of uniformed men-at-arms gradually
+lapses. Vicarious consumption by dependents bearing the insignia
+of their patron or master narrows down to a corps of liveried
+menials. In a heightened degree, therefore, the livery comes to
+be a badge of servitude, or rather servility. Something of a
+honorific character always attached to the livery of the armed
+retainer, but this honorific character disappears when the livery
+becomes the exclusive badge of the menial. The livery becomes
+obnoxious to nearly all who are required to wear it. We are yet
+so little removed from a state of effective slavery as still to
+be fully sensitive to the sting of any imputation of servility.
+This antipathy asserts itself even in the case of the liveries or
+uniforms which some corporations prescribe as the distinctive
+dress of their employees. In this country the aversion even goes
+the length of discrediting -- in a mild and uncertain way --
+those government employments, military and civil, which require
+the wearing of a livery or uniform.
+
+With the disappearance of servitude, the number of vicarious
+consumers attached to any one gentleman tends, on the whole, to
+decrease. The like is of course true, and perhaps in a still
+higher degree, of the number of dependents who perform vicarious
+leisure for him. In a general way, though not wholly nor
+consistently, these two groups coincide. The dependent who was
+first delegated for these duties was the wife, or the chief wife;
+and, as would be expected, in the later development of the
+institution, when the number of persons by whom these duties are
+customarily performed gradually narrows, the wife remains the
+last. In the higher grades of society a large volume of both
+these kinds of service is required; and here the wife is of
+course still assisted in the work by a more or less numerous
+corps of menials. But as we descend the social scale, the point
+is presently reached where the duties of vicarious leisure and
+consumption devolve upon the wife alone. In the communities of
+the Western culture, this point is at present found among the
+lower middle class.
+
+And here occurs a curious inversion. It is a fact of common
+observance that in this lower middle class there is no pretense
+of leisure on the part of the head of the household. Through
+force of circumstances it has fallen into disuse. But the
+middle-class wife still carries on the business of vicarious
+leisure, for the good name of the household and its master. In
+descending the social scale in any modern industrial community,
+the primary fact-the conspicuous leisure of the master of the
+household-disappears at a relatively high point. The head of the
+middle-class household has been reduced by economic circumstances
+to turn his hand to gaining a livelihood by occupations which
+often partake largely of the character of industry, as in the
+case of the ordinary business man of today. But the derivative
+fact-the vicarious leisure and consumption rendered by the wife,
+and the auxiliary vicarious performance of leisure by
+menials-remains in vogue as a conventionality which the demands
+of reputability will not suffer to be slighted. It is by no means
+an uncommon spectacle to find a man applying himself to work with
+the utmost assiduity, in order that his wife may in due form
+render for him that degree of vicarious leisure which the common
+sense of the time demands.
+
+The leisure rendered by the wife in such cases is, of course, not
+a simple manifestation of idleness or indolence. It almost
+invariably occurs disguised under some form of work or household
+duties or social amenities, which prove on analysis to serve
+little or no ulterior end beyond showing that she does not occupy
+herself with anything that is gainful or that is of substantial
+use. As has already been noticed under the head of manners, the
+greater part of the customary round of domestic cares to which
+the middle-class housewife gives her time and effort is of this
+character. Not that the results of her
+attention to household matters, of a decorative and mundificatory
+character, are not pleasing to the sense of men trained in
+middle-class proprieties; but the taste to which these effects of
+household adornment and tidiness appeal is a taste which has been
+formed under the selective guidance of a canon of propriety that
+demands just these evidences of wasted effort. The effects are
+pleasing to us chiefly because we have been taught to find them
+pleasing. There goes into these domestic duties much solicitude
+for a proper combination of form and color, and for other ends
+that are to be classed as aesthetic in the proper sense of the
+term; and it is not denied that effects having some substantial
+aesthetic value are sometimes attained. Pretty much all that is
+here insisted on is that, as regards these amenities of life, the
+housewife's efforts are under the guidance of traditions that
+have been shaped by the law of conspicuously wasteful expenditure
+of time and substance. If beauty or comfort is achieved-and it is
+a more or less fortuitous circumstance if they are-they must be
+achieved by means and methods that commend themselves to the
+great economic law of wasted effort. The more reputable,
+"presentable" portion of middle-class household paraphernalia
+are, on the one hand, items of conspicuous consumption, and on
+the other hand, apparatus for putting in evidence the vicarious
+leisure rendered by the housewife.
+
+The requirement of vicarious consumption at the hands of the wife
+continues in force even at a lower point in the pecuniary scale
+than the requirement of vicarious leisure. At a point below which
+little if any pretense of wasted effort, in ceremonial cleanness
+and the like, is observable, and where there is
+assuredly no conscious attempt at ostensible leisure, decency
+still requires the wife to consume some goods conspicuously for
+the reputability of the household and its head. So that, as the
+latter-day outcome of this evolution of an archaic institution,
+the wife, who was at the outset the drudge and chattel of the
+man, both in fact and in theory -- the producer of goods for him
+to consume -- has become the ceremonial consumer of goods which
+he produces. But she still quite unmistakably remains his chattel
+in theory; for the habitual rendering of vicarious leisure and
+consumption is the abiding mark of the unfree servant.
+
+This vicarious consumption practiced by the household of the
+middle and lower classes can not be counted as a direct
+expression of the leisure-class scheme of life, since the
+household of this pecuniary grade does not belong within the
+leisure class. It is rather that the leisure-class scheme of life
+here comes to an expression at the second remove. The leisure
+class stands at the head of the social structure in point of
+reputability; and its manner of life and its standards of worth
+therefore afford the norm of reputability for the community. The
+observance of these standards, in some degree of approximation,
+becomes incumbent upon all classes lower in the scale. In modern
+civilized communities the lines of demarcation between social
+classes have grown vague and transient, and wherever this happens
+the norm of reputability imposed by the upper class extends its
+coercive influence with but slight hindrance down through the
+social structure to the lowest strata. The result is that the
+members of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency the
+scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum, and bend
+their energies to live up to that ideal. On pain of forfeiting
+their good name and their self-respect in case of failure, they
+must conform to the accepted code, at least in appearance.
+The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial
+community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means
+of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a
+good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.
+Accordingly, both of these methods are in vogue as far down the
+scale as it remains possible; and in the lower strata in which
+the two methods are employed, both offices are in great part
+delegated to the wife and children of the household. Lower still,
+where any degree of leisure, even ostensible, has become
+impracticable for the wife, the conspicuous consumption of goods
+remains and is carried on by the wife and children. The man of
+the household also can do something in this direction, and
+indeed, he commonly does; but with a still lower descent into the
+levels of indigence -- along the margin of the slums -- the man,
+and presently also the children, virtually cease to consume
+valuable goods for appearances, and the woman remains virtually
+the sole exponent of the household's pecuniary decency. No class
+of society, not even the most abjectly poor, forgoes all
+customary conspicuous consumption. The last items of this
+category of consumption are not given up except under stresS of
+the direst necessity. Very much of squalor and discomfort will be
+endured before the last trinket or the last pretense of pecuniary
+decency is put away. There is no class and no country that has
+yielded so abjectly before the pressure of physical want as to
+deny themselves all gratification of this higher or spiritual
+need.
+
+From the foregoing survey of the growth of conspicuous leisure
+and consumption, it appears that the utility of both alike for
+the purposes of reputability lies in the element of waste that is
+common to both. In the one case it is a waste of time and effort,
+in the other it is a waste of goods. Both are methods of
+demonstrating the possession of wealth, and the two are
+conventionally accepted as equivalents. The choice between them
+is a question of advertising expediency simply, except so far as
+it may be affected by other standards of propriety, springing
+from a different source. On grounds of expediency the preference
+may be given to the one or the other at different stages of the
+economic development. The question is, which of the two methods
+will most effectively reach the persons whose
+convictions it is desired to affect. Usage has answered this
+question in different ways under different circumstances.
+
+So long as the community or social group is small enough and
+compact enough to be effectually reached by common notoriety
+alone that is to say, so long as the human environment to which
+the individual is required to adapt himself in respect of
+reputability is comprised within his sphere of personal
+acquaintance and neighborhood gossip -- so long the one method is
+about as effective as the other. Each will therefore serve about
+equally well during the earlier stages of social growth. But when
+the differentiation has gone farther and it becomes necessary to
+reach a wider human environment, consumption begins to hold over
+leisure as an ordinary means of decency. This is especially true
+during the later, peaceable economic stage. The means of
+communication and the mobility of the population now expose the
+individual to the observation of many persons who have no other
+means of judging of his reputability than the display of goods
+(and perhaps of breeding) which he is able to make while he is
+under their direct observation.
+
+The modern organization of industry works in the same direction
+also by another line. The exigencies of the modern industrial
+system frequently place individuals and households in
+juxtaposition between whom there is little contact in any other
+sense than that of juxtaposition. One's neighbors, mechanically
+speaking, often are socially not one's neighbors, or even
+acquaintances; and still their transient good opinion has a high
+degree of utility. The only practicable means of impressing one's
+pecuniary ability on these unsympathetic observers of one's
+everyday life is an unremitting demonstration of ability to pay.
+In the modern community there is also a more frequent attendance
+at large gatherings of people to whom one's everyday life is
+unknown; in such places as churches, theaters, ballrooms, hotels,
+parks, shops, and the like. In order to impress these transient
+observers, and to retain one's self-complacency under their
+observation, the signature of one's pecuniary strength should be
+written in characters which he who runs may read. It is evident,
+therefore, that the present trend of the development is in the
+direction of heightening the utility of conspicuous consumption
+as compared with leisure.
+
+It is also noticeable that the serviceability of consumption as a
+means of repute, as well as the insistence on it as an element of
+decency, is at its best in those portions of the community where
+the human contact of the individual is widest and the mobility of
+the population is greatest. Conspicuous
+consumption claims a relatively larger portion of the income of
+the urban than of the rural population, and the claim is also
+more imperative. The result is that, in order to keep up a decent
+appearance, the former habitually live hand-to-mouth to a greater
+extent than the latter. So it comes, for instance, that the
+American farmer and his wife and daughters are notoriously less
+modish in their dress, as well as less urbane in their manners,
+than the city artisan's family with an equal income. It is not
+that the city population is by nature much more eager for the
+peculiar complacency that comes of a conspicuous consumption, nor
+has the rural population less regard for pecuniary decency. But
+the provocation to this line of evidence, as well as its
+transient effectiveness, is more decided in the city. This method
+is therefore more readily resorted to, and in the struggle to
+outdo one another the city population push their normal standard
+of conspicuous consumption to a higher point, with the result
+that a relatively greater expenditure in this direction is
+required to indicate a given degree of pecuniary decency in the
+city. The requirement of conformity to this higher conventional
+standard becomes mandatory. The standard of decency is higher,
+class for class, and this requirement of decent appearance must
+be lived up to on pain of losing caste.
+
+Consumption becomes a larger element in the standard of living in
+the city than in the country. Among the country
+population its place is to some extent taken by savings and home
+comforts known through the medium of neighborhood gossip
+sufficiently to serve the like general purpose of Pecuniary
+repute. These home comforts and the leisure indulged in -- where
+the indulgence is found -- are of course also in great part to be
+classed as items of conspicuous consumption; and much the same is
+to be said of the savings. The smaller amount of the savings laid
+by by the artisan class is no doubt due, in some measure, to the
+fact that in the case of the artisan the savings are a less
+effective means of advertisement, relative to the environment in
+which he is placed, than are the savings of the people living on
+farms and in the small villages. Among the latter, everybody's
+affairs, especially everybody's pecuniary status, are known to
+everybody else. Considered by itself simply -- taken in the first
+degree -- this added provocation to which the artisan and the
+urban laboring classes are exposed may not very seriously
+decrease the amount of savings; but in its cumulative action,
+through raising the standard of decent expenditure, its deterrent
+effect on the tendency to save cannot but be very great.
+
+A felicitous illustration of the manner in which this canon of
+reputability works out its results is seen in the practice of
+dram-drinking, "treating," and smoking in public places, which is
+customary among the laborers and handicraftsmen of the towns, and
+among the lower middle class of the urban population generally
+Journeymen printers may be named as a class among whom this form
+of conspicuous consumption has a great vogue, and among whom it
+carries with it certain well-marked consequences that are often
+deprecated. The peculiar habits of the class in this respect are
+commonly set down to some kind of an ill-defined moral deficiency
+with which this class is credited, or to a morally deleterious
+influence which their occupation is supposed to exert, in some
+unascertainable way, upon the men employed in it. The state of
+the case for the men who work in the composition and press rooms
+of the common run of printing-houses may be summed up as follows.
+Skill acquired in any printing-house or any city is easily turned
+to account in almost any other house or city; that is to say, the
+inertia due to special training is slight. Also, this occupation
+requires more than the average of intelligence and general
+information, and the men employed in it are therefore ordinarily
+more ready than many others to take advantage of any slight
+variation in the demand for their labor from one place to
+another. The inertia due to the home feeling is consequently also
+slight. At the same time the wages in the trade are high enough
+to make movement from place to place relatively easy. The result
+is a great mobility of the labor employed in printing; perhaps
+greater than in any other equally well-defined and considerable
+body of workmen. These men are constantly thrown in contact with
+new groups of acquaintances, with whom the relations established
+are transient or ephemeral, but whose good opinion is valued none
+the less for the time being. The human proclivity to ostentation,
+reenforced by sentiments of goodfellowship, leads them to spend
+freely in those directions which will best serve these needs.
+Here as elsewhere prescription seizes upon the custom as soon as
+it gains a vogue, and incorporates it in the accredited standard
+of decency. The next step is to make this standard of decency the
+point of departure for a new move in advance in the same
+direction -- for there is no merit in simple spiritless
+conformity to a standard of dissipation that is lived up to as a
+matter of course by everyone in the trade.
+
+The greater prevalence of dissipation among printers than among
+the average of workmen is accordingly attributable, at least in
+some measure, to the greater ease of movement and the more
+transient character of acquaintance and human contact in this
+trade. But the substantial ground of this high requirement in
+dissipation is in the last analysis no other than that same
+propensity for a manifestation of dominance and pecuniary decency
+which makes the French peasant-proprietor parsimonious and
+frugal, and induces the American millionaire to found colleges,
+hospitals and museums. If the canon of conspicuous consumption
+were not offset to a considerable extent by other features of
+human nature, alien to it, any saving should logically be
+impossible for a population situated as the artisan and laboring
+classes of the cities are at present, however high their wages or
+their income might be.
+
+But there are other standards of repute and other, more or less
+imperative, canons of conduct, besides wealth and its
+manifestation, and some of these come in to accentuate or to
+qualify the broad, fundamental canon of conspicuous waste. Under
+the simple test of effectiveness for advertising, we should
+expect to find leisure and the conspicuous consumption of goods
+dividing the field of pecuniary emulation pretty evenly between
+them at the outset. Leisure might then be expected gradually to
+yield ground and tend to obsolescence as the economic development
+goes forward, and the community increases in size; while the
+conspicuous consumption of goods should gradually gain in
+importance, both absolutely and relatively, until it had absorbed
+all the available product, leaving nothing over beyond a bare
+livelihood. But the actual course of development has been
+somewhat different from this ideal scheme. Leisure held the first
+place at the start, and came to hold a rank very much above
+wasteful consumption of goods, both as a direct exponent of
+wealth and as an element in the standard of decency , during the
+quasi-peaceable culture. From that point onward, consumption has
+gained ground, until, at present, it unquestionably holds the
+primacy, though it is still far from absorbing the entire margin
+of production above the subsistence minimum.
+
+The early ascendency of leisure as a means of reputability is
+traceable to the archaic distinction between noble and ignoble
+employments. Leisure is honorable and becomes imperative partly
+because it shows exemption from ignoble labor. The archaic
+differentiation into noble and ignoble classes is based on an
+invidious distinction between employments as honorific or
+debasing; and this traditional distinction grows into an
+imperative canon of decency during the early quasi-peaceable
+stage. Its ascendency is furthered by the fact that leisure is
+still fully as effective an evidence of wealth as consumption.
+Indeed, so effective is it in the relatively small and stable
+human environment to which the individual is exposed at that
+cultural stage, that, with the aid of the archaic tradition which
+deprecates all productive labor, it gives rise to a large
+impecunious leisure class, and it even tends to limit the
+production of the community's industry to the subsistence
+minimum. This extreme inhibition of industry is avoided because
+slave labor, working under a compulsion more vigorous than that
+of reputability, is forced to turn out a product in excess of the
+subsistence minimum of the working class. The subsequent relative
+decline in the use of conspicuous leisure as a basis of repute is
+due partly to an increasing relative effectiveness of consumption
+as an evidence of wealth; but in part it is traceable to another
+force, alien, and in some degree antagonistic, to the usage of
+conspicuous waste.
+
+This alien factor is the instinct of workmanship. Other
+circumstances permitting, that instinct disposes men to look with
+favor upon productive efficiency and on whatever is of human use.
+It disposes them to depreCate waste of substance or effort. The
+instinct of workmanship is present in all men, and asserts itself
+even under very adverse circumstances. So that however wasteful a
+given expenditure may be in reality, it must at least have some
+colorable excuse in the way of an ostensible purpose. The manner
+in which, under special circumstances, the instinct eventuates in
+a taste for exploit and an invidious discrimination between noble
+and ignoble classes has been indicated in an earlier chapter. In
+so far as it comes into conflict with the law of conspicuous
+waste, the instinct of workmanship expresses itself not so much
+in insistence on substantial usefulness as in an abiding sense of
+the odiousness and aesthetic impossibility of what is obviously
+futile. Being of the nature of an instinctive affection, its
+guidance touches chiefly and immediately the obvious and apparent
+violations of its requirements. It is only less promptly and with
+less constraining force that it reaches such substantial
+violations of its requirements as are appreciated only upon
+reflection.
+
+So long as all labor continues to be performed exclusively or
+usually by slaves, the baseness of all productive effort is too
+constantly and deterrently present in the mind of men to allow
+the instinct of workmanship seriously to take effect in the
+direction of industrial usefulness; but when the quasi-peaceable
+stage (with slavery and status) passes into the peaceable stage
+of industry (with wage labor and cash payment) the instinct comes
+more effectively into play. It then begins aggressively to shape
+men's views of what is meritorious, and asserts itself at least
+as an auxiliary canon of self-complacency. All extraneous
+considerations apart, those persons (adult) are but a vanishing
+minority today who harbor no inclination to the accomplishment of
+some end, or who are not impelled of their own motion to shape
+some object or fact or relation for human use. The propensity may
+in large measure be overborne by the more immediately
+constraining incentive to a reputable leisure and an avoidance of
+indecorous usefulness, and it may therefore work itself out in
+make-believe only; as for instance in "social duties," and in
+quasi-artistic or quasi-scholarly accomplishments, in the care
+and decoration of the house, in sewing-circle activity or dress
+reform, in proficiency at dress, cards, yachting, golf, and
+various sports. But the fact that it may under stress of
+circumstances eventuate in inanities no more disproves the
+presence of the instinct than the reality of the brooding
+instinct is disproved by inducing a hen to sit on a nestful of
+china eggs.
+
+This latter-day uneasy reaching-out for some form of
+purposeful activity that shall at the same time not be
+indecorously productive of either individual or collective gain
+marks a difference of attitude between the modern leisure class
+and that of the quasi-peaceable stage. At the earlier stage, as
+was said above, the all-dominating institution of slavery and
+status acted resistlessly to discountenance exertion directed to
+other than naively predatory ends. It was still possible to find
+some habitual employment for the inclination to action in the way
+of forcible aggression or repression directed against hostile
+groups or against the subject classes within the group; and this
+sewed to relieve the pressure and draw off the energy of the
+leisure class without a resort to actually useful, or even
+ostensibly useful employments. The practice of hunting also sewed
+the same purpose in some degree. When the community developed
+into a peaceful industrial organization, and when fuller
+occupation of the land had reduced the opportunities for the hunt
+to an inconsiderable residue, the pressure of energy seeking
+purposeful employment was left to find an outlet in some other
+direction. The ignominy which attaches to useful effort also
+entered upon a less acute phase with the disappearance of
+compulsory labor; and the instinct of workmanship then came to
+assert itself with more persistence and consistency.
+
+The line of least resistance has changed in some measure, and the
+energy which formerly found a vent in predatory activity, now in
+part takes the direction of some ostensibly useful end.
+Ostensibly purposeless leisure has come to be deprecated,
+especially among that large portion of the leisure class whose
+plebeian origin acts to set them at variance with the tradition
+of the otium cum dignitate. But that canon of reputability which
+discountenances all employment that is of the nature of
+productive effort is still at hand, and will permit nothing
+beyond the most transient vogue to any employment that is
+substantially useful or productive. The consequence is that a
+change has been wrought in the conspicuous leisure practiced by
+the leisure class; not so much in substance as in form. A
+reconciliation between the two conflicting requirements is
+effected by a resort to make-believe. Many and intricate polite
+observances and social duties of a ceremonial nature are
+developed; many organizations are founded, with some specious
+object of amelioration embodied in their official style and
+title; there is much coming and going, and a deal of talk, to the
+end that the talkers may not have occasion to reflect on what is
+the effectual economic value of their traffic. And along with the
+make-believe of purposeful employment, and woven inextricably
+into its texture, there is commonly, if not invariably, a more or
+less appreciable element of purposeful effort directed to some
+serious end.
+
+In the narrower sphere of vicarious leisure a similar change has
+gone forward. Instead of simply passing her time in visible
+idleness, as in the best days of the patriarchal regime, the
+housewife of the advanced peaceable stage applies herself
+assiduously to household cares. The salient features of this
+development of domestic service have already been indicated.
+Throughout the entire evolution of conspicuous expenditure,
+whether of goods or of services or human life, runs the obvious
+implication that in order to effectually mend the consumer's good
+fame it must be an expenditure of superfluities. In order to be
+reputable it must be wasteful. No merit would accrue from the
+consumption of the bare necessaries of life, except by comparison
+with the abjectly poor who fall short even of the subsistence
+minimum; and no standard of expenditure could result from such a
+comparison, except the most prosaic and unattractive level of
+decency. A standard of life would still be possible which should
+admit of invidious comparison in other respects than that of
+opulence; as, for instance, a comparison in various directions in
+the manifestation of moral, physical, intellectual, or aesthetic
+force. Comparison in all these directions is in vogue today; and
+the comparison made in these respects is commonly so inextricably
+bound up with the pecuniary comparison as to be scarcely
+distinguishable from the latter. This is especially true as
+regards the current rating of expressions of intellectual and
+aesthetic force or proficiency' so that we frequently interpret
+as aesthetic or intellectual a difference which in substance is
+pecuniary only.
+
+The use of the term "waste" is in one respect an unfortunate one.
+As used in the speech of everyday life the word carries an
+undertone of deprecation. It is here used for want of a better
+term that will adequately describe the same range of motives and
+of phenomena, and it is not to be taken in an odious sense, as
+implying an illegitimate expenditure of human products or of
+human life. In the view of economic theory the expenditure in
+question is no more and no less legitimate than any other
+expenditure. It is here called "waste" because this expenditure
+does not serve human life or human well-being on the whole, not
+because it is waste or misdirection of effort or expenditure as
+viewed from the standpoint of the individual consumer who chooses
+it. If he chooses it, that disposes of the question of its
+relative utility to him, as compared with other forms of
+consumption that would not be deprecated on account of their
+wastefulness. Whatever form of expenditure the consumer chooses,
+or whatever end he seeks in making his choice, has utility to him
+by virtue of his preference. As seen from the point of view of
+the individual consumer, the question of wastefulness does not
+arise within the scope of economic theory proper. The use of the
+word "waste" as a technical term, therefore, implies no
+deprecation of the motives or of the ends sought by the consumer
+under this canon of conspicuous waste.
+
+But it is, on other grounds, worth noting that the term "waste"
+in the language of everyday life implies deprecation of what is
+characterized as wasteful. This common-sense implication is
+itself an outcropping of the instinct of workmanship. The popular
+reprobation of waste goes to say that in order to be at peace
+with himself the common man must be able to see in any and all
+human effort and human enjoyment an enhancement of life and
+well-being on the whole. In order to meet with unqualified
+approval, any economic fact must approve itself under the test of
+impersonal usefulness-usefulness as seen from the point of view
+of the generically human. Relative or competitive advantage of
+one individual in comparison with another does not satisfy the
+economic conscience, and therefore competitive expenditure has
+not the approval of this conscience.
+
+In strict accuracy nothing should be included under the head of
+conspicuous waste but such expenditure as is incurred on the
+ground of an invidious pecuniary comparison. But in order to
+bring any given item or element in under this head it is not
+necessary that it should be recognized as waste in this sense by
+the person incurring the expenditure. It frequently happens that
+an element of the standard of living which set out with being
+primarily wasteful, ends with becoming, in the apprehension of
+the consumer, a necessary of life; and it may in this way become
+as indispensable as any other item of the consumer's habitual
+expenditure. As items which sometimes fall under this head, and
+are therefore available as illustrations of the manner in which
+this principle applies, may be cited carpets and tapestries,
+silver table service, waiter's services, silk hats, starched
+linen, many articles of jewelry and of dress. The
+indispensability of these things after the habit and the
+convention have been formed, however, has little to say in the
+classification of expenditures as waste or not waste in the
+technical meaning of the word. The test to which all expenditure
+must be brought in an attempt to decide that point is the
+questiOn whether it serves directly to enhance human life on the
+whole-whether it furthers the life process taken impersonally.
+For this is the basis of award of the instinct of workmanship,
+and that instinct is the court of final appeal in any question of
+economic truth or adequacy. It is a question as to the award
+rendered by a dispassionate common sense. The question is,
+therefore, not whether, under the existing circumstances of
+individual habit and social custom, a given expenditure conduces
+to the particular consumer's gratification or peace of mind; but
+whether, aside from acquired tastes and from the canons of usage
+and conventional decency, its result is a net gain in comfort or
+in the fullness of life. Customary expenditure must be classed
+under the head of waste in so far as the custom on which it rests
+is traceable to the habit of making an invidious pecuniary
+comparison-in so far as it is conceived that it could not have
+become customary and prescriptive without the backing of this
+principle of pecuniary reputability or relative economic success.
+It is obviously not necessary that a given object of
+expenditure should be exclusively wasteful in order to come in
+under the category of conspicuous waste. An article may be useful
+and wasteful both, aud its utility to the consumer may be made up
+of use and waste in the most varying proportions. Consumable
+goods, and even productive goods, generally show the two elements
+in combination, as constituents of their utility; although, in a
+general way, the element of waste tends to predominate in
+articles of consumption, while the contrary is true of articles
+designed for productive use. Even in articles which appear at
+first glance to serve for pure ostentation only, it is always
+possible to detect the presence of some, at least ostensible,
+useful purpose; and on the other hand, even in special machinery
+and tools contrived for some particular industrial process, as
+well as in the rudest appliances of human industry, the traces of
+conspicuous waste, or at least of the habit of ostentation,
+usually become evident on a close scrutiny. It would be hazardous
+to assert that a useful purpose is ever absent from the utility
+of any article or of any service, however obviously its prime
+purpose and chief element is conspicuous waste; and it would be
+only less hazardous to assert of any primarily useful product
+that the element of waste is in no way concerned in its value,
+immediately or remotely.
+
+Chapter Five
+
+The Pecuniary Standard of Living
+
+For the great body of the people in any modern community, the
+proximate ground of expenditure in excess of what is required for
+physical comfort is not a conscious effort to excel in the
+expensiveness of their visible consumption, so much as it is a
+desire to live up to the conventional standard of decency in the
+amount and grade of goods consumed. This desire is not guided by
+a rigidly invariable standard, which must be lived up to, and
+beyond which there is no incentive to go. The standard is
+flexible; and especially it is indefinitely extensible, if only
+time is allowed for habituation to any increase in pecuniary
+ability and for acquiring facility in the new and larger scale of
+expenditure that follows such an increase. It is much more
+difficult to recede from a scale of expenditure once adopted than
+it is to extend the accustomed scale in response to an accession
+of wealth. Many items of customary expenditure prove on analysis
+to be almost purely wasteful, and they are therefore honorific
+only, but after they have once been incorporated into the scale
+of decent consumption, and so have become an integral part of
+one's scheme of life, it is quite as hard to give up these as it
+is to give up many items that conduce directly to one's physicaL
+comfort, or even that may be necessary to life and health. That
+is to say, the conspicuously wasteful honorific expenditure that
+confers spiritual well-being may become more indispensable than
+much of that expenditure which ministers to the "lower" wants of
+physical well-being or sustenance only. It is notoriously just as
+difficult to recede from a "high" standard of living as it is to
+lower a standard which is already relatively low; although in the
+former case the difficulty is a moral one, while in the latter it
+may involve a material deduction from the physical comforts of
+life.
+
+But while retrogression is difficult, a fresh advance in
+conspicuous expenditure is relatively easy; indeed, it takes
+place almost as a matter of course. In the rare cases where it
+occurs, a failure to increase one's visible consumption when the
+means for an increase are at hand is felt in popular apprehension
+to call for explanation, and unworthy motives of miserliness are
+imputed to those who fall short in this respect. A prompt
+response to the stimulus, on the other hand, is accepted as the
+normal effect. This suggests that the standard of expenditure
+which commonly guides our efforts is not the average, ordinary
+expenditure already achieved; it is an ideal of consumption that
+lies just beyond our reach, or to reach which requires some
+strain. The motive is emulation -- the stimulus of an invidious
+comparison which prompts us to outdo those with whom we are in
+the habit of classing ourselves. Substantially the same
+proposition is expressed in the commonplace remark that each
+class envies and emulates the class next above it in the social
+scale, while it rarely compares itself with those below or with
+those who are considerably in advance. That is to say, in other
+words, our standard of decency in expenditure, as in other ends
+of emulation, is set by the usage of those next above us in
+reputability; until, in this way, especially in any community
+where class distinctions are somewhat vague, all canons of
+reputability and decency, and all standards of consumption, are
+traced back by insensible gradations to the usages and habits of
+thought of the highest social and pecuniary class -- the wealthy
+leisure class.
+
+It is for this class to determine, in general outline, what
+scheme of Life the community shall accept as decent or honorific;
+and it is their office by precept and example to set forth this
+scheme of social salvation in its highest, ideal form. But the
+higher leisure class can exercise this quasi-sacerdotal office
+only under certain material limitations. The class cannot at
+discretion effect a sudden revolution or reversal of the popular
+habits of thought with respect to any of these ceremonial
+requirements. It takes time for any change to permeate the mass
+and change the habitual attitude of the people; and especially it
+takes time to change the habits of those classes that are
+socially more remote from the radiant body. The process is slower
+where the mobility of the population is less or where the
+intervals between the several classes are wider and more abrupt.
+But if time be allowed, the scope of the discretion of the
+leisure class as regards questions of form and detail in the
+community's scheme of life is large; while as regards the
+substantial principles of reputability, the changes which it can
+effect lie within a narrow margin of tolerance. Its example and
+precept carries the force of prescription for all classes below
+it; but in working out the precepts which are handed down as
+governing the form and method of reputability -- in shaping the
+usages and the spiritual attitude of the lower classes -- this
+authoritative prescription constantly works under the selective
+guidance of the canon of conspicuous waste, tempered in varying
+degree by the instinct of workmanship. To those norms is to be
+added another broad principle of human nature -- the predatory
+animus -- which in point of generality and of psychological
+content lies between the two just named. The effect of the latter
+in shaping the accepted scheme of life is yet to be discussed.
+The canon of reputability, then, must adapt itself to the
+economic circumstances, the traditions, and the degree of
+spiritual maturity of the particular class whose scheme of life
+it is to regulate. It is especially to be noted that however high
+its authority and however true to the fundamental requirements of
+reputability it may have been at its inception, a specific formal
+observance can under no circumstances maintain itself in force if
+with the lapse of time or on its transmission to a lower
+pecuniary class it is found to run counter to the ultimate ground
+of decency among civilized peoples, namely, serviceability for
+the purpose of an invidious comparison in pecuniary success.
+It is evident that these canons of expenditure have much to say
+in determining the standard of living for any community and for
+any class. It is no less evident that the standard of living
+which prevails at any time or at any given social altitude will
+in its turn have much to say as to the forms which honorific
+expenditure will take, and as to the degree to which this
+"higher" need will dominate a people's consumption. In this
+respect the control exerted by the accepted standard of living is
+chiefly of a negative character; it acts almost solely to prevent
+recession from a scale of conspicuous expenditure that has once
+become habitual.
+
+A standard of living is of the nature of habit. It is an habitual
+scale and method of responding to given stimuli. The difficulty
+in the way of receding from an accustomed standard is the
+difficulty of breaking a habit that has once been formed. The
+relative facility with which an advance in the standard is made
+means that the life process is a process of unfolding activity
+and that it will readily unfold in a new direction whenever and
+wherever the resistance to self-expression decreases. But when
+the habit of expression along such a given line of low resistance
+has once been formed, the discharge will seek the accustomed
+outlet even after a change has taken place in the environment
+whereby the external resistance has appreciably risen. That
+heightened facility of expression in a given direction which is
+called habit may offset a considerable increase in the resistance
+offered by external circumstances to the unfolding of life in the
+given direction. As between the various habits, or habitual modes
+and directions of expression, which go to make up an individual's
+standard of living, there is an appreciable difference in point
+of persistence under counteracting circumstances and in point of
+the degree of imperativeness with which the discharge seeks a
+given direction.
+
+That is to say, in the language of current economic theory, while
+men are reluctant to retrench their expenditures in any
+direction, they are more reluctant to retrench in some directions
+than in others; so that while any accustomed consumption is
+reluctantly given up, there are certain lines of consumption
+which are given up with relatively extreme reluctance. The
+articles or forms of consumption to which the consumer clings
+with the greatest tenacity are commonly the so-called necessaries
+of life, or the subsistence minimum. The subsistence minimum is
+of course not a rigidly determined allowance of goods, definite
+and invariable in kind and quantity; but for the purpose in hand
+it may be taken to comprise a certain, more or less definite,
+aggregate of consumption required for the maintenance of life.
+This minimum, it may be assumed, is ordinarily given up last in
+case of a progressive retrenchment of expenditure. That is to
+say, in a general way, the most ancient and ingrained of the
+habits which govern the individual's life -- those habits that
+touch his existence as an organism -- are the most persistent and
+imperative. Beyond these come the higher wants -- later-formed
+habits of the individual or the race -- in a somewhat irregular
+and by no means invariable gradation. Some of these higher wants,
+as for instance the habitual use of certain stimulants, or the
+need of salvation (in the eschatological sense), or of good
+repute, may in some cases take precedence of the lower or more
+elementary wants. In general, the longer the habituation, the
+more unbroken the habit, and the more nearly it coincides with
+previous habitual forms of the life process, the more
+persistently will the given habit assert itself. The habit will
+be stronger if the particular traits of human nature which its
+action involves, or the particular aptitudes that find exercise
+in it, are traits or aptitudes that are already largely and
+profoundly concerned in the life process or that are intimately
+bound up with the life history of the particular racial stock.
+The varying degrees of ease with which different habits are
+formed by different persons, as well as the varying degrees of
+reluctance with which different habits are given up, goes to say
+that the formation of specific habits is not a matter of length
+of habituation simply. Inherited aptitudes and traits of
+temperament count for quite as much as length of habituation in
+deciding what range of habits will come to dominate any
+individual's scheme of life. And the prevalent type of
+transmitted aptitudes, or in other words the type of temperament
+belonging to the dominant ethnic element in any community, will
+go far to decide what will be the scope and form of expression of
+the community's habitual life process. How greatly the
+transmitted idiosyncrasies of aptitude may count in the way of a
+rapid and definitive formation of habit in individuals is
+illustrated by the extreme facility with which an all-dominating
+habit of alcoholism is sometimes formed; or in the similar
+facility and the similarly inevitable formation of a habit of
+devout observances in the case of persons gifted with a special
+aptituDe in that direction. Much the same meaning attaches to
+that peculiar facility of habituation to a specific human
+environment that is called romantic love.
+
+Men differ in respect of transmitted aptitudes, or in respect of
+the relative facility with which they unfold their life activity
+in particular directions; and the habits which coincide with or
+proceed upon a relatively strong specific aptitude or a
+relatively great specific facility of expression become of great
+consequence to the man's well-being. The part played by this
+element of aptitude in determining the relative tenacity of the
+several habits which constitute the standard of living goes to
+explain the extreme reluctance with which men give up any
+habitual expenditure in the way of conspicuous
+consumption. The aptitudes or propensities to which a habit of
+this kind is to be referred as its ground are those aptitudes
+whose exercise is comprised in emulation; and the propensity for
+emulation -- for invidious comparison -- is of ancient growth and
+is a pervading trait of human nature. It is easily called into
+vigorous activity in any new form, and it asserts itself with
+great insistence under any form under which it has once found
+habitual expression. When the individual has once formed the
+habit of seeking expression in a given line of honorific
+expenditure -- when a given set of stimuli have come to be
+habitually responded to in activity of a given kind and direction
+under the guidance of these alert and deep-reaching propensities
+of emulation -- it is with extreme reluctance that such an
+habitual expenditure is given up. And on the other hand, whenever
+an accession of pecuniary strength puts the individual in a
+position to unfold his life process in larger scope and with
+additional reach, the ancient propensities of the race will
+assert themselves in determining the direction which the new
+unfolding of life is to take. And those propensities which are
+already actively in the field under some related form of
+expression, which are aided by the pointed suggestions afforded
+by a current accredited scheme of life, and for the exercise of
+which the material means and opportunities are readily available
+-- these will especially have much to say in shaping the form and
+direction in which the new accession to the individual's
+aggregate force will assert itself. That is to say, in concrete
+terms, in any community where conspicuous consumption is an
+element of the scheme of life, an increase in an individual's
+ability to pay is likely to take the form of an expenditure for
+some accredited line of conspicuous consumption.
+
+With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the
+propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert
+and persistent of the economic motives proper. In an industrial
+community this propensity for emulation expresses itself in
+pecuniary emulation; and this, so far as regards the Western
+civilized communities of the present, is virtually equivalent to
+saying that it expresses itself in some form of conspicuous
+waste. The need of conspicuous waste, therefore, stands ready to
+absorb any increase in the community's industrial efficiency or
+output of goods, after the most elementary physical wants have
+been provided for. Where this result does not follow, under
+modern conditions, the reason for the discrepancy is commonly to
+be sought in a rate of increase in the individual's wealth too
+rapid for the habit of expenditure to keep abreast of it; or it
+may be that the individual in question defers the conspicuous
+consumption of the increment to a later date -- ordinarily with a
+view to heightening the spectacular effect of the aggregate
+expenditure contemplated. As increased industrial efficiency
+makes it possible to procure the means of livelihood with less
+labor, the energies of the industrious members of the community
+are bent to the compassing of a higher result in conspicuous
+expenditure, rather than slackened to a more comfortable pace.
+The strain is not lightened as industrial efficiency increases
+and makes a lighter strain possible, but the increment of output
+is turned to use to meet this want, which is indefinitely
+expansible, after the manner commonly imputed in economic theory
+to higher or spiritual wants. It is owing chiefly to the presence
+of this element in the standard of living that J. S. Mill was
+able to say that "hitherto it is questionable if all the
+mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of
+any human being." The accepted standard of expenditure in the
+community or in the class to which a person belongs largely
+determines what his standard of living will be. It does this
+directly by commending itself to his common sense as right and
+good, through his habitually contemplating it and assimilating
+the scheme of life in which it belongs; but it does so also
+indirectly through popular insistence on conformity to the
+accepted scale of expenditure as a matter of propriety, under
+pain of disesteem and ostracism. To accept and practice the
+standard of living which is in vogue is both agreeable and
+expedient, commonly to the point of being indispensable to
+personal comfort and to success in life. The standard of living
+of any class, so far as concerns the element of conspicuous
+waste, is commonly as high as the earning capacity of the class
+will permit -- with a constant tendency to go higher. The effect
+upon the serious activities of men is therefore to direct them
+with great singleness of purpose to the largest possible
+acquisition of wealth, and to discountenance work that brings no
+pecuniary gain. At the same time the effect on consumption is to
+concentrate it upon the lines which are most patent to the
+observers whose good opinion is sought; while the inclinations
+and aptitudes whose exercise does not involve a honorific
+expenditure of time or substance tend to fall into abeyance
+through disuse.
+
+Through this discrimination in favor of visible consumption it
+has come about that the domestic life of most classes is
+relatively shabby, as compared with the éclat of that overt
+portion of their life that is carried on before the eyes of
+observers. As a secondary consequence of the same discrimination,
+people habitually screen their private life from observation. So
+far as concerns that portion of their consumption that may
+without blame be carried on in secret, they withdraw from all
+contact with their neighbors, Hence the exclusiveness of people,
+as regards their domestic life, in most of the industrially
+developed communities; and hence, by remoter derivation, the
+habit of privacy and reserve that is so large a feature in the
+code of proprieties of the better class in all communities. The
+low birthrate of the classes upon whom the requirements of
+reputable expenditure fall with great urgency is likewise
+traceable to the exigencies of a standard of living based on
+conspicuous waste. The conspicuous consumption, and the
+consequent increased expense, required in the reputable
+maintenance of a child is very considerable and acts as a
+powerful deterrent. It is probably the most effectual of the
+Malthusian prudential checks.
+
+ The effect of this factor of the standard of living, both in the
+way of retrenchment in the obscurer elements of consumption that
+go to physical comfort and maintenance, and also in the paucity
+or absence of children, is perhaps seen at its best among the
+classes given to scholarly pursuits. Because of a presumed
+superiority and scarcity of the gifts and attainments that
+characterize their life, these classes are by convention subsumed
+under a higher social grade than their pecuniary grade should
+warrant. The scale of decent expenditure in their case is pitched
+correspondingly high, and it consequently leaves an exceptionally
+narrow margin disposable for the other ends of life. By force of
+circumstances, their habitual sense of what is good and right in
+these matters, as well as the expectations of the community in
+the way of pecuniary decency among the learned, are excessively
+high -- as measured by the prevalent degree of opulence and
+earning capacity of the class, relatively to the non-scholarly
+classes whose social equals they nominally are. In any modern
+community where there is no priestly monopoly of these
+occupations, the people of scholarly pursuits are unavoidably
+thrown into contact with classes that are pecuniarily their
+superiors. The high standard of pecuniary decency in force among
+these superior classes is transfused among the scholarly classes
+with but little mitigation of its rigor; and as a consequence
+there is no class of the community that spends a larger
+proportion of its substance in conspicuous waste than these.  
+Chapter Six
+
+Pecuniary Canons of Taste
+
+The caution has already been repeated more than once, that while
+the regulating norm of consumption is in large part the
+requirement of conspicuous waste, it must not be understood that
+the motive on which the consumer acts in any given case is this
+principle in its bald, unsophisticated form. Ordinarily his
+motive is a wish to conform to established usage, to avoid
+unfavorable notice and comment, to live up to the accepted canons
+of decency in the kind, amount, and grade of goods consumed, as
+well as in the decorous employment of his time and effort. In the
+common run of cases this sense of prescriptive usage is present
+in the motives of the consumer and exerts a direct constraining
+force, especially as regards consumption carried on under the
+eyes of observers. But a considerable element of prescriptive
+expensiveness is observable also in consumption that does not in
+any appreciable degree become known to outsiders -- as, for
+instance, articles of underclothing, some articles of food,
+kitchen utensils, and other household apparatus designed for
+service rather than for evidence. In all such useful articles a
+close scrutiny will discover certain features which add to the
+cost and enhance the commercial value of the goods in question,
+but do not proportionately increase the serviceability of these
+articles for the material purposes which alone they ostensibly
+are designed to serve.
+
+Under the selective surveillance of the law of conspicuous waste
+there grows up a code of accredited canons of consumption, the
+effect of which is to hold the consumer up to a standard of
+expensiveness and wastefulness in his consumption of goods and in
+his employment of time and effort. This growth of prescriptive
+usage has an immediate effect upon economic life, but it has also
+an indirect and remoter effect upon conduct in other respects as
+well. Habits of thought with respect to the expression of life in
+any given direction unavoidably affect the habitual view of what
+is good and right in life in other directions also. In the
+organic complex of habits of thought which make up the substance
+of an individual's conscious life the economic interest does not
+lie isolated and distinct from all other interests. Something,
+for instance, has already been said of its relation to the canons
+of reputability.
+
+The principle of conspicuous waste guides the formation of habits
+of thought as to what is honest and reputable in life and in
+commodities. In so doing, this principle will traverse other
+norms of conduct which do not primarily have to do with the code
+of pecuniary honor, but which have, directly or incidentally, an
+economic significance of some magnitude. So the canon of
+honorific waste may, immediately or remotely, influence the sense
+of duty, the sense of beauty, the sense of utility, the sense of
+devotional or ritualistic fitness, and the scientific sense of
+truth.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to go into a discussion here of the
+particular points at which, or the particular manner in which,
+the canon of honorific expenditure habitually traverses the
+canons of moral conduct. The matter is one which has received
+large attention and illustration at the hands of those whose
+office it is to watch and admonish with respect to any departures
+from the accepted code of morals. In modern communities, where
+the dominant economic and legal feature of the community's life
+is the institution of private property, one of the salient
+features of the code of morals is the sacredness of property.
+There needs no insistence or illustration to gain assent to the
+proposition that the habit of holding private property inviolate
+is traversed by the other habit of seeking wealth for the sake of
+the good repute to be gained through its conspicuous consumption.
+Most offenses against property, especially offenses of an
+appreciable magnitude, come under this head. It is also a matter
+of common notoriety and byword that in offenses which result in a
+large accession of property to the offender he does not
+ordinarily incur the extreme penalty or the extreme obloquy with
+which his offenses would he visited on the ground of the naive
+moral code alone. The thief or swindler who has gained great
+wealth by his delinquency has a better chance than the small
+thief of escaping the rigorous penalty of the law and some good
+repute accrues to him from his increased wealth and from his
+spending the irregularly acquired possessions in a seemly manner.
+A well-bred expenditure of his booty especially appeals with
+great effect to persons of a cultivated sense of the proprieties,
+and goes far to mitigate the sense of moral turpitude with which
+his dereliction is viewed by them. It may be noted also -- and it
+is more immediately to the point -- that we are all inclined to
+condone an offense against property in the case of a man whose
+motive is the worthy one of providing the means of a "decent"
+manner of life for his wife and children. If it is added that the
+wife has been "nurtured in the lap of luxury," that is accepted
+as an additional extenuating circumstance. That is to say, we are
+prone to condone such an offense where its aim is the honorific
+one of enabling the offender's wife to perform for him such an
+amount of vicarious consumption of time and substance as is
+demanded by the standard of pecuniary decency. In such a case the
+habit of approving the accustomed degree of conspicuous waste
+traverses the habit of deprecating violations of ownership, to
+the extent even of sometimes leaving the award of praise or blame
+uncertain. This is peculiarly true where the dereliction involves
+an appreciable predatory or piratical element.
+
+This topic need scarcely be pursued further here; but the remark
+may not be out of place that all that considerable body of morals
+that clusters about the concept of an inviolable ownership is
+itself a psychological precipitate of the traditional
+meritoriousness of wealth. And it should be added that this
+wealth which is held sacred is valued primarily for the sake of
+the good repute to be got through its conspicuous consumption.
+The bearing of pecuniary decency upon the scientific spirit or
+the quest of knowledge will he taken up in some detail in a
+separate chapter. Also as regards the sense of devout or ritual
+merit and adequacy in this connection, little need be said in
+this place. That topic will also come up incidentally in a later
+chapter. Still, this usage of honorific expenditure has much to
+say in shaping popular tastes as to what is right and meritorious
+in sacred matters, and the bearing of the principle of
+conspicuous waste upon some of the commonplace devout observances
+and conceits may therefore be pointed out.
+
+Obviously, the canon of conspicuous waste is accountable for a
+great portion of what may be called devout consumption; as, e.g.,
+the consumption of sacred edifices, vestments, and other goods of
+the same class. Even in those modern cults to whose divinities is
+imputed a predilection for temples not built with hands, the
+sacred buildings and the other properties of the cult are
+constructed and decorated with some view to a reputable degree of
+wasteful expenditure. And it needs but little either of
+observation or introspection -- and either will serve the turn --
+to assure us that the expensive splendor of the house of worship
+has an appreciable uplifting and mellowing effect upon the
+worshipper's frame of mind. It will serve to enforce the same
+fact if we reflect upon the sense of abject shamefulness with
+which any evidence of indigence or squalor about the sacred place
+affects all beholders. The accessories of any devout observance
+should be pecuniarily above reproach. This requirement is
+imperative, whatever latitude may be allowed with regard to these
+accessories in point of aesthetic or other serviceability.
+It may also be in place to notice that in all communities,
+especially in neighborhoods where the standard of pecuniary
+decency for dwellings is not high, the local sanctuary is more
+ornate, more conspicuously wasteful in its architecture and
+decoration, than the dwelling houses of the congregation. This is
+true of nearly all denominations and cults, whether Christian or
+Pagan, but it is true in a peculiar degree of the older and
+maturer cults. At the same time the sanctuary commonly
+contributes little if anything to the physical comfort of the
+members. Indeed, the sacred structure not only serves the
+physical well-being of the members to but a slight extent, as
+compared with their humbler dwelling-houses; but it is felt by
+all men that a right and enlightened sense of the true, the
+beautiful, and the good demands that in all expenditure on the
+sanctuary anything that might serve the comfort of the worshipper
+should be conspicuously absent. If any element of comfort is
+admitted in the fittings of the sanctuary, it should be at least
+scrupulously screened and masked under an ostensible austerity.
+In the most reputable latter-day houses of worship, where no
+expense is spared, the principle of austerity is carried to the
+length of making the fittings of the place a means of mortifying
+the flesh, especially in appearance. There are few persons of
+delicate tastes, in the matter of devout consumption to whom this
+austerely wasteful discomfort does not appeal as intrinsically
+right and good. Devout consumption is of the nature of vicarious
+consumption. This canon of devout austerity is based on the
+pecuniary reputability of conspicuously wasteful consumption,
+backed by the principle that vicarious consumption should
+conspicuously not conduce to the comfort of the vicarious
+consumer.
+
+The sanctuary and its fittings have something of this austerity
+in all the cults in which the saint or divinity to whom the
+sanctuary pertains is not conceived to be present and make
+personal use of the property for the gratification of luxurious
+tastes imputed to him. The character of the sacred paraphernalia
+is somewhat different in this respect in those cults where the
+habits of life imputed to the divinity more nearly approach those
+of an earthly patriarchal potentate -- where he is conceived to
+make use of these consumable goods in person. In the latter case
+the sanctuary and its fittings take on more of the fashion given
+to goods destined for the conspicuous consumption of a temporal
+master or owner. On the other hand, where the sacred apparatus is
+simply employed in the divinity's service, that is to say, where
+it is consumed vicariously on his account by his servants, there
+the sacred properties take the character suited to goods that are
+destined for vicarious consumption only.
+
+In the latter case the sanctuary and the sacred apparatus are so
+contrived as not to enhance the comfort or fullness of life of
+the vicarious consumer, or at any rate not to convey the
+impression that the end of their consumption is the consumer's
+comfort. For the end of vicarious consumption is to enhance, not
+the fullness of life of the consumer, but the pecuniary repute of
+the master for whose behoof the consumption takes place.
+Therefore priestly vestments are notoriously expensive, ornate,
+and inconvenient; and in the cults where the priestly servitor of
+the divinity is not conceived to serve him in the capacity of
+consort, they are of an austere, comfortless fashion. And such it
+is felt that they should be.
+
+It is not only in establishing a devout standard of decent
+expensiveness that the principle of waste invades the domain of
+the canons of ritual serviceability. It touches the ways as well
+as the means, and draws on vicarious leisure as well as on
+vicarious consumption. Priestly demeanor at its best is aloof,
+leisurely, perfunctory, and uncontaminated with suggestions of
+sensuOus pleasure. This holds true, in different degrees of
+course, for the different cults and denominations; but in the
+priestly life of all anthropomorphic cults the marks of a
+vicarious consumption of time are visible.
+
+The same pervading canon of vicarious leisure is also visibly
+present in the exterior details of devout observances and need
+only be pointed out in order to become obvious to all beholders.
+All ritual has a notable tendency to reduce itself to a rehearsal
+of formulas. This development of formula is most noticeable in
+the maturer cults, which have at the same time a more austere,
+ornate, and severe priestly life and garb; but it is perceptible
+also in the forms and methods of worship of the newer and fresher
+sects, whose tastes in respect of priests, vestments, and
+sanctuaries are less exacting. The rehearsal of the service (the
+term "service" carries a suggestion significant for the point in
+question) grows more perfunctory as the cult gains in age and
+consistency, and this perfunctoriness of the rehearsal is very
+pleasing to the correct devout taste. And with a good reason, for
+the fact of its being perfunctory goes to say pointedly that the
+master for whom it is performed is exalted above the vulgar need
+of actually proficuous service on the part of his servants. They
+are unprofitable servants, and there is an honorific implication
+for their master in their remaining
+unprofitable. It is needless to point out the close analogy at
+this point between the priestly office and the office of the
+footman. It is pleasing to our sense of what is fitting in these
+matters, in either case, to recognize in the obvious
+perfunctoriness of the service that it is a pro forma execution
+only. There should be no show of agility or of dexterous
+manipulation in the execution of the priestly office, such as
+might suggest a capacity for turning off the work.
+
+In all this there is of course an obvious implication as to the
+temperament, tastes, propensities, and habits of life imputed to
+the divinity by worshippers who live under the tradition of these
+pecuniary canons of reputability. Through its pervading men's
+habits of thought, the principle of conspicuous waste has colored
+the worshippers' notions of the divinity and of the relation in
+which the human subject stands to him. It is of course in the
+more naive cults that this suffusion of pecuniary beauty is most
+patent, but it is visible throughout. All peoples, at whatever
+stage of culture or degree of enlightenment, are fain to eke out
+a sensibly scant degree of authentic formation
+regarding the personality and habitual surroundings of their
+divinities. In so calling in the aid of fancy to enrich and fill
+in their picture of the divinity's presence and manner of life
+they habitually impute to him such traits as go to make up their
+ideal of a worthy man. And in seeking communion with the divinity
+the ways and means of approach are assimilated as nearly as may
+be to the divine ideal that is in men's minds at the time. It is
+felt that the divine presence is entered with the best grace, and
+with the best effect, according to certain accepted methods and
+with the accompaniment of certain material circumstances which in
+popular apprehension are peculiarly consonant with the divine
+nature. This popularly accepted ideal of the bearing and
+paraphernalia adequate to such occasions of communion is, of
+course, to a good extent shaped by the popular apprehension of
+what is intrinsically worthy and beautiful in human carriage and
+surroundings on all occasions of dignified intercourse. It would
+on this account be misleading to attempt an analysis of devout
+demeanor by referring all evidences of the presence of a
+pecuniary standard of reputability back directly and baldly to
+the underlying norm of pecuniary emulation. So it would also be
+misleading to ascribe to the divinity, as popularly conceived, a
+jealous regard for his pecuniary standing and a habit of avoiding
+and condemning squalid situations and surroundings simply because
+they are under grade in the pecuniary respect.
+
+And still, after all allowance has been made, it appears that the
+canons of pecuniary reputability do, directly or
+indirectly, materially affect our notions of the attributes of
+divinity, as well as our notions of what are the fit and adequate
+manner and circumstances of divine communion. It is felt that the
+divinity must be of a peculiarly serene and leisurely habit of
+life. And whenever his local habitation is pictured in poetic
+imagery, for edification or in appeal to the devout fancy, the
+devout word-painter, as a matter of course, brings out before his
+auditors' imagination a throne with a profusion of the insignia
+of opulence and power, and surrounded by a great number of
+servitors. In the common run of such presentations of the
+celestial abodes, the office of this corps of servants is a
+vicarious leisure, their time and efforts being in great measure
+taken up with an industrially unproductive rehearsal of the
+meritorious characteristics and exploits of the divinity; while
+the background of the presentation is filled with the shimmer of
+the precious metals and of the more expensive varieties of
+precious stones. It is only in the crasser expressions of devout
+fancy that this intrusion of pecuniary canons into the devout
+ideals reaches such an extreme. An extreme case occurs in the
+devout imagery of the Negro population of the South. Their
+word-painters are unable to descend to anything cheaper than
+gold; so that in this case the insistence on pecuniary beauty
+gives a startling effect in yellow -- such as would be unbearable
+to a soberer taste. Still, there is probably no cult in which
+ideals of pecuniary merit have not been called in to supplement
+the ideals of ceremonial adequacy that guide men's conception of
+what is right in the matter of sacred apparatus.
+
+Similarly it is felt -- and the sentiment is acted upon -- that
+the priestly servitors of the divinity should not engage in
+industrially productive work; that work of any kind -- any
+employment which is of tangible human use -- must not be carried
+on in the divine presence, or within the precincts of the
+sanctuary; that whoever comes into the presence should come
+cleansed of all profane industrial features in his apparel or
+person, and should come clad in garments of more than everyday
+expensiveness; that on holidays set apart in honor of or for
+communion with the divinity no work that is of human use should
+be performed by any one. Even the remoter, lay dependents should
+render a vicarious leisure to the extent of one day in seven.
+In all these deliverances of men's uninstructed sense of what is
+fit and proper in devout observance and in the relations of the
+divinity, the effectual presence of the canons of
+pecuniary reputability is obvious enough, whether these canons
+have had their effect on the devout judgment in this respect
+immediately or at the second remove.
+
+These canons of reputability have had a similar, but more
+far-reaching and more specifically determinable, effect upon the
+popular sense of beauty or serviceability in consumable goods.
+The requirements of pecuniary decency have, to a very appreciable
+extent, influenced the sense of beauty and of utility in articles
+of use or beauty. Articles are to an extent preferred for use on
+account of their being conspicuously wasteful; they are felt to
+be serviceable somewhat in proportion as they are wasteful and
+ill adapted to their ostensible use.
+
+The utility of articles valued for their beauty depends closely
+upon the expensiveness of the articles. A homely
+illustration will bring out this dependence. A hand-wrought
+silver spoon, of a commercial value of some ten to twenty
+dollars, is not ordinarily more serviceable -- in the first sense
+of the word -- than a machine-made spoon of the same material. It
+may not even be more serviceable than a machine-made spoon of
+some "base" metal, such as aluminum, the value of which may be no
+more than some ten to twenty cents. The former of the two
+utensils is, in fact, commonly a less effective contrivance for
+its ostensible purpose than the latter. The objection is of
+course ready to hand that, in taking this view of the matter, one
+of the chief uses, if not the chief use, of the costlier spoon is
+ignored; the hand-wrought spoon gratifies our taste, our sense of
+the beautiful, while that made by machinery out of the base metal
+has no useful office beyond a brute efficiency. The facts are no
+doubt as the objection states them, but it will be evident on
+reJection that the objection is after all more plausible than
+conclusive. It appears (1) that while the different materials of
+which the two spoons are made each possesses beauty and
+serviceability for the purpose for which it is used, the material
+of the hand-wrought spoon is some one hundred times more valuable
+than the baser metal, without very greatly excelling the latter
+in intrinsic beauty of grain or color, and without being in any
+appreciable degree superior in point of mechanical
+serviceability; (2) if a close inspection should show that the
+supposed hand-wrought spoon were in reality only a very clever
+citation of hand-wrought goods, but an imitation so cleverly
+wrought as to give the same impression of line and surface to any
+but a minute examination by a trained eye, the utility of the
+article, including the gratification which the user derives from
+its contemplation as an object of beauty, would immediately
+decline by some eighty or ninety per cent, or even more; (3) if
+the two spoons are, to a fairly close observer, so nearly
+identical in appearance that the lighter weight of the spurious
+article alone betrays it, this identity of form and color will
+scarcely add to the value of the machine-made spoon, nor
+appreciably enhance the gratification of the user's "sense of
+beauty" in contemplating it, so long as the cheaper spoon is not
+a novelty, ad so long as it can be procured at a nominal cost.
+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. The question is further
+complicated by the fact that many objects, as, for instance, the
+precious stones and the metals and some other materials used for
+adornment and decoration, owe their utility as items of
+conspicuous waste to an antecedent utility as objects of beauty.
+Gold, for instance, has a high degree of sensuous beauty very
+many if not most of the highly prized works of art are
+intrinsically beautiful, though often with material
+qualification; the like is true of some stuffs used for clothing,
+of some landscapes, and of many other things in less degree.
+Except for this intrinsic beauty which they possess, these
+objects would scarcely have been coveted as they are, or have
+become monopolized objects of pride to their possessors and
+users. But the utility of these things to the possessor is
+commonly due less to their intrinsic beauty than to the honor
+which their possession and consumption confers, or to the obloquy
+which it wards off.
+
+Apart from their serviceability in other respects, these objects
+are beautiful and have a utility as such; they are valuable on
+this account if they can be appropriated or
+monopolized; they are, therefore, coveted as valuable
+possessions, and their exclusive enjoyment gratifies the
+possessor's sense of pecuniary superiority at the same time that
+their contemplation gratifies his sense of beauty. But their
+beauty, in the naive sense of the word, is the occasion rather
+than the ground of their monopolization or of their commercial
+value. "Great as is the sensuous beauty of gems, their rarity and
+price adds an expression of distinction to them, which they would
+never have if they were cheap." There is, indeed, in the common
+run of cases under this head, relatively little incentive to the
+exclusive possession and use of these beautiful things, except on
+the ground of their honorific character as items of conspicuous
+waste. Most objects of this general class, with the partial
+exception of articles of personal adornment, would serve all
+other purposes than the honorific one equally well, whether owned
+by the person viewing them or not; and even as regards personal
+ornaments it is to be added that their chief purpose is to lend
+áéáclat to the person of their wearer (or owner) by comparison
+with other persons who are compelled to do without. The aesthetic
+serviceability of objects of beauty is not greatly nor
+universally heightened by possession.
+
+The generalization for which the discussion so far affords ground
+is that any valuable object in order to appeal to our sense of
+beauty must conform to the requirements of beauty and of
+expensiveness both. But this is not all. Beyond this the canon of
+expensiveness also affects our tastes in such a way as to
+inextricably blend the marks of expensiveness, in our
+appreciation, with the beautiful features of the object, and to
+subsume the resultant effect under the head of an appreciation of
+beauty simply. The marks of expensiveness come to be accepted as
+beautiful features of the expensive articles. They are pleasing
+as being marks of honorific costliness, and the pleasure which
+they afford on this score blends with that afforded by the
+beautiful form and color of the object; so that we often declare
+that an article of apparel, for instance, is "perfectly lovely,"
+when pretty much all that an analysis of the aesthetic value of
+the article would leave ground for is the declaration that it is
+pecuniarily honorific.
+
+This blending and confusion of the elements of expensiveness and
+of beauty is, perhaps, best exemplified in articles of dress and
+of household furniture. The code of reputability in matters of
+dress decides what shapes, colors, materials, and general effects
+in human apparel are for the time to be accepted as suitable; and
+departures from the code are offensive to our taste, supposedly
+as being departures from aesthetic truth. The approval with which
+we look upon fashionable attire is by no means to be accounted
+pure make-believe. We readily, and for the most part with utter
+sincerity, find those things pleasing that are in vogue. Shaggy
+dress-stuffs and pronounced color effects, for instance, offend
+us at times when the vogue is goods of a high, glossy finish and
+neutral colors. A fancy bonnet of this year's model
+unquestionably appeals to our sensibilities today much more
+forcibly than an equally fancy bonnet of the model of last year;
+although when viewed in the perspective of a quarter of a
+century, it would, I apprehend, be a matter of the utmost
+difficulty to award the palm for intrinsic beauty to the one
+rather than to the other of these structures. So, again, it may
+be remarked that, considered simply in their physical
+juxtaposition with the human form, the high gloss of a
+gentleman's hat or of a patent-leather shoe has no more of
+intrinsic beauty than a similiarly high gloss on a threadbare
+sleeve; and yet there is no question but that all well-bred
+people (in the Occidental civilized communities) instinctively
+and unaffectedly cleave to the one as a phenomenon of great
+beauty, and eschew the other as offensive to every sense to which
+it can appeal. It is extremely doubtful if any one could be
+induced to wear such a contrivance as the high hat of civilized
+society, except for some urgent reason based on other than
+aesthetic grounds.
+
+By further habituation to an appreciative perception of the marks
+of expensiveness in goods, and by habitually identifying beauty
+with reputability, it comes about that a beautiful article which
+is not expensive is accounted not beautiful. In this way it has
+happened, for instance, that some beautiful flowers pass
+conventionally for offensive weeds; others that can be cultivated
+with relative ease are accepted and admired by the lower middle
+class, who can afford no more expensive luxuries of this kind;
+but these varieties are rejected as vulgar by those people who
+are better able to pay for expensive flowers and who are educated
+to a higher schedule of pecuniary beauty in the florist's
+products; while still other flowers, of no greater intrinsic
+beauty than these, are cultivated at great cost and call out much
+admiration from flower-lovers whose tastes have been matured
+under the critical guidance of a polite environment.
+
+The same variation in matters of taste, from one class of society
+to another, is visible also as regards many other kinds of
+consumable goods, as, for example, is the case with furniture,
+houses, parks, and gardens. This diversity of views as to what is
+beautiful in these various classes of goods is not a diversity of
+the norm according to which the unsophisticated sense of the
+beautiful works. It is not a constitutional difference of
+endowments in the aesthetic respect, but rather a difference in
+the code of reputability which specifies what objects properly
+lie within the scope of honorific consumption for the class to
+which the critic belongs. It is a difference in the traditions of
+propriety with respect to the kinds of things which may, without
+derogation to the consumer, be consumed under the head of objects
+of taste and art. With a certain allowance for variations to be
+accounted for on other grounds, these traditions are determined,
+more or less rigidly, by the pecuniary plane of life of the
+class.
+
+Everyday life affords many curious illustrations of the way in
+which the code of pecuniary beauty in articles of use varies from
+class to class, as well as of the way in which the
+conventional sense of beauty departs in its deliverances from the
+sense untutored by the requirements of pecuniary repute. Such a
+fact is the lawn, or the close-cropped yard or park, which
+appeals so unaffectedly to the taste of the Western peoples. It
+appears especially to appeal to the tastes of the well-to-do
+classes in those communities in which the dolicho-blond element
+predominates in an appreciable degree. The lawn unquestionably
+has an element of sensuous beauty, simply as an object of
+apperception, and as such no doubt it appeals pretty directly to
+the eye of nearly all races and all classes; but it is, perhaps,
+more unquestionably beautiful to the eye of the dolicho-blond
+than to most other varieties of men. This higher appreciation of
+a stretch of greensward in this ethnic element than in the other
+elements of the population, goes along with certain other
+features of the dolicho-blond temperament that indicate that this
+racial element had once been for a long time a pastoral people
+inhabiting a region with a humid climate. The close-cropped lawn
+is beautiful in the eyes of a people whose inherited bent it is
+to readily find pleasure in contemplating a well-preserved
+pasture or grazing land.
+
+For the aesthetic purpose the lawn is a cow pasture; and in some
+cases today -- where the expensiveness of the attendant
+circumstances bars out any imputation of thrift -- the idyl of
+the dolicho-blond is rehabilitated in the introduction of a cow
+into a lawn or private ground. In such cases the cow made use of
+is commonly of an expensive breed. The vulgar suggestion of
+thrift, which is nearly inseparable from the cow, is a standing
+objection to the decorative use of this animal. So that in all
+cases, except where luxurious surroundings negate this
+suggestion, the use of the cow as an object of taste must be
+avoided. Where the predilection for some grazing animal to fill
+out the suggestion of the pasture is too strong to be suppressed,
+the cow's place is often given to some more or less inadequate
+substitute, such as deer, antelopes, or some such exotic beast.
+These substitutes, although less beautiful to the pastoral eye of
+Western man than the cow, are in such cases preferred because of
+their superior expensiveness or futility, and their consequent
+repute. They are not vulgarly lucrative either in fact or in
+suggestion.
+
+Public parks of course fall in the same category with the lawn;
+they too, at their best, are imitations of the pasture. Such a
+park is of course best kept by grazing, and the cattle on the
+grass are themselves no mean addition to the beauty of the thing,
+as need scarcely be insisted on with anyone who has once seen a
+well-kept pasture. But it is worth noting, as an
+expression of the pecuniary element in popular taste, that such a
+method of keeping public grounds is seldom resorted to. The best
+that is done by skilled workmen under the supervision of a
+trained keeper is a more or less close imitation of a pasture,
+but the result invariably falls somewhat short of the artistic
+effect of grazing. But to the average popular apprehension a herd
+of cattle so pointedly suggests thrift and usefulness that their
+presence in the public pleasure ground would be intolerably
+cheap. This method of keeping grounds is comparatively
+inexpensive, therefore it is indecorous.
+
+Of the same general bearing is another feature of public grounds.
+There is a studious exhibition of expensiveness coupled with a
+make-believe of simplicity and crude serviceability. Private
+grounds also show the same physiognomy wherever they are in the
+management or ownership of persons whose tastes have been formed
+under middle-class habits of life or under the upper-class
+traditions of no later a date than the childhood of the
+generation that is now passing. Grounds which conform to the
+instructed tastes of the latter-day upper class do not show these
+features in so marked a degree. The reason for this difference in
+tastes between the past and the incoming generation of the
+well-bred lies in the changing economic situation. A similar
+difference is perceptible in other respects, as well as in the
+accepted ideals of pleasure grounds. In this country as in most
+others, until the last half century but a very small proportion
+of the population were possessed of such wealth as would exempt
+them from thrift. Owing to imperfect means of communication, this
+small fraction were scattered and out of effective touch with one
+another. There was therefore no basis for a growth of taste in
+disregard of expensiveness. The revolt of the well-bred taste
+against vulgar thrift was unchecked. Wherever the unsophisticated
+sense of beauty might show itself sporadically in an approval of
+inexpensive or thrifty surroundings, it would lack the "social
+confirmation" which nothing but a considerable body of
+like-minded people can give. There was, therefore, no effective
+upper-class opinion that would overlook evidences of possible
+inexpensiveness in the management of grounds; and there was
+consequently no appreciable divergence between the leisure-class
+and the lower middle-class ideal in the physiognomy of pleasure
+grounds. Both classes equally constructed their ideals with the
+fear of pecuniary disrepute before their eyes.
+
+Today a divergence in ideals is beginning to be apparent. The
+portion of the leisure class that has been consistently exempt
+from work and from pecuniary cares for a generation or more is
+now large enough to form and sustain opinion in matters of taste.
+increased mobility of the members has also added to the facility
+with which a "social confirmation" can be attained within the
+class. Within this select class the exemption from thrift is a
+matter so commonplace as to have lost much of its utility as a
+basis of pecuniary decency. Therefore the latter-day upper-class
+canons of taste do not so consistently insist on an unremitting
+demonstration of expensiveness and a strict exclusion of the
+appearance of thrift. So, a predilection for the rustic and the
+"natural" in parks and grounds makes its appearance on these
+higher social and intellectual levels. This predilection is in
+large part an outcropping of the instinct of workmanship; and it
+works out its results with varying degrees of consistency. It is
+seldom altogether unaffected, and at times it shades off into
+something not widely different from that make-believe of
+rusticity which has been referred to above.
+
+A weakness for crudely serviceable contrivances that
+pointedly suggest immediate and wasteless use is present even in
+the middle-class tastes; but it is there kept well in hand under
+the unbroken dominance of the canon of reputable futility.
+Consequently it works out in a variety of ways and means for
+shamming serviceability -- in such contrivances as rustic fences,
+bridges, bowers, pavilions, and the like decorative features. An
+expression of this affectation of serviceability, at what is
+perhaps its widest divergence from the first promptings of the
+sense of economic beauty, is afforded by the cast-iron rustic
+fence and trellis or by a circuitous drive laid across level
+ground.
+
+The select leisure class has outgrown the use of these
+pseudo-serviceable variants of pecuniary beauty, at least at some
+points. But the taste of the more recent accessions to the
+leisure class proper and of the middle and lower classes still
+requires a pecuniary beauty to supplement the aesthetic beauty,
+even in those objects which are primarily admired for the beauty
+that belongs to them as natural growths.
+
+The popular taste in these matters is to be seen in the prevalent
+high appreciation of topiary work and of the
+conventional flower-beds of public grounds. Perhaps as happy an
+illustration as may be had of this dominance of pecuniary beauty
+over aesthetic beauty in middle-class tastes is seen in the
+reconstruction of the grounds lately occupied by the Columbian
+Exposition. The evidence goes to show that the requirement of
+reputable expensiveness is still present in good vigor even where
+all ostensibly lavish display is avoided. The artistic effects
+actually wrought in this work of reconstruction diverge somewhat
+widely from the effect to which the same ground would have lent
+itself in hands not guided by pecuniary canons of taste. And even
+the better class of the city's population view the progress of
+the work with an unreserved approval which suggests that there is
+in this case little if any discrepancy between the tastes of the
+upper and the lower or middle classes of the city. The sense of
+beauty in the population of this representative city of the
+advanced pecuniary culture is very chary of any departure from
+its great cultural principle of conspicuous waste.
+
+The love of nature, perhaps itself borrowed from a
+higher-class code of taste, sometimes expresses itself in
+unexpected ways under the guidance of this canon of pecuniary
+beauty, and leads to results that may seem incongruous to an
+unreflecting beholder. The well-accepted practice of planting
+trees in the treeless areas of this country, for instance, has
+been carried over as an item of honorific expenditure into the
+heavily wooded areas; so that it is by no means unusual for a
+village or a farmer in the wooded country to clear the land of
+its native trees and immediately replant saplings of certain
+introduced varieties about the farmyard or along the streets. In
+this way a forest growth of oak, elm, beech, butternut, hemlock,
+basswood, and birch is cleared off to give room for saplings of
+soft maple, cottonwood, and brittle willow. It is felt that the
+inexpensiveness of leaving the forest trees standing would
+derogate from the dignity that should invest an article which is
+intended to serve a decorative and honorific end.
+
+The like pervading guidance of taste by pecuniary repute is
+traceable in the prevalent standards of beauty in animals. The
+part played by this canon of taste in assigning her place in the
+popular aesthetic scale to the cow has already been spokes of.
+Something to the same effect is true of the other domestic
+animals, so far as they are in an appreciable degree industrially
+useful to the community -- as, for instance, barnyard fowl, hogs,
+cattle, sheep, goats, draught-horses. 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.
+The cat is less reputable than the other two just named, because
+she is less wasteful; she may eves serve a useful end. At the
+same time the cat's temperament does not fit her for the
+honorific purpose. She lives with man on terms of equality, knows
+nothing of that relation of status which is the ancient basis of
+all distinctions of worth, honor, and repute, and she does not
+lend herself with facility to an invidious comparison between her
+owner and his neighbors. The exception to this last rule occurs
+in the case of such scarce and fanciful products as the Angora
+cat, which have some slight honorific value on the ground of
+expensiveness, and have, therefore, some special claim to beauty
+on pecuniary grounds.
+
+The dog has advantages in the way of uselessness as well as in
+special gifts of temperament. He is often spoken of, in an
+eminent sense, as the friend of man, and his intelligence and
+fidelity are praised. The meaning of this is that the dog is
+man's servant and that he has the gift of an unquestioning
+subservience and a slave's quickness in guessing his master's
+mood. Coupled with these traits, which fit him well for the
+relation of status -- and which must for the present purpose be
+set down as serviceable traits -- the dog has some
+characteristics which are of a more equivocal aesthetic value. He
+is the filthiest of the domestic animals in his person and the
+nastiest in his habits. For this he makes up is a servile,
+fawning attitude towards his master, and a readiness to inflict
+damage and discomfort on all else. The dog, then, commends
+himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for
+mastery, and as he is also an item of expense, and commonly
+serves no industrial purpose, he holds a well-assured place in
+men's regard as a thing of good repute. The dog is at the same
+time associated in our imagination with the chase -- a
+meritorious employment and an expression of the honorable
+predatory impulse. Standing on this vantage ground, whatever
+beauty of form and motion and whatever commendable mental traits
+he may possess are conventionally acknowledged and magnified. And
+even those varieties of the dog which have been bred into
+grotesque deformity by the dog-fancier are in good faith
+accounted beautiful by many. These varieties of dogs -- and the
+like is true of other fancy-bred animals -- are rated and graded
+in aesthetic value somewhat in proportion to the degree of
+grotesqueness and instability of the particular fashion which the
+deformity takes in the given case. For the purpose in hand, this
+differential utility on the ground of grotesqueness and
+instability of structure is reducible to terms of a greater
+scarcity and consequent expense. The commercial value of canine
+monstrosities, such as the prevailing styles of pet dogs both for
+men's and women's use, rests on their high cost of production,
+and their value to their owners lies chiefly in their utility as
+items of conspicuous consumption. In directly, through reflection
+Upon their honorific expensiveness, a social worth is imputed to
+them; and so, by an easy substitution of words and ideas, they
+come to be admired and reputed beautiful. Since any attention
+bestowed upon these animals is in no sense gainful or useful, it
+is also reputable; and since the habit of giving them attention
+is consequently not deprecated, it may grow into an habitual
+attachment of great tenacity and of a most benevolent character.
+So that in the affection bestowed on pet animals the canon of
+expensiveness is present more or less remotely as a norm which
+guides and shapes the sentiment and the selection of its object.
+The like is true, as will be noticed presently, with respect to
+affection for persons also; although the manner in which the norm
+acts in that case is somewhat different.
+
+The case of the fast horse is much like that of the dog. He is on
+the whole expensive, or wasteful and useless -- for the
+industrial purpose. What productive use he may possess, in the
+way of enhancing the well-being of the community or making the
+way of life easier for men, takes the form of exhibitions of
+force and facility of motion that gratify the popular aesthetic
+sense. This is of course a substantial serviceability. The horse
+is not endowed with the spiritual aptitude for servile dependence
+in the same measure as the dog; but he ministers effectually to
+his master's impulse to convert the "animate" forces of the
+environment to his own use and discretion and so express his own
+dominating individuality through them. The fast horse is at least
+potentially a race-horse, of high or low degree; and it is as
+such that he is peculiarly serviceable to his owner. The utility
+of the fast horse lies largely in his efficiency as a means of
+emulation; it gratifies the owner's sense of aggression and
+dominance to have his own horse outstrip his neighbor's. This use
+being not lucrative, but on the whole pretty consistently
+wasteful, and quite conspicuously so, it is honorific, and
+therefore gives the fast horse a strong presumptive position of
+reputability. Beyond this, the race-horse proper has also a
+similarly non-industrial but honorific use as a gambling
+instrument.
+
+The fast horse, then, is aesthetically fortunate, in that the
+canon of pecuniary good repute legitimates a free
+appreciation of whatever beauty or serviceability he may possess.
+His pretensions have the countenance of the principle of
+conspicuous waste and the backing of the predatory aptitude for
+dominance and emulation. The horse is, moreover, a beautiful
+animal, although the race-horse is so in no peculiar degree to
+the uninstructed taste of those persons who belong neither in the
+class of race-horse fanciers nor in the class whose sense of
+beauty is held in abeyance by the moral constraint of the horse
+fancier's award. To this untutored taste the most beautiful horse
+seems to be a form which has suffered less radical alteration
+than the race-horse under the breeder's selective development of
+the animal. Still, when a writer or speaker -- especially of
+those whose eloquence is most consistently commonplace wants an
+illustration of animal grace and serviceability, for rhetorical
+use, he habitually turns to the horse; and he commonly makes it
+plain before he is done that what he has in mind is the
+race-horse.
+
+It should be noted that in the graduated appreciation of
+varieties of horses and of dogs, such as one meets with among
+people of even moderately cultivated tastes in these matters,
+there is also discernible another and more direct line of
+influence of the leisure-class canons of reputability. In this
+country, for instance, leisure-class tastes are to some extent
+shaped on usages and habits which prevail, or which are
+apprehended to prevail, among the leisure class of Great Britain.
+In dogs this is true to a less extent than in horses. In horses,
+more particularly in saddle horses -- which at their best serve
+the purpose of wasteful display simply -- it will hold true in a
+general way that a horse is more beautiful in proportion as he is
+more English; the English leisure class being, for purposes of
+reputable usage, the upper leisure class of this country, and so
+the exemplar for the lower grades. This mimicry in the methods of
+the apperception of beauty and in the forming of judgments of
+taste need not result in a spurious, or at any rate not a
+hypocritical or affected, predilection. The predilection is as
+serious and as substantial an award of taste when it rests on
+this basis as when it rests on any other, the difference is that
+this taste is and as substantial an award of taste when it rests
+on this basis as when it rests on any other; the difference is
+that this taste is a taste for the reputably correct, not for the
+aesthetically true.
+
+The mimicry, it should be said, extends further than to the sense
+of beauty in horseflesh simply. It includes trappings and
+horsemanship as well, so that the correct or reputably beautiful
+seat or posture is also decided by English usage, as well as the
+equestrian gait. To show how fortuitous may sometimes be the
+circumstances which decide what shall be becoming and what not
+under the pecuniary canon of beauty, it may be noted that this
+English seat, and the peculiarly distressing gait which has made
+an awkward seat necessary, are a survival from the time when the
+English roads were so bad with mire and mud as to be virtually
+impassable for a horse travelling at a more comfortable gait; so
+that a person of decorous tastes in horsemanship today rides a
+punch with docked tail, in an uncomfortable posture and at a
+distressing gait, because the English roads during a great part
+of the last century were impassable for a horse travelling at a
+more horse-like gait, or for an animal built for moving with ease
+over the firm and open country to which the horse is indigenous.
+It is not only with respect to consumable goods -- including
+domestic animals -- that the canons of taste have been colored by
+the canons of pecuniary reputability. Something to the like
+effect is to be said for beauty in persons. In order to avoid
+whatever may be matter of controversy, no weight will be given in
+this connection to such popular predilection as there may be for
+the dignified (leisurely) bearing and poly presence that are by
+vulgar tradition associated with opulence in mature men. These
+traits are in some measure accepted as elements of personal
+beauty. But there are certain elements of feminine beauty, on the
+other hand, which come in under this head, and which are of so
+concrete and specific a character as to admit of itemized
+appreciation. It is more or less a rule that in communities which
+are at the stage of economic development at which women are
+valued by the upper class for their service, the ideal of female
+beauty is a robust, large-limbed woman. The ground of
+appreciation is the physique, while the conformation of the face
+is of secondary weight only. A well-known instance of this ideal
+of the early predatory culture is that of the maidens of the
+Homeric poems.
+
+This ideal suffers a change in the succeeding development, when,
+in the conventional scheme, the office of the high-class wife
+comes to be a vicarious leisure simply. The ideal then includes
+the characteristics which are supposed to result from or to go
+with a life of leisure consistently enforced. The ideal accepted
+under these circumstances may be gathered from
+descriptions of beautiful women by poets and writers of the
+chivalric times. In the conventional scheme of those days ladies
+of high degree were conceived to be in perpetual tutelage, and to
+be scrupulously exempt from all useful work. The resulting
+chivalric or romantic ideal of beauty takes cognizance chiefly of
+the face, and dwells on its delicacy, and on the delicacy of the
+hands and feet, the slender figure, and especially the slender
+waist. In the pictured representations of the women of that time,
+and in modern romantic imitators of the chivalric thought and
+feeling, the waist is attenuated to a degree that implies extreme
+debility. The same ideal is still extant among a considerable
+portion of the population of modern industrial communities; but
+it is to be said that it has retained its hold most tenaciously
+in those modern communities which are least advanced in point of
+economic and civil development, and which show the most
+considerable survivals of status and of predatory institutions.
+That is to say, the chivalric ideal is best preserved in those
+existing communities which are substantially least modern.
+Survivals of this lackadaisical or romantic ideal occur freely in
+the tastes of the well-to-do classes of Continental countries.
+In modern communities which have reached the higher levels of
+industrial development, the upper leisure class has
+accumulated so great a mass of wealth as to place its women above
+all imputation of vulgarly productive labor. Here the status of
+women as vicarious consumers is beginning to lose its place in
+the sections of the body of the people; and as a consequence the
+ideal of feminine beauty is beginning to change back again from
+the infirmly delicate, translucent, and hazardously slender, to a
+woman of the archaic type that does not disown her hands and
+feet, nor, indeed, the other gross material facts of her person.
+In the course of economic development the ideal of beauty among
+the peoples of the Western culture has shifted from the woman of
+physical presence to the lady, and it is beginning to shift back
+again to the woman; and all in obedience to the changing
+conditions of pecuniary emulation. The exigencies of emulation at
+one time required lusty slaves; at another time they required a
+conspicuous performance of vicarious leisure and consequently an
+obvious disability; but the situation is now beginning to outgrow
+this last requirement, since, under the higher efficiency of
+modern industry, leisure in women is possible so far down the
+scale of reputability that it will no longer serve as a
+definitive mark of the highest pecuniary grade.
+
+Apart from this general control exercised by the norm of
+conspicuous waste over the ideal of feminine beauty, there are
+one or two details which merit specific mention as showing how it
+may exercise an extreme constraint in detail over men's sense of
+beauty in women. It has already been noticed that at the stages
+of economic evolution at which conspicuous leisure is much
+regarded as a means of good repute, the ideal requires delicate
+and diminutive bands and feet and a slender waist. These
+features, together with the other, related faults of structure
+that commonly go with them, go to show that the person so
+affected is incapable of useful effort and must therefore be
+supported in idleness by her owner. She is useless and expensive,
+and she is consequently valuable as evidence of pecuniary
+strength. It results that at this cultural stage women take
+thought to alter their persons, so as to conform more nearly to
+the requirements of the instructed taste of the time; and under
+the guidance of the canon of pecuniary decency, the men find the
+resulting artificially induced pathological features attractive.
+So, for instance, the constricted waist which has had so wide and
+persistent a vogue in the communities of the Western culture, and
+so also the deformed foot of the Chinese. Both of these are
+mutilations of unquestioned repulsiveness to the untrained sense.
+It requires habituation to become reconciled to them. Yet there
+is no room to question their attractiveness to men into whose
+scheme of life they fit as honorific items sanctioned by the
+requirements of pecuniary reputability. They are items of
+pecuniary and cultural beauty which have come to do duty as
+elements of the ideal of womanliness.
+
+The connection here indicated between the aesthetic value and the
+invidious pecuniary value of things is of course not present in
+the consciousness of the valuer. So far as a person, in forming a
+judgment of taste, takes thought and reflects that the object of
+beauty under consideration is wasteful and
+reputable, and therefore may legitimately be accounted beautiful;
+so far the judgment is not a bona fide judgment of taste and does
+not come up for consideration in this connection. The connection
+which is here insisted on between the reputability and the
+apprehended beauty of objects lies through the effect which the
+fact of reputability has upon the valuer's habits of thought. He
+is in the habit of forming judgments of value of various
+kinds-economic, moral, aesthetic, or reputable concerning the
+objects with which he has to do, and his attitude of commendation
+towards a given object on any other ground will affect the degree
+of his appreciation of the object when he comes to value it for
+the aesthetic purpose. This is more particularly true as regards
+valuation on grounds so closely related to the aesthetic ground
+as that of reputability. The valuation for the aesthetic purpose
+and for the purpose of repute are not held apart as distinctly as
+might be. Confusion is especially apt to arise between these two
+kinds of valuation, because the value of objects for repute is
+not habitually distinguished in speech by the use of a special
+descriptive term. The result is that the terms in familiar use to
+designate categories or elements of beauty are applied to cover
+this unnamed element of pecuniary merit, and the corresponding
+confusion of ideas follows by easy consequence. The demands of
+reputability in this way coalesce in the popular apprehension
+with the demands of the sense of beauty, and beauty which is not
+accompanied by the accredited marks of good repute is not
+accepted. But the requirements of pecuniary reputability and
+those of beauty in the naive sense do not in any appreciable
+degree coincide. The elimination from our surroundings of the
+pecuniarily unfit, therefore, results in a more or less thorough
+elimination of that considerable range of elements of beauty
+which do not happen to conform to the pecuniary requirement.
+The underlying norms of taste are of very ancient growth,
+probably far antedating the advent of the pecuniary institutions
+that are here under discussion. Consequently, by force of the
+past selective adaptation of men's habits of thought, it happens
+that the requirements of beauty, simply, are for the most part
+best satisfied by inexpensive contrivances and structures which
+in a straightforward manner suggest both the office which they
+are to perform and the method of serving their end, It may be in
+place to recall the modern psychological position. Beauty of form
+seems to be a question of facility of apperception. The
+proposition could perhaps safely be made broader than this. If
+abstraction is made from association, suggestion, and
+"expression," classed as elements of beauty, then beauty in any
+perceived object means that the mid readily unfolds its
+apperceptive activity in the directions which the object in
+question affords. But the directions in which activity readily
+unfolds or expresses itself are the directions to which long and
+close habituation bas made the mind prone. So far as concerns the
+essential elements of beauty, this habituation is an habituation
+so close and long as to have induced not only a proclivity to the
+apperceptive form in question, but an adaptation of physiological
+structure and function as well. So far as the economic interest
+enters into the constitution of beauty, it enters as a suggestion
+or expression of adequacy to a purpose, a manifest and readily
+inferable subservience to the life process. This expression of
+economic facility or economic serviceability in any object --
+what may be called the economic beauty of the object-is best
+sewed by neat and unambiguous suggestion of its office and its
+efficiency for the material ends of life.
+
+On this ground, among objects of use the simple and
+unadorned article is aesthetically the best. But since the
+pecuniary canon of reputability rejects the inexpensive in
+articles appropriated to individual consumption, the satisfaction
+of our craving for beautiful things must be sought by way of
+compromise. The canons of beauty must be circumvented by some
+contrivance which will give evidence of a reputably wasteful
+expenditure, at the same time that it meets the demands of our
+critical sense of the useful and the beautiful, or at least meets
+the demand of some habit which has come to do duty in place of
+that sense. Such an auxiliary sense of taste is the sense of
+novelty; and this latter is helped out in its surrogateship by
+the curiosity with which men view ingenious and puzzling
+contrivances. Hence it comes that most objects alleged to be
+beautiful, and doing duty as such, show considerable ingenuity of
+design and are calculated to puzzle the beholder -- to bewilder
+him with irrelevant suggestions and hints of the improbable -- at
+the same time that they give evidence of an expenditure of labor
+in excess of what would give them their fullest efficency for
+their ostensible economic end.
+
+This may be shown by an illustration taken from outside the range
+of our everyday habits and everyday contact, and so outside the
+range of our bias. Such are the remarkable feather mantles of
+Hawaii, or the well-known cawed handles of the ceremonial adzes
+of several Polynesian islands, These are undeniably beautiful,
+both in the sense that they offer a pleasing composition of form,
+lines, and color, and in the sense that they evince great skill
+and ingenuity in design and construction. At the same time the
+articles are manifestly ill fitted to serve any other economic
+purpose. But it is not always that the evolution of ingenious and
+puzzling contrivances under the guidance of the canon of wasted
+effort works out so happy a result. The result is quite as often
+a virtually complete suppression of all elements that would bear
+scrutiny as expressions of beauty, or of serviceability, and the
+substitution of evidences of misspent ingenuity and labor, backed
+by a conspicuous ineptitude; until many of the objects with which
+we surround ourselves in everyday life, and even many articles of
+everyday dress and ornament, are such as would not be tolerated
+except under the stress of prescriptive tradition. Illustrations
+of this substitution of ingenuity and expense in place of beauty
+and serviceability are to be seen, for instance, in domestic
+architecture, in domestic art or fancy work, in various articles
+of apparel, especially of feminine and priestly apparel.
+
+The canon of beauty requires expression of the generic. The
+"novelty" due to the demands of conspicuous waste traverses this
+canon of beauty, in that it results in making the physiognomy of
+our objects of taste a congeries of idiosyncrasies; and the
+idiosyncrasies are, moreover, under the selective surveillance of
+the canon of expensiveness.
+
+This process of selective adaptation of designs to the end of
+conspicuous waste, and the substitution of pecuniary beauty for
+aesthetic beauty, has been especially effective in the
+development of architecture. It would be extremely difficult to
+find a modern civilized residence or public building which can
+claim anything better than relative inoffensiveness in the eyes
+of anyone who will dissociate the elements of beauty from those
+of honorific waste. The endless variety of fronts presented by
+the better class of tenements and apartment houses in our cities
+is an endless variety of architectural distress and of
+suggestions of expensive discomfort. Considered as objects of
+beauty, the dead walls of the sides and back of these structures,
+left untouched by the hands of the artist, are commonly the best
+feature of the building.
+
+What has been said of the influence of the law of
+conspicuous waste upon the canons of taste will hold true, with
+but a slight change of terms, of its influence upon our notions
+of the serviceability of goods for other ends than the aesthetic
+one. Goods are produced and consumed as a means to the fuller
+unfolding of human life; and their utility consists, in the first
+instance, in their efficiency as means to this end. The end is,
+in the first instance, the fullness of life of the individual,
+taken in absolute terms. But the human proclivity to emulation
+has seized upon the consumption of goods as a means to an
+invidious comparison, and has thereby invested constable goods
+with a secondary utility as evidence of relative ability to pay.
+This indirect or secondary use of consumable goods lends an
+honorific character to consumption and presently also to the
+goods which best serve the emulative end of consumption. The
+consumption of expensive goods is meritorious, and the goods
+which contain an appreciable element of cost in excess of what
+goes to give them serviceability for their ostensible mechanical
+purpose are honorific. The marks of superfluous costliness in the
+goods are therefore marks of worth -- of high efficency for the
+indirect, invidious end to be served by their consumption; and
+conversely. goods are humilific, and therefore unattractive, if
+they show too thrifty an adaptation to the mechanical end sought
+and do not include a margin of expensiveness on which to rest a
+complacent invidious comparison. This indirect utility gives much
+of their value to the "better" grades of goods. In order to
+appeal to the cultivated sense of utility, an article must
+contain a modicum of this indirect utility.
+
+While men may have set out with disapproving an inexpensive
+manner of living because it indicated inability to spend much,
+and so indicated a lack of pecuniary success, they end by falling
+into the habit of disapproving cheap things as being
+intrinsically dishonorable or unworthy because they are cheap. As
+time has gone on, each succeeding generation has received this
+tradition of meritorious expenditure from the generation before
+it, and has in its turn further elaborated and fortified the
+traditional canon of pecuniary reputability in goods consumed;
+until we have finally reached such a degree of conviction as to
+the unworthiness of all inexpensive things, that we have no
+longer any misgivings in formulating the maxim, "Cheap and
+nasty."  So thoroughly has the habit of approving the expensive
+and disapproving the inexpensive been ingrained into our thinking
+that we instinctively insist upon at least some measure of
+wasteful expensiveness in all our consumption, even in the case
+of goods which are consumed in strict privacy and without the
+slightest thought of display. We all feel, sincerely and without
+misgiving, that we are the more lifted up in spirit for having,
+even in the privacy of our own household, eaten our daily meal by
+the help of hand-wrought silver utensils, from hand-painted china
+(often of dubious artistic value) laid on high-priced table
+linen. Any retrogression from the standard of living which we are
+accustomed to regard as worthy in this respect is felt to be a
+grievous violation of our human dignity. So, also, for the last
+dozen years candles have been a more pleasing source of light at
+dinner than any other. Candlelight is now softer, less
+distressing to well-bred eyes, than oil, gas, or electric light.
+The same could not have been said thirty years ago, when candles
+were, or recently had been, the cheapest available light for
+domestic use. Nor are candles even now found to give an
+acceptable or effective light for any other than a ceremonial
+illumination.
+
+A political sage still living has summed up the conclusion of
+this whole matter in the dictum : "A cheap coat makes a cheap
+man," and there is probably no one who does not feel the
+convincing force of the maxim.
+
+The habit of looking for the marks of superfluous
+expensiveness in goods, and of requiring that all goods should
+afford some utility of the indirect or invidious sort, leads to a
+change in the standards by which the utility of goods is gauged.
+The honorific element and the element of brute efficiency are not
+held apart in the consumer's appreciation of commodities, and the
+two together go to make up the unanalyzed aggregate
+serviceability of the goods. Under the resulting standard of
+serviceability, no article will pass muster on the strength of
+material sufficiency alone. In order to completeness and full
+acceptability to the consumer it must also show the honorific
+element. It results that the producers of articles of consumption
+direct their efforts to the production of goods that shall meet
+this demand for the honorific element. They will do this with all
+the more alacrity and effect, since they are themselves under the
+dominance of the same standard of worth in goods, and would be
+sincerely grieved at the sight of goods which lack the proper
+honorific finish. Hence it has come about that there are today no
+goods supplied in any trade which do not contain the honorific
+element in greater or less degree. Any consumer who might,
+Diogenes-like, insist on the elimination of all honorific or
+wasteful elements from his consumption, would be unable to supply
+his most trivial wants in the modern market. Indeed, even if he
+resorted to supplying his wants directly by his own efforts, he
+would find it difficult if not impossible to divest himself of
+the current habits of thought on this head; so that he could
+scarcely compass a supply of the necessaries of life for a day's
+consumption without instinctively and by oversight incorporating
+in his home-made product something of this honorific,
+quasi-decorative element of wasted labor.
+
+It is notorious that in their selection of serviceable goods in
+the retail market purchasers are guided more by the finish and
+workmanship of the goods than by any marks of substantial
+serviceability. Goods, in order to sell, must have some
+appreciable amount of labor spent in giving them the marks of
+decent expensiveness, in addition to what goes to give them
+efficiency for the material use which they are to serve. This
+habit of making obvious costliness a canon of serviceability of
+course acts to enhance the aggregate cost of articles of
+consumption. It puts us on our guard against cheapness by
+identifying merit in some degree with cost. There is ordinarily a
+consistent effort on the part of the consumer to obtain goods of
+the required serviceability at as advantageous a bargain as may
+be; but the conventional requirement of obvious costliness, as a
+voucher and a constituent of the serviceability of the goods,
+leads him to reject as under grade such goods as do not contain a
+large element of conspicuous waste.
+
+It is to be added that a large share of those features of
+consumable goods which figure in popular apprehension as marks of
+serviceability, and to which reference is here had as elements of
+conspicuous waste, commend themselves to the consumer also on
+other grounds than that of expensiveness alone. They usually give
+evidence of skill and effective workmanship, even if they do not
+contribute to the substantial serviceability of the goods; and it
+is no doubt largely on some such ground that any particular mark
+of honorific serviceability first comes into vogue and afterward
+maintains its footing as a normal constituent element of the
+worth of an article. A display of efficient workmanship is
+pleasing simply as such, even where its remoter, for the time
+unconsidered, outcome is futile. There is a gratification of the
+artistic sense in the contemplation of skillful work. But it is
+also to be added that no such evidence of skillful workmanship,
+or of ingenious and effective adaptation of means to an end,
+will, in the long run, enjoy the approbation of the modern
+civilized consumer unless it has the sanction of the Canon of
+conspicuous waste.
+
+The position here taken is enforced in a felicitous manner by the
+place assigned in the economy of consumption to machine products.
+The point of material difference between machine-made goods and
+the hand-wrought goods which serve the same purposes is,
+ordinarily, that the former serve their primary purpose more
+adequately. They are a more perfect product -- show a more
+perfect adaptation of means to end. This does not save them from
+disesteem and deprecation, for they fall short under the test of
+honorific waste. Hand labor is a more wasteful method of
+production; hence the goods turned out by this method are more
+serviceable for the purpose of pecuniary reputability; hence the
+marks of hand labor come to be honorific, and the goods which
+exhibit these marks take rank as of higher grade than the
+corresponding machine product. Commonly, if not invariably, the
+honorific marks of hand labor are certain imperfections and
+irregularities in the lines of the hand-wrought article, showing
+where the workman has fallen short in the execution of the
+design. The ground of the superiority of hand-wrought goods,
+therefore, is a certain margin of crudeness. This margin must
+never be so wide as to show bungling workmanship, since that
+would be evidence of low cost, nor so narrow as to suggest the
+ideal precision attained only by the machine, for that would be
+evidence of low cost.
+
+The appreciation of those evidences of honorific crUdeness to
+which hand-wrought goods owe their superior worth and charm in
+the eyes of well-bred people is a matter of nice discrimination.
+It requires training and the formation of right habits of thought
+with respect to what may be called the physiognomy of goods.
+Machine-made goods of daily use are often admired and preferred
+precisely on account of their excessive perfection by the vulgar
+and the underbred who have not given due thought to the
+punctilios of elegant consumption. The ceremonial inferiority of
+machine products goes to show that the perfection of skill and
+workmanship embodied in any costly innovations in the finish of
+goods is not sufficient of itself to secure them acceptance and
+permanent favor. The innovation must have the support of the
+canon of conspicuous waste. Any feature in the physiognomy of
+goods, however pleasing in itself, and however well it may
+approve itself to the taste for effective work, will not be
+tolerated if it proves obnoxious to this norm of pecuniary
+reputability.
+
+The ceremonial inferiority or uncleanness in consumable goods due
+to "commonness," or in other words to their slight cost of
+production, has been taken very seriously by many persons. The
+objection to machine products is often formulated as an objection
+to the commonness of such goods. What is common is within the
+(pecuniary) reach of many people. Its consumption is therefore
+not honorific, since it does not serve the purpose of a favorable
+invidious comparison with other consumers. Hence the consumption,
+or even the sight of such goods, is inseparable from an odious
+suggestion of the lower levels of human life, and one comes away
+from their contemplation with a pervading sense of meanness that
+is extremely distasteful and depressing to a person of
+sensibility. In persons whose tastes assert themselves
+imperiously, and who have not the gift, habit, or incentive to
+discriminate between the grounds of their various judgments of
+taste, the deliverances of the sense of the honorific coalesce
+with those of the sense of beauty and of the sense of
+serviceability -- in the manner already spoken of; the resulting
+composite valuation serves as a judgment of the object's beauty
+or its serviceability, according as the valuer's bias or interest
+inclines him to apprehend the object in the one or the other of
+these aspects. It follows not infrequently that the marks of
+cheapness or commonness are accepted as definitive marks of
+artistic unfitness, and a code or schedule of aesthetic
+proprieties on the one hand, and of aesthetic abominations On the
+other, is constructed on this basis for guidance in questions of
+taste.
+
+As has already been pointed out, the cheap, and therefore
+indecorous, articles of daily consumption in modern industrial
+communities are commonly machine products; and the generic
+feature of the physiognomy of machine-made goods as compared with
+the hand-wrought article is their greater perfection in
+workmanship and greater accuracy in the detail execution of the
+design. Hence it comes about that the visible imperfections of
+the hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are accounted marks of
+superiority in point of beauty, Or serviceability, or both. Hence
+has arisen that exaltation of the defective, of which John Ruskin
+and William Morris were such eager spokesmen in their time; and
+on this ground their propaganda of crudity and wasted effort has
+been taken up and carried forward since their time. And hence
+also the propaganda for a return to handicraft and household
+industry. So much of the work and speculations of this group of
+men as fairly comes under the characterization here given would
+have been impossible at a time when the visibly more perfect
+goods were not the cheaper.
+
+It is of course only as to the economic value of this school of
+aesthetic teaching that anything is intended to be said or can be
+said here. What is said is not to be taken in the sense of
+depreciation, but chiefly as a characterization of the tendency
+of this teaching in its effect on consumption and on the
+production of consumable goods.
+
+The manner in which the bias of this growth of taste has worked
+itself out in production is perhaps most cogently
+exemplified in the book manufacture with which Morris busied
+himself during the later years of his life; but what holds true
+of the work of the Kelmscott Press in an eminent degree, holds
+true with but slightly abated force when applied to latter-day
+artistic book-making generally -- as to type, paper,
+illustration, binding materials, and binder's work. The claims to
+excellence put forward by the later products of the bookmaker's
+industry rest in some measure on the degree of its approximation
+to the crudities of the time when the work of book-making was a
+doubtful struggle with refractory materials carried on by means
+of insufficient appliances. These products, since they require
+hand labor, are more expensive; they are also less convenient for
+use than the books turned out with a view to serviceability
+alone; they therefore argue ability on the part of the purchaser
+to consume freely, as well as ability to waste time and effort.
+It is on this basis that the printers of today are returning to
+"old-style," and other more or less obsolete styles of type which
+are less legible and give a cruder appearance to the page than
+the "modern." Even a scientific periodical, with ostensibly no
+purpose but the most effective presentation of matter with which
+its science is concerned, will concede so much to the demands of
+this pecuniary beauty as to publish its scientific discussions in
+oldstyle type, on laid paper, and with uncut edges. But books
+which are not ostensibly concerned with the effective
+presentation of their contents alone, of course go farther in
+this direction. Here we have a somewhat cruder type, printed on
+hand-laid, deckel-edged paper, with excessive margins and uncut
+leaves, with bindings of a painstaking crudeness and elaborate
+ineptitude. The Kelmscott Press reduced the matter to an
+absurdity -- as seen from the point of view of brute
+serviceability alone -- by issuing books for modern use, edited
+with the obsolete spelling, printed in black-letter, and bound in
+limp vellum fitted with thongs. As a further characteristic
+feature which fixes the economic place of artistic book-making,
+there is the fact that these more elegant books are, at their
+best, printed in limited editions. A limited edition is in effect
+a guarantee -- somewhat crude, it is true -- that this book is
+scarce and that it therefore is costly and lends pecuniary
+distinction to its consumer.
+
+The special attractiveness of these book-products to the
+book-buyer of cultivated taste lies, of course, not in a
+conscious, naive recognition of their costliness and superior
+clumsiness. Here, as in the parallel case of the superiority of
+hand-wrought articles over machine products, the conscious ground
+of preference is an intrinsic excellence imputed to the costlier
+and more awkward article. The superior excellence imputed to the
+book which imitates the products of antique and obsolete
+processes is conceived to be chiefly a superior utility in the
+aesthetic respect; but it is not unusual to find a well-bred
+book-lover insisting that the clumsier product is also more
+serviceable as a vehicle of printed speech. So far as regards the
+superior aesthetic value of the decadent book, the chances are
+that the book-lover's contention has some ground. The book is
+designed with an eye single to its beauty, and the result is
+commonly some measure of success on the part of the designer.
+What is insisted on here, however, is that the canon of taste
+under which the designer works is a canon formed under the
+surveillance of the law of conspicuous waste, and that this law
+acts selectively to eliminate any canon of taste that does not
+conform to its demands. That is to say, while the decadent book
+may be beautiful, the limits within which the designer may work
+are fixed by requirements of a non-aesthetic kind. The product,
+if it is beautiful, must also at the same time be costly and ill
+adapted to its ostensible use. This mandatory canon of taste in
+the case of the book-designer, however, is not shaped entirely by
+the law of waste in its first form; the canon is to some extent
+shaped in conformity to that secondary expression of the
+predatory temperament, veneration for the archaic or obsolete,
+which in one of its special developments is called classicism.
+In aesthetic theory it might be extremely difficult, if not quite
+impracticable, to draw a line between the canon of
+classicism, or regard for the archaic, and the canon of beauty,
+For the aesthetic purpose such a distinction need scarcely be
+drawn, and indeed it need not exist. For a theory of taste the
+expression of an accepted ideal of archaism, on whatever basis it
+may have been accepted, is perhaps best rated as an element of
+beauty; there need be no question of its legitimation. But for
+the present purpose -- for the purpose of determining what
+economic grounds are present in the accepted canons of taste and
+what is their significance for the distribution and consumption
+of goods -- the distinction is not similarly beside the point.
+The position of machine products in the civilized scheme of
+consumption serves to point out the nature of the relation which
+subsists between the canon of conspicuous waste and the code of
+proprieties in consumption. Neither in matters of art and taste
+proper, nor as regards the current sense of the serviceability of
+goods, does this canon act as a principle of innovation or
+initiative. It does not go into the future as a creative
+principle which makes innovations and adds new items of
+consumption and new elements of cost. The principle in question
+is, in a certain sense, a negative rather than a positive law. It
+is a regulative rather than a creative principle. It very rarely
+initiates or originates any usage or custom directly. Its action
+is selective only. Conspicuous wastefulness does not directly
+afford ground for variation and growth, but conformity to its
+requirements is a condition to the survival of such innovations
+as may be made on other grounds. In whatever way usages and
+customs and methods of expenditure arise, they are all subject to
+the selective action of this norm of reputability; and the degree
+in which they conform to its requirements is a test of their
+fitness to survive in the competition with other similar usages
+and customs. Other thing being equal, the more obviously wasteful
+usage or method stands the better chance of survival under this
+law. The law of conspicuous waste does not account for the origin
+of variations, but only for the persistence of such forms as are
+fit to survive under its dominance. It acts to conserve the fit,
+not to originate the acceptable. Its office is to prove all
+things and to hold fast that which is good for its purpose.   
+Chapter Seven
+
+Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture
+
+It will in place, by way of illustration, to show in some detail
+how the economic principles so far set forth apply to everyday
+facts in some one direction of the life process. For this purpose
+no line of consumption affords a more apt
+illustration than expenditure on dress. It is especially the rule
+of the conspicuous waste of goods that finds expression in dress,
+although the other, related principles of pecuniary repute are
+also exemplified in the same contrivances. Other methods of
+putting one's pecuniary standing in evidence serve their end
+effectually, and other methods are in vogue always and
+everywhere; but expenditure on dress has this advantage over most
+other methods, that our apparel is always in evidence and affords
+an indication of our pecuniary standing to all observers at the
+first glance. It is also true that admitted expenditure for
+display is more obviously present, and is, perhaps, more
+universally practiced in the matter of dress than in any other
+line of consumption. No one finds difficulty in assenting to the
+commonplace that the greater part of the expenditure incurred by
+all classes for apparel is incurred for the sake of a respectable
+appearance rather than for the protection of the person. And
+probably at no other point is the sense of shabbiness so keenly
+felt as it is if we fall short of the standard set by social
+usage in this matter of dress. It is true of dress in even a
+higher degree than of most other items of consumption, that
+people will undergo a very considerable degree of privation in
+the comforts or the neCessaries of life in order to afford what
+is considered a decent amount of wasteful consumption; so that it
+is by no means an uncommon occurrence, in an inclement climate,
+for people to go ill clad in order to appear well dressed. And
+the commercial value of the goods used for clotting in any modern
+community is made up to a much larger extent of the
+fashionableness, the reputability of the goods than of the
+mechanical service which they render in clothing the person of
+the wearer. The need of dress is eminently a "higher" or
+spiritual need.
+
+This spiritual need of dress is not wholly, nor even
+chiefly, a naive propensity for display of expenditure. The law
+of conspicuous waste guides consumption in apparel, as in other
+things, chiefly at the second remove, by shaping the canons of
+taste and decency. In the common run of cases the conscious
+motive of the wearer or purchaser of conspicuously wasteful
+apparel is the need of conforming to established usage, and of
+living up to the accredited standard of taste and reputability.
+It is not only that one must be guided by the code of proprieties
+in dress in order to avoid the mortification that comes of
+unfavorable notice and comment, though that motive in itself
+counts for a great deal; but besides that, the requirement of
+expensiveness is so ingrained into our habits of thought in
+matters of dress that any other than expensive apparel is
+instinctively odious to us. Without reflection or analysis, we
+feel that what is inexpensive is unworthy. "A cheap coat makes a
+cheap man." "Cheap and nasty" is recognized to hold true in dress
+with even less mitigation than in other lines of consumption. On
+the ground both of taste and of serviceability, an inexpensive
+article of apparel is held to be inferior, under the maxim "cheap
+and nasty." We find things beautiful, as well as serviceable,
+somewhat in proportion as they are costly. With few and
+inconsequential exceptions, we all find a costly hand-wrought
+article of apparel much preferable, in point of beauty and of
+serviceability, to a less expensive imitation of it, however
+cleverly the spurious article may imitate the costly original;
+and what offends our sensibilities in the spurious article is not
+that it falls short in form or color, or, indeed, in visual
+effect in any way. The offensive object may be so close an
+imitation aS to defy any but the closest scrutiny; and yet so
+soon as the counterfeit is detected, its aesthetic value, and its
+commercial value as well, declines precipitately. Not only that,
+but it may be asserted with but small risk of contradiction that
+the aesthetic value of a detected counterfeit in dress declines
+somewhat in the same proportion as the counterfeit is cheaper
+than its original. It loses caste aesthetically because it falls
+to a lower pecuniary grade.
+
+But the function of dress as an evidence of ability to pay does
+not end with simply showing that the wearer consumes
+valuable goods in excess of what is required for physical
+comfort. Simple conspicuous waste of goods is effective and
+gratifying as far as it goes; it is good prima facie evidence of
+pecuniary success, and consequently prima facie evidence of
+social worth. But dress has subtler and more far-reaching
+possibilities than this crude, first-hand evidence of wasteful
+consumption only. If, in addition to showing that the wearer can
+afford to consume freely and uneconomically, it can also be shown
+in the same stroke that he or she is not under the necessity of
+earning a livelihood, the evidence of social worth is enhanced in
+a very considerable degree. Our dress, therefore, in order to
+serve its purpose effectually, should not only he expensive, but
+it should also make plain to all observers that the wearer is not
+engaged in any kind of productive labor. In the evolutionary
+process by which our system of dress has been elaborated into its
+present admirably perfect adaptation to its purpose, this
+subsidiary line of evidence has received due attention. A
+detailed examination of what passes in popular apprehension for
+elegant apparel will show that it is contrived at every point to
+convey the impression that the wearer does not habitually put
+forth any useful effort. It goes without saying that no apparel
+can be considered elegant, or even decent, if it shows the effect
+of manual labor on the part of the wearer, in the way of soil or
+wear. The pleasing effect of neat and spotless garments is
+chiefly, if not altogether, due to their carrying the suggestion
+of leisure-exemption from personal contact with industrial
+processes of any kind. Much of the charm that invests the
+patent-leather shoe, the stainless linen, the lustrous
+cylindrical hat, and the walking-stick, which so greatly enhance
+the native dignity of a gentleman, comes of their pointedly
+suggesting that the wearer cannot when so attired bear a hand in
+any employment that is directly and immediately of any human use.
+Elegant dress serves its purpose of elegance not only in that it
+is expensive, but also because it is the insignia of leisure. It
+not only shows that the wearer is able to consume a relativeLy
+large value, but it argues at the same time that he consumes
+without producing.
+
+The dress of women goes even farther than that of men in the way
+of demonstrating the wearer's abstinence from productive
+employment. It needs no argument to enforce the generalization
+that the more elegant styLes of feminine bonnets go even farther
+towards making work impossible than does the man's high hat. The
+woman's shoe adds the so-called French heel to the evidence of
+enforced leisure afforded by its polish; because this high heel
+obviously makes any, even the simplest and most necessary manual
+work extremely difficult. The like is true even in a higher
+degree of the skirt and the rest of the drapery which
+characterizes woman's dress. The substantial reason for our
+tenacious attachment to the skirt is just this; it is expensive
+and it hampers the wearer at every turn and incapacitates her for
+alL useful exertion. The like is true of the feminine custom of
+wearing the hair excessively long.
+
+But the woman's apparel not only goes beyond that of the modern
+man in the degree in which it argues exemption from labor; it
+also adds a peculiar and highly characteristic feature which
+differs in kind from anything habitually practiced by the men.
+This feature is the class of contrivances of which the corset is
+the typical example. The corset is, in economic theory,
+substantially a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering
+the subject's vitality and rendering her permanently and
+obviously unfit for work. It is true, the corset impairs the
+personal attractions of the wearer, but the loss suffered on that
+score is offset by the gain in reputability which comes of her
+visibly increased expensiveness and infirmity. It may broadly be
+set down that the womanliness of woman's apparel resolves itself,
+in point of substantial fact, into the more effective hindrance
+to useful exertion offered by the garments peculiar to women.
+This difference between masculine and feminine apparel is here
+simply pointed out as a characteristic feature. The ground of its
+occurrence will be discussed presently.
+
+So far, then, we have, as the great and dominant norm of dress,
+the broad principle of conspicuous waste. Subsidiary to this
+principle, and as a corollary under it, we get as a second norm
+the principle of conspicuous leisure. In dress construction this
+norm works out in the shape of divers contrivances going to show
+that the wearer does not and, as far as it may conveniently be
+shown, can not engage in productive labor. Beyond these two
+principles there is a third of scarcely less constraining force,
+which will occur to any one who reflects at all on the subject.
+Dress must not only be conspicuously expensive and inconvenient,
+it must at the same time be up to date. No explanation at all
+satisfactory has hitherto been offered of the phenomenon of
+changing fashions. The imperative requirement of dressing in the
+latest accredited manner, as well as the fact that this
+accredited fashion constantly changes from season to season, is
+sufficiently familiar to every one, but the theory of this flux
+and change has not been worked out. We may of course say, with
+perfect consistency and truthfulness, that this principle of
+novelty is another corollary under the law of conspicuous waste.
+Obviously, if each garment is permitted to serve for but a brief
+term, and if none of last season's apparel is carried over and
+made further use of during the present season, the wasteful
+expenditure on dress is greatly increased. This is good as far as
+it goes, but it is negative only. Pretty much all that this
+consideration warrants us in saying is that the norm of
+conspicuous waste exercises a controlling surveillance in all
+matters of dress, so that any change in the fashions must
+conspicuous waste exercises a controlling surveillance in all
+matters of dress, so that any change in the fashions must conform
+to the requirement of wastefulness; it leaves unanswered the
+question as to the motive for making and accepting a change in
+the prevailing styles, and it also fails to explain why
+conformity to a given style at a given time is so imperatively
+necessary as we know it to be.
+
+For a creative principle, capable of serving as motive to
+invention and innovation in fashions, we shall have to go back to
+the primitive, non-economic motive with which apparel originated
+-- the motive of adornment. Without going into an extended
+discussion of how and why this motive asserts itself under the
+guidance of the law of expensiveness, it may be stated broadly
+that each successive innovation in the fashions is an effort to
+reach some form of display which shall be more acceptable to our
+sense of form and color or of effectiveness, than that which it
+displaces. The changing styles are the expression of a restless
+search for something which shall commend itself to our aesthetic
+sense; but as each innovation is subject to the selective action
+of the norm of conspicuous waste, the range within which
+innovation can take place is somewhat restricted. The innovation
+must not only be more beautiful, or perhaps oftener less
+offensive, than that which it displaces, but it must also come up
+to the accepted standard of expensiveness.
+
+It would seem at first sight that the result of such an
+unremitting struggle to attain the beautiful in dress should be a
+gradual approach to artistic perfection. We might naturally
+expect that the fashions should show a well-marked trend in the
+direction of some one or more types of apparel eminently becoming
+to the human form; and we might even feel that ge have
+substantial ground for the hope that today, after all the
+ingenuity and effort which have been spent on dress these many
+years, the fashions should have achieved a relative perfection
+and a relative stability, closely approximating to a permanently
+tenable artistic ideal. But such is not the case. It would be
+very hazardous indeed to assert that the styles of today are
+intrinsically more becoming than those of ten years ago, or than
+those of twenty, or fifty, or one hundred years ago. On the other
+hand, the assertion freely goes uncontradicted that styles in
+vogue two thousand years ago are more becoming than the most
+elaborate and painstaking constructions of today.
+
+The explanation of the fashions just offered, then, does not
+fully explain, and we shall have to look farther. It is well
+known that certain relatively stable styles and types of costume
+have been worked out in various parts of the world; as, for
+instance, among the Japanese, Chinese, and other Oriental
+nations; likewise among the Greeks, Romans, and other Eastern
+peoples of antiquity so also, in later times, among the, peasants
+of nearly every country of Europe. These national or popular
+costumes are in most cases adjudged by competent critics to be
+more becoming, more artistic, than the fluctuating styles of
+modern civilized apparel. At the same time they are also, at
+least usually, less obviously wasteful; that is to say, other
+elements than that of a display of expense are more readily
+detected in their structure.
+
+These relatively stable costumes are, commonly, pretty strictly
+and narrowly localized, and they vary by slight and systematic
+gradations from place to place. They have in every case been
+worked out by peoples or classes which are poorer than we, and
+especially they belong in countries and localities and times
+where the population, or at least the class to which the costume
+in question belongs, is relatively homogeneous, stable, and
+immobile. That is to say, stable costumes which will bear the
+test of time and perspective are worked out under circumstances
+where the norm of conspicuous waste asserts itself less
+imperatively than it does in the large modern civilized cities,
+whose relatively mobile wealthy population today sets the pace in
+matters of fashion. The countries and classes which have in this
+way worked out stable and artistic costumes have been so placed
+that the pecuniary emulation among them has taken the direction
+of a competition in conspicuous leisure rather than in
+conspicuous consumption of goods. So that it will hold true in a
+general way that fashions are least stable and least becoming in
+those communities where the principle of a conspicuous waste of
+goods asserts itself most imperatively, as among ourselves. All
+this points to an antagonism between expensiveness and artistic
+apparel. In point of practical fact, the norm of conspicuous
+waste is incompatible with the requirement that dress should be
+beautiful or becoming. And this antagonism offers an explanation
+of that restless change in fashion which neither the canon of
+expensiveness nor that of beauty alone can account for.
+
+The standard of reputability requires that dress should show
+wasteful expenditure; but all wastefulness is offensive to native
+taste. The psychological law has already been pointed out that
+all men -- and women perhaps even in a higher degree abhor
+futility, whether of effort or of expenditure -- much as Nature
+was once said to abhor a vacuum. But the principle of conspicuous
+waste requires an obviously futile expenditure; and the resulting
+conspicuous expensiveness of dress is therefore intrinsically
+ugly. Hence we find that in all innovations in dress, each added
+or altered detail strives to avoid condemnation by showing some
+ostensible purpose, at the same time that the requirement of
+conspicuous waste prevents the purposefulness of these
+innovations from becoming anything more than a somewhat
+transparent pretense. Even in its freest flights, fashion rarely
+if ever gets away from a simulation of some ostensible use. The
+ostensible usefulness of the fashionable details of dress,
+however, is always so transparent a make-believe, and their
+substantial futility presently forces itself so baldly upon our
+attention as to become unbearable, and then we take refuge in a
+new style. But the new style must conform to the requirement of
+reputable wastefulness and futility. Its futility presently
+becomes as odious as that of its predecessor; and the only remedy
+which the law of waste allows us is to seek relief in some new
+construction, equally futile and equally untenable. Hence the
+essential ugliness and the unceasing change of fashionable
+attire.
+
+Having so explained the phenomenon of shifting fashions, the next
+thing is to make the explanation tally with everyday facts. Among
+these everyday facts is the well-known liking which all men have
+for the styles that are in vogue at any given time. A new style
+comes into vogue and remains in favor for a season, and, at least
+so long as it is a novelty, people very generally find the new
+style attractive. The prevailing fashion is felt to be beautiful.
+This is due partly to the relief it affords in being different
+from what went before it, partly to its being
+reputable. As indicated in the last chapter, the canon of
+reputability to some extent shapes our tastes, so that under its
+guidance anything will be accepted as becoming until its novelty
+wears off, or until the warrant of reputability is transferred to
+a new and novel structure serving the same general purpose. That
+the alleged beauty, or "loveliness," of the styles in vogue at
+any given time is transient and spurious only is attested by the
+fact that none of the many shifting fashions will bear the test
+of time. When seen in the perspective of half-a-dozen years or
+more, the best of our fashions strike us as grotesque, if not
+unsightly. Our transient attachment to whatever happens to be the
+latest rests on other than aesthetic grounds, and lasts only
+until our abiding aesthetic sense has had time to assert itself
+and reject this latest indigestible contrivance.
+
+The process of developing an aesthetic nausea takes more or less
+time; the length of time required in any given case being
+inversely as the degree of intrinsic odiousness of the style in
+question. This time relation between odiousness and instability
+in fashions affords ground for the inference that the more
+rapidly the styles succeed and displace one another, the more
+offensive they are to sound taste. The presumption, therefore, is
+that the farther the community, especially the wealthy classes of
+the community, develop in wealth and mobility and in the range of
+their human contact, the more imperatively will the law of
+conspicuous waste assert itself in matters of dress, the more
+will the sense of beauty tend to fall into abeyance or be
+overborne by the canon of pecuniary reputability, the more
+rapidly will fashions shift and change, and the more grotesque
+and intolerable will be the varying styles that successively come
+into vogue.
+
+There remains at least one point in this theory of dress yet to
+be discussed. Most of what has been said applies to men's attire
+as well as to that of women; although in modern times it applies
+at nearly all points with greater force to that of women. But at
+one point the dress of women differs substantially from that of
+men. In woman's dress there is obviously greater
+insistence on such features as testify to the wearer's exemption
+from or incapacity for all vulgarly productive employment. This
+characteristic of woman's apparel is of interest, not only as
+completing the theory of dress, but also as confirming what has
+already been said of the economic status of women, both in the
+past and in the present.
+
+As has been seen in the discussion of woman's status under the
+heads of Vicarious Leisure and Vicarious Consumption, it has in
+the course of economic development become the office of the woman
+to consume vicariously for the head of the household; and her
+apparel is contrived with this object in view. It has come about
+that obviously productive labor is in a peculiar degree
+derogatory to respectable women, and therefore special pains
+should be taken in the construction of women's dress, to impress
+upon the beholder the fact (often indeed a fiction) that the
+wearer does not and can not habitually engage in useful work.
+Propriety requires respectable women to abstain more consistently
+from useful effort and to make more of a show of leisure than the
+men of the same social classes. It grates painfully on our nerves
+to contemplate the necessity of any well-bred woman's earning a
+livelihood by useful work. It is not "woman's sphere." Her sphere
+is within the household, which she should "beautify," and of
+which she should be the "chief ornament." The male head of the
+household is not currently spoken of as its ornament. This
+feature taken in conjunction with the other fact that propriety
+requires more unremitting attention to expensive display in the
+dress and other paraphernalia of women, goes to enforce the view
+already implied in what has gone before. By virtue of its descent
+from a patriarchal past, our social system makes it the woman's
+function in an especial degree to put in evidence her household's
+ability to pay. According to the modern civilized scheme of life,
+the good name of the household to which she belongs should be the
+special care of the woman; and the system of honorific
+expenditure and conspicuous leisure by which this good name is
+chiefly sustained is therefore the woman's sphere. In the ideal
+scheme, as it tends to realize itself in the life of the higher
+pecuniary classes, this attention to conspicuous waste of
+substance and effort should normally be the sole economic
+function of the woman.
+
+At the stage of economic development at which the women were
+still in the full sense the property of the men, the performance
+of conspicuous leisure and consumption came to be part of the
+services required of them. The women being not their own masters,
+obvious expenditure and leisure on their part would redound to
+the credit of their master rather than to their own credit; and
+therefore the more expensive and the more obviously unproductive
+the women of the household are, the more creditable and more
+effective for the purpose of reputability of the household or its
+head will their life be. So much so that the women have been
+required not only to afford evidence of a life of leisure, but
+even to disable themselves for useful activity.
+
+It is at this point that the dress of men falls short of that of
+women, and for sufficient reason. Conspicuous waste and
+conspicuous leisure are reputable because they are evidence of
+pecuniary strength; pecuniary strength is reputable or honorific
+because, in the last analysis, it argues success and superior
+force; therefore the evidence of waste and leisure put forth by
+any individual in his own behalf cannot consistently take such a
+form or be carried to such a pitch as to argue incapacity or
+marked discomfort on his part; as the exhibition would in that
+case show not superior force, but inferiority, and so defeat its
+own purpose. So, then, wherever wasteful expenditure and the show
+of abstention from effort is normally. or on an average, carried
+to the extent of showing obvious discomfort or voluntarily
+induced physical disability. there the immediate inference is
+that the individual in question does not perform this wasteful
+expenditure and undergo this disability for her own personal gain
+in pecuniary repute, but in behalf of some one else to whom she
+stands in a relation of economic dependence; a relation which in
+the last analysis must, in economic theory, reduce itself to a
+relation of servitude.
+
+To apply this generalization to women's dress, and put the matter
+in concrete terms: the high heel, the skirt, the
+impracticable bonnet, the corset, and the general disregard of
+the wearer's comfort which is an obvious feature of all civilized
+women's apparel, are so many items of evidence to the effect that
+in the modern civilized scheme of life the woman is still, in
+theory, the economic dependent of the man -- that, perhaps in a
+highly idealized sense, she still is the man's chattel. The
+homely reason for all this conspicuous leisure and attire on the
+part of women lies in the fact that they are servants to whom, in
+the differentiation of economic functions, has been delegated the
+office of putting in evidence their master's ability to pay.
+There is a marked similarity in these respects between the
+apparel of women and that of domestic servants, especially
+liveried servants. In both there is a very elaborate show of
+unnecessary expensiveness, and in both cases there is also a
+notable disregard of the physical comfort of the wearer. But the
+attire of the lady goes farther in its elaborate insistence on
+the idleness, if not on the physical infirmity of the wearer,
+than does that of the domestic. And this is as it should be; for
+in theory, according to the ideal scheme of the pecuniary
+culture, the lady of the house is the chief menial of the
+household.
+
+Besides servants, currently recognized as such, there is at least
+one other class of persons whose garb assimilates them to the
+class of servants and shows many of the features that go to make
+up the womanliness of woman's dress. This is the priestly class.
+Priestly vestments show, in accentuated form, all the features
+that have been shown to be evidence of a servile status and a
+vicarious life. Even more strikingly than the everyday habit of
+the priest, the vestments, properly so called, are ornate,
+grotesque, inconvenient, and, at least ostensibly, comfortless to
+the point of distress. The priest is at the same time expected to
+refrain from useful effort and, when before the public eye, to
+present an impassively disconsolate countenance, very much after
+the manner of a well-trained domestic servant. The shaven face of
+the priest is a further item to the same effect. This
+assimilation of the priestly class to the class of body servants,
+in demeanor and apparel, is due to the similarity of the two
+classes as regards economic function. In economic theory, the
+priest is a body servant, constructively in
+attendance upon the person of the divinity whose livery he wears.
+His livery is of a very expensive character, as it should be in
+order to set forth in a beseeming manner the dignity of his
+exalted master; but it is contrived to show that the wearing of
+it contributes little or nothing to the physical comfort of the
+wearer, for it is an item of vicarious consumption, and the
+repute which accrues from its consumption is to be imputed to the
+absent master, not to the servant.
+
+The line of demarcation between the dress of women, priests, and
+servants, on the one hand, and of men, on the other hand, is not
+always consistently observed in practice, but it will
+scarcely be disputed that it is always present in a more or less
+definite way in the popular habits of thought. There are of
+course also free men, and not a few of them, who, in their blind
+zeal for faultless reputable attire, transgress the theoretical
+line between man's and woman's dress, to the extent of arraying
+themselves in apparel that is obviously designed to vex the
+mortal frame; but everyone recognizes without hesitation that
+such apparel for men is a departure from the normal. We are in
+the habit of saying that such dress is "effeminate"; and one
+sometimes hears the remark that such or such an exquisitely
+attired gentleman is as well dressed as a footman.
+
+Certain apparent discrepancies under this theory of dress merit a
+more detailed examination, especially as they mark a more or less
+evident trend in the later and maturer development of dress. The
+vogue of the corset offers an apparent exception from the rule of
+which it has here been cited as an illustration. A closer
+examination, however, will show that this apparent
+exception is really a verification of the rule that the vogue of
+any given element or feature in dress rests on its utility as an
+evidence of pecuniary standing. It is well known that in the
+industrially more advanced communities the corset is employed
+only within certain fairly well defined social strata. The women
+of the poorer classes, especially of the rural population, do not
+habitually use it, except as a holiday luxury. Among these
+classes the women have to work hard, and it avails them little in
+the way of a pretense of leisure to so crucify the flesh in
+everyday life. The holiday use of the contrivance is due to
+imitation of a higher-class canon of decency. Upwards from this
+low level of indigence and manual labor, the corset was until
+within a generation or two nearly indispensable to a socially
+blameless standing for all women, including the wealthiest and
+most reputable. This rule held so long as there still was no
+large class of people wealthy enough to be above the imputation
+of any necessity for manual labor and at the same time large
+enough to form a self-sufficient, isolated social body whose mass
+would afford a foundation for special rules of conduct within the
+class, enforced by the current opinion of the class alone. But
+now there has grown up a large enough leisure class possessed of
+such wealth that any aspersion on the score of enforced manual
+employment would be idle and harmless calumny; and the corset has
+therefore in large measure fallen into disuse within this class.
+The exceptions under this rule of exemption from the corset are
+more apparent than real. They are the wealthy classes of
+countries with a lower industrial structure -- nearer the
+archaic, quasi-industrial type -- together with the later
+accessions of the wealthy classes in the more advanced industrial
+communities. The latter have not yet had time to divest
+themselves of the plebeian canons of taste and of reputability
+carried over from their former, lower pecuniary grade. Such
+survival of the corset is not infrequent among the higher social
+classes of those American cities, for instance, which have
+recently and rapidly risen into opulence. If the word be used as
+a technical term, without any odious implication, it may be said
+that the corset persists in great measure through the period of
+snobbery -- the interval of uncertainty and of transition from a
+lower to the upper levels of pecuniary culture. That is to say,
+in all countries which have inherited the corset it continues in
+use wherever and so long as it serves its purpose as an evidence
+of honorific leisure by arguing physical disability in the
+wearer. The same rule of course applies to other mutilations and
+contrivances for decreasing the visible efficiency of the
+individual.
+
+Something similar should hold true with respect to divers items
+of conspicuous consumption, and indeed something of the kind does
+seem to hold to a slight degree of sundry features of dress,
+especially if such features involve a marked discomfort or
+appearance of discomfort to the wearer. During the past one
+hundred years there is a tendency perceptible, in the development
+of men's dress especially, to discontinue methods of expenditure
+and the use of symbols of leisure which must have been irksome,
+which may have served a good purpose in their time, but the
+continuation of which among the upper classes today would be a
+work of supererogation; as, for instance, the use of powdered
+wigs and of gold lace, and the practice of constantly shaving the
+face. There has of late years been some slight recrudescence of
+the shaven face in polite society, but this is probably a
+transient and unadvised mimicry of the fashion imposed upon body
+servants, and it may fairly be expected to go the way of the
+powdered wig of our grandfathers.
+
+These indices and others which resemble them in point of the
+boldness with which they point out to all observers the habitual
+uselessness of those persons who employ them, have been replaced
+by other, more dedicate methods of expressing the same fact;
+methods which are no less evident to the trained eyes of that
+smaller, select circle whose good opinion is chiefly sought. The
+earlier and cruder method of advertisement held its ground so
+long as the public to which the exhibitor had to appeal comprised
+large portions of the community who were not trained to detect
+delicate variations in the evidences of wealth and leisure. The
+method of advertisement undergoes a refinement when a
+sufficiently large wealthy class has developed, who have the
+leisure for acquiring skill in interpreting the subtler signs of
+expenditure. "Loud" dress becomes offensive to people of taste,
+as evincing an undue desire to reach and impress the untrained
+sensibilities of the vulgar. To the individual of high breeding,
+it is only the more honorific esteem accorded by the cultivated
+sense of the members of his own high class that is of material
+consequence. Since the wealthy leisure class has grown so large,
+or the contact of the leisure-class individual with members of
+his own class has grown so wide, as to constitute a human
+environment sufficient for the honorific purpose, there arises a
+tendency to exclude the baser elements of the population from the
+scheme even as spectators whose applause or mortification should
+be sought. The result of all this is a refinement of methods, a
+resort to subtler contrivances, and a spiritualization of the
+scheme of symbolism in dress. And as this upper leisure class
+sets the pace in all matters of decency, the result for the rest
+of society also is a gradual amelioration of the scheme of dress.
+As the community advances in wealth and culture, the ability to
+pay is put in evidence by means which require a progressively
+nicer discrimination in the beholder. This nicer discrimination
+between advertising media is in fact a very large element of the
+higher pecuniary culture.
+
+Chapter Eight
+
+Industrial Exemption and Conservatism
+
+The life of man in society, just like the life of other species,
+is a struggle for existence, and therefore it is a process of
+selective adaptation. The evolution of social
+structure has been a process of natural selection of
+institutions. The progress which has been and is being made in
+human institutions and in human character may be set down,
+broadly, to a natural selection of the fittest habits of thought
+and to a process of enforced adaptation of individuals to an
+environment which has progressively changed with the growth of
+the community and with the changing institutions under which men
+have lived. Institutions are not only themselves the result of a
+selective and adaptive process which shapes the prevailing or
+dominant types of spiritual attitude and aptitudes; they are at
+the same time special methods of life and of human relations, and
+are therefore in their turn efficient factors of selection. So
+that the changing institutions in their turn make for a further
+selection of individuals endowed with the fittest temperament,
+and a further adaptation of individual temperament and habits to
+the changing environment through the formation of new
+institutions.
+
+ The forces which have shaped the development of human life and
+of social structure are no doubt ultimately reducible to terms of
+living tissue and material environment; but proximately for the
+purpose in hand, these forces may best be stated in terms of an
+environment, partly human, partly non-human, and a human subject
+with a more or less definite physical and intellectual
+constitution. Taken in the aggregate or average, this human
+subject is more or less variable; chiefly, no doubt, under a rule
+of selective conservation of favorable variations. The selection
+of favorable variations is perhaps in great measure a selective
+conservation of ethnic types. In the life history of any
+community whose population is made up of a mixture of divers
+ethnic elements, one or another of several persistent and
+relatively stable types of body and of temperament rises into
+dominance at any given point. The situation, including the
+institutions in force at any given time, will favor the survival
+and dominance of one type of character in preference to another;
+and the type of man so selected to continue and to further
+elaborate the institutions handed down from the past will in some
+considerable measure shape these institutions in his own
+likeness. But apart from selection as between relatively stable
+types of character and habits of mind, there is no doubt
+simultaneously going on a process of selective adaptation of
+habits of thought within the general range of aptitudes which is
+characteristic of the dominant ethnic type or types. There may be
+a variation in the fundamental character of any population by
+selection between relatively stable types; but there is also a
+variation due to adaptation in detail within the range of the
+type, and to selection between specific habitual views regarding
+any given social relation or group of relations.
+
+ For the present purpose, however, the question as to the nature
+of the adaptive process -- whether it is chiefly a
+selection between stable types of temperament and character, or
+chiefly an adaptation of men's habits of thought to changing
+circumstances -- is of less importance than the fact that, by one
+method or another, institutions change and develop. Institutions
+must change with changing circumstances, since they are of the
+nature of an habitual method of responding to the stimuli which
+these changing circumstances afford. The development of these
+institutions is the development of society. The institutions are,
+in substance, prevalent habits of thought with respect to
+particular relations and particular functions of the individual
+and of the community; and the scheme of life, which is made up of
+the aggregate of institutions in force at a given time or at a
+given point in the development of any society, may, on the
+psychological side, be broadly characterized as a prevalent
+spiritual attitude or a prevalent theory of life. As regards its
+generic features, this spiritual attitude or theory of life is in
+the last analysis reducible to terms of a prevalent type of
+character.
+
+ The situation of today shapes the institutions of tomorrow
+through a selective, coercive process, by acting upon men's
+habitual view of things, and so altering or fortifying a point of
+view or a mental attitude banded down from the past. The
+institutions -- that is to say the habits of thought -- under the
+guidance of which men live are in this way received from an
+earlier time; more or less remotely earlier, but in any event
+they have been elaborated in and received from the past.
+Institutions are products of the past process, are adapted to
+past circumstances, and are therefore never in full accord with
+the requirements of the present. In the nature of the case, this
+process of selective adaptation can never catch up with the
+progressively changing situation in which the community finds
+itself at any given time; for the environment, the situation, the
+exigencies of life which enforce the adaptation and exercise the
+selection, change from day to day; and each successive situation
+of the community in its turn tends to obsolescence as soon as it
+has been established. When a step in the development has been
+taken, this step itself constitutes a change of situation which
+requires a new adaptation; it becomes the point of departure for
+a new step in the adjustment, and so on interminably.
+
+ It is to be noted then, although it may be a tedious truism,
+that the institutions of today -- the present accepted scheme of
+life -- do not entirely fit the situation of today. At the same
+time, men's present habits of thought tend to persist
+indefinitely, except as circumstances enforce a change. These
+institutions which have thus been handed down, these habits of
+thought, points of view, mental attitudes and aptitudes, or what
+not, are therefore themselves a conservative factor. This is the
+factor of social inertia, psychological inertia, conservatism.
+Social structure changes, develops, adapts itself to an altered
+situation, only through a change in the habits of thought of the
+several classes of the community, or in the last analysis,
+through a change in the habits of thought of the individuals
+which make up the community. The evolution of society is
+substantially a process of mental adaptation on the part of
+individuals under the stress of circumstances which will no
+longer tolerate habits of thought formed under and conforming to
+a different set of circumstances in the past. For the immediate
+purpose it need not be a question of serious importance whether
+this adaptive process is a process of selection and survival of
+persistent ethnic types or a process of individual adaptation and
+an inheritance of acquired traits.
+
+ Social advance, especially as seen from the point of view of
+economic theory, consists in a continued progressive approach to
+an approximately exact "adjustment of inner relations to outer
+relations", but this adjustment is never definitively
+established, since the "outer relations" are subject to constant
+change as a consequence of the progressive change going on in the
+"inner relations. " But the degree of approximation may be
+greater or less, depending on the facility with which an
+adjustment is made. A readjustment of men's habits of thought to
+conform with the exigencies of an altered situation is in any
+case made only tardily and reluctantly, and only under the
+coercion exercised by a stipulation which has made the accredited
+views untenable. The readjustment of institutions and habitual
+views to an altered environment is made in response to pressure
+from without; it is of the nature of a response to stimulus.
+Freedom and facility of readjustment, that is to say capacity for
+growth in social structure, therefore depends in great measure on
+the degree of freedom with which the situation at any given time
+acts on the individual members of the community-the degree of
+exposure of the individual members to the constraining forces of
+the environment. If any portion or class of society is sheltered
+from the action of the environment in any essential respect, that
+portion of the community, or that class, will adapt its views and
+its scheme of life more tardily to the altered general situation;
+it will in so far tend to retard the process of social
+transformation. The wealthy leisure class is in such a sheltered
+position with respect to the economic forces that make for change
+and readjustment. And it may be said that the forces which make
+for a readjustment of institutions, especially in the case of a
+modern industrial community, are, in the last analysis, almost
+entirely of an economic nature.
+
+ Any community may be viewed as an industrial or economic
+mechanism, the structure of which is made up of what is called
+its economic institutions. These institutions are habitual
+methods of carrying on the life process of the community in
+contact with the material environment in which it lives. When
+given methods of unfolding human activity in this given
+environment have been elaborated in this way, the life of the
+community will express itself with some facility in these
+habitual directions. The community will make use of the forces of
+the environment for the purposes of its life according to methods
+learned in the past and embodied in these institutions. But as
+population increases, and as men's knowledge and skill in
+directing the forces of nature widen, the habitual methods of
+relation between the members of the group, and the habitual
+method of carrying on the life process of the group as a whole,
+no longer give the same result as before; nor are the resulting
+conditions of life distributed and apportioned in the same manner
+or with the same effect among the various members as before. If
+the scheme according to which the life process of the group was
+carried on under the earlier conditions gave approximately the
+highest attainable result -- under the circumstances -- in the
+way of efficiency or facility of the life process of the group;
+then the same scheme of life unaltered will not yield the highest
+result attainable in this respect under the altered conditions.
+Under the altered conditions of population, skill, and knowledge,
+the facility of life as carried on according to the traditional
+scheme may not be lower than under the earlier conditions; but
+the chances are always that it is less than might he if the
+scheme were altered to suit the altered conditions.
+
+ The group is made up of individuals, and the group's life is the
+life of individuals carried on in at least ostensible
+severalty. The group's accepted scheme of life is the consensus
+of views held by the body of these individuals as to what is
+right, good, expedient, and beautiful in the way of human life.
+In the redistribution of the conditions of life that comes of the
+altered method of dealing with the environment, the outcome is
+not an equable change in the facility of life throughout the
+group. The altered conditions may increase the facility of life
+for the group as a whole, but the redistribution will usually
+result in a decrease of facility or fullness of life for some
+members of the group. An advance in technical methods, in
+population, or in industrial organization will require at least
+some of the members of the community to change their habits of
+life, if they are to enter with facility and effect into the
+altered industrial methods; and in doing so they will be unable
+to live up to the received notions as to what are the right and
+beautiful habits of life.
+
+ Any one who is required to change his habits of life and his
+habitual relations to his fellow men will feel the discrepancy
+between the method of life required of him by the newly arisen
+exigencies, and the traditional scheme of life to which he is
+accustomed. It is the individuals placed in this position who
+have the liveliest incentive to reconstruct the received scheme
+of life and are most readily persuaded to accept new standards;
+and it is through the need of the means of livelihood that men
+are placed in such a position. The pressure exerted by the
+environment upon the group, and making for a readjustment of the
+group's scheme of life, impinges upon the members of the group in
+the form of pecuniary exigencies; and it is owing to this fact --
+that external forces are in great part translated into the form
+of pecuniary or economic exigencies -- it is owing to this fact
+that we can say that the forces which count toward a readjustment
+of institutions in any modern industrial community are chiefly
+economic forces; or more specifically, these forces take the form
+of pecuniary pressure. Such a readjustment as is here
+contemplated is substantially a change in men's views as to what
+is good and right, and the means through which a change is
+wrought in men's apprehension of what is good and right is in
+large part the pressure of pecuniary exigencies.
+
+ Any change in men's views as to what is good and right in human
+life make its way but tardily at the best. Especially is this
+true of any change in the direction of what is called progress;
+that is to say, in the direction of divergence from the archaic
+position -- from the position which may be accounted the point of
+departure at any step in the social evolution of the community.
+Retrogression, reapproach to a standpoint to which the race has
+been long habituated in the past, is easier. This is especially
+true in case the development away from this past standpoint has
+not been due chiefly to a substitution of an ethnic type whose
+temperament is alien to the earlier standpoint.
+The cultural stage which lies immediately back of the present in
+the life history of Western civilization is what has here been
+called the quasi-peaceable stage. At this quasi-peaceable stage
+the law of status is the dominant feature in the scheme of life.
+There is no need of pointing out how prone the men of today are
+to revert to the spiritual attitude of mastery and of personal
+subservience which characterizes that stage. It may rather be
+said to be held in an uncertain abeyance by the economic
+exigencies of today, than to have been definitely supplanted by a
+habit of mind that is in full accord with these later-developed
+exigencies. The predatory and quasi-peaceable stages of economic
+evolution seem to have been of long duration in life history of
+all the chief ethnic elements which go to make up the populations
+of the Western culture. The temperament and the propensities
+proper to those cultural stages have, therefore, attained such a
+persistence as to make a speedy reversion to the broad features
+of the corresponding psychological constitution inevitable in the
+case of any class or community which is removed from the action
+of those forces that make for a maintenance of the
+later-developed habits of thought.
+
+ It is a matter of common notoriety that when individuals, or
+even considerable groups of men, are segregated from a higher
+industrial culture and exposed to a lower cultural environment,
+or to an economic situation of a more primitive character, they
+quickly show evidence of reversion toward the spiritual features
+which characterize the predatory type; and it seems probable that
+the dolicho-blond type of European man is possessed of a greater
+facility for such reversion to barbarism than the other ethnic
+elements with which that type is associated in the Western
+culture. Examples of such a reversion on a small scale abound in
+the later history of migration and colonization. Except for the
+fear of offending that chauvinistic patriotism which is so
+characteristic a feature of the predatory culture, and the
+presence of which is frequently the most striking mark of
+reversion in modern communities, the case of the American
+colonies might be cited as an example of such a reversion on an
+unusually large scale, though it was not a reversion of very
+large scope. 
+
+ The leisure class is in great measure sheltered from
+theÜjÜstress of those economic exigencies which prevail in any
+modem, highly organized industrial community. The exigencies of
+the struggle for the means of life are less exacting for this
+class than for any other; and as a consequence of this privileged
+position we should expect to find it one of the least responsive
+of the classes of society to the demands which the situation
+makes for a further growth of institutions and a readjustment to
+an altered industrial situation. The leisure class is the
+conservative class. The exigencies of the general economic
+situation of the community do not freely or directly impinge upon
+the members of this class. They are not required under penalty of
+forfeiture to change their habits of life and their theoretical
+views of the external world to suit the demands of an altered
+industrial technique, since they are not in the full sense an
+organic part of the industrial community. Therefore these
+exigencies do not readily produce, in the members of this class,
+that degree of uneasiness with the existing order which alone can
+lead any body of men to give up views and methods of life that
+have become habitual to them. The office of the leisure class in
+social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what
+is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel; it has
+long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion.
+
+ The prevalent conviction that the wealthy class is by nature
+conservative has been popularly accepted without much aid from
+any theoretical view as to the place and relation of that class
+in the cultural development. When an explanation of this class
+conservatism is offered, it is commonly the invidious one that
+the wealthy class opposes innovation because it has a vested
+interest, of an unworthy sort, in maintaining the present
+conditions. The explanation here put forward imputes no unworthy
+motive. The opposition of the class to changes in the cultural
+scheme is instinctive, and does not rest primarily on an
+interested calculation of material advantages; it is an
+instinctive revulsion at any departure from the accepted way of
+doing and of looking at things -- a revulsion common to all men
+and only to be overcome by stress of circumstances. All change in
+habits of life and of thought is irksome. The difference in this
+respect between the wealthy and the common run of mankind lies
+not so much in the motive which prompts to conservatism as in the
+degree of exposure to the economic forces that urge a change. The
+members of the wealthy class do not yield to the demand for
+innovation as readily as other men because they are not
+constrained to do so.
+
+ This conservatism of the wealthy class is so obvious a feature
+that it has even come to be recognized as a mark of
+respectability. Since conservatism is a characteristic of the
+wealthier and therefore more reputable portion of the community,
+it has acquired a certain honorific or decorative value. It has
+become prescriptive to such an extent that an adherence to
+conservative views is comprised as a matter of course in our
+notions of respectability; and it is imperatively incumbent on
+all who would lead a blameless life in point of social repute.
+Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous;
+and conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is
+vulgar. The first and most unreflected element in that
+instinctive revulsion and reprobation with which we turn from all
+social innovators is this sense of the essential vulgarity of the
+thing. So that even in cases where one recognizes the substantial
+merits of the case for which the innovator is spokesman -- as may
+easily happen if the evils which he seeks to remedy are
+sufficiently remote in point of time or space or personal contact
+-- still one cannot but be sensible of the fact that the
+innovator is a person with whom it is at least distasteful to be
+associated, and from whose social contact one must shrink.
+Innovation is bad form.
+
+The fact that the usages, actions, and views of the
+well-to-do leisure class acquire the character of a prescriptive
+canon of conduct for the rest of society, gives added weight and
+reach to the conservative influence of that class. It makes it
+incumbent upon all reputable people to follow their lead. So
+that, by virtue of its high position as the avatar of good form,
+the wealthier class comes to exert a retarding influence upon
+social development far in excess of that which the simple
+numerical strength of the class would assign it. Its prescriptive
+example acts to greatly stiffen the resistance of all other
+classes against any innovation, and to fix men's affections upon
+the good institutions handed down from an earlier generation.
+There is a second way in which the influence of the leisure class
+acts in the same direction, so far as concerns hindrance to the
+adoption of a conventional scheme of life more in accord with the
+exigencies of the time. This second method of upperclass guidance
+is not in strict consistency to be brought under the same
+category as the instinctive conservatism and aversion to new
+modes of thought just spoken of; but it may as well be dealt with
+here, since it has at least this much in common with the
+conservative habit of mind that it acts to retard innovation and
+the growth of social structure. The code of proprieties,
+conventionalities, and usages in vogue at any given time and
+among any given people has more or less of the character of an
+organic whole; so that any appreciable change in one point of the
+scheme involves something of a change or readjustment at other
+points also, if not a reorganization all along the line. When a
+change is made which immediately touches only a minor point in
+the scheme, the consequent derangement of the structure of
+conventionalities may be inconspicuous; but even in such a case
+it is safe to say that some derangement of the general scheme,
+more or less far-reaching, will follow. On the other hand, when
+an attempted reform involves the suppression or thorough-going
+remodelling of an institution of first-rate importance in the
+conventional scheme, it is immediately felt that a serious
+derangement of the entire scheme would result; it is felt that a
+readjustment of the structure to the new form taken on by one of
+its chief elements would be a painful and tedious, if not a
+doubtful process.
+
+In order to realize the difficulty which such a radical change in
+any one feature of the conventional scheme of life would involve,
+it is only necessary to suggest the suppression of the monogamic
+family, or of the agnatic system of consanguinity, or of private
+property, or of the theistic faith, in any country of the Western
+civilization; or suppose the suppression of ancestor worship in
+China, or of the caste system in india, or of slavery in Africa,
+or the establishment of equality of the sexes in Mohammedan
+countries. It needs no argument to show that the derangement of
+the general structure of conventionalities in any of these cases
+would be very considerable. In order to effect such an innovation
+a very far-reaching alteration of men's habits of thought would
+be involved also at other points of the scheme than the one
+immediately in question. The aversion to any such innovation
+amounts to a shrinking from an essentially alien scheme of life.
+
+The revulsion felt by good people at any proposed departure from
+the accepted methods of life is a familiar fact of everyday
+experience. It is not unusual to hear those persons who dispense
+salutary advice and admonition to the community express
+themselves forcibly upon the far-reaching pernicious effects
+which the community would suffer from such relatively slight
+changes as the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, an
+increased facility of divorce, adoption of female suffrage,
+prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating
+beverages, abolition or restriction of inheritances, etc. Any one
+of these innovations would, we are told, "shake the social
+structure to its base," "reduce society to chaos," "subvert the
+foundations of morality," "make life intolerable," "confound the
+order of nature," etc. These various locutions are, no doubt, of
+the nature of hyperbole; but, at the same time, like all
+overstatement, they are evidence of a lively sense of the gravity
+of the consequences which they are intended to describe. The
+effect of these and like innovations in deranging the accepted
+scheme of life is felt to be of much graver consequence than the
+simple alteration of an isolated item in a series of contrivances
+for the convenience of men in society. What is true in so obvious
+a degree of innovations of first-rate importance is true in a
+less degree of changes of a smaller immediate importance. The
+aversion to change is in large part an aversion to the bother of
+making the readjustment which any given change will necessitate;
+and this solidarity of the system of institutions of any given
+culture or of any given people strengthens the instinctive
+resistance offered to any change in men's habits of thought, even
+in matters which, taken by themselves, are of minor importance.
+A consequence of this increased reluctance, due to the
+solidarity of human institutions, is that any innovation calls
+for a greater expenditure of nervous energy in making the
+necessary readjustment than would otherwise be the case. It is
+not only that a change in established habits of thought is
+distasteful. The process of readjustment of the accepted theory
+of life involves a degree of mental effort -- a more or less
+protracted and laborious effort to find and to keep one's
+bearings under the altered circumstances. This process requires a
+certain expenditure of energy, and so presumes, for its
+successful accomplishment, some surplus of energy beyond that
+absorbed in the daily struggle for subsistence. Consequently it
+follows that progress is hindered by underfeeding and excessive
+physical hardship, no less effectually than by such a luxurious
+life as will shut out discontent by cutting off the occasion for
+it. The abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are
+entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance, are
+conservative because they cannot afford the effort of taking
+thought for the day after tomorrow; just as the highly prosperous
+are conservative because they have small occasion to be
+discontented with the situation as it stands today.
+
+From this proposition it follows that the institution of a
+leisure class acts to make the lower classes conservative by
+withdrawing from them as much as it may of the means of
+sustenance, and so reducing their consumption, and consequently
+their available energy, to such a point as to make them incapable
+of the effort required for the learning and adoption of new
+habits of thought. The accumulation of wealth at the upper end of
+the pecuniary scale implies privation at the lower end of the
+scale. It is a commonplace that, wherever it occurs, a
+considerable degree of privation among the body of the people is
+a serious obstacle to any innovation.
+
+This direct inhibitory effect of the unequal distribution of
+wealth is seconded by an indirect effect tending to the same
+result. As has already been seen, the imperative example set by
+the upper class in fixing the canons of reputability fosters the
+practice of conspicuous consumption. The prevalence of
+conspicuous consumption as one of the main elements in the
+standard of decency among all classes is of course not traceable
+wholly to the example of the wealthy leisure class, but the
+practice and the insistence on it are no doubt strengthened by
+the example of the leisure class. The requirements of decency in
+this matter are very considerable and very imperative; so that
+even among classes whose pecuniary position is sufficiently
+strong to admit a consumption of goods considerably in excess of
+the subsistence minimum, the disposable surplus left over after
+the more imperative physical needs are satisfied is not
+infrequently diverted to the purpose of a conspicuous decency,
+rather than to added physical comfort and fullness of life.
+Moreover, such surplus energy as is available is also likely to
+be expended in the acquisition of goods for conspicuous
+consumption or conspicuous boarding. The result is that the
+requirements of pecuniary reputability tend (1) to leave but a
+scanty subsistence minimum available for other than conspicuous
+consumption, and (2) to absorb any surplus energy which may be
+available after the bare physical necessities of life have been
+provided for. The outcome of the whole is a strengthening of the
+general conservative attitude of the community. The institution
+of a leisure class hinders cultural development immediately (1)
+by the inertia proper to the class itself, (2) through its
+prescriptive example of conspicuous waste and of conservatism,
+and (3) indirectly through that system of unequal distribution of
+wealth and sustenance on which the institution itself rests.
+To this is to be added that the leisure class has also a material
+interest in leaving things as they are. Under the circumstances
+prevailing at any given time this class is in a privileged
+position, and any departure from the existing order may be
+expected to work to the detriment of the class rather than the
+reverse. The attitude of the class, simply as influenced by its
+class interest, should therefore be to let well-enough alone.
+This interested motive comes in to supplement the strong
+instinctive bias of the class, and so to render it even more
+consistently conservative than it otherwise would be.
+
+All this, of course, bas nothing to say in the way of eulogy or
+deprecation of the office of the leisure class as an exponent and
+vehicle of conservatism or reversion in social structure. The
+inhibition which it exercises may be salutary or the reverse.
+Wether it is the one or the other in any given case is a question
+of casuistry rather than of general theory. There may be truth in
+the view (as a question of policy) so often expressed by the
+spokesmen of the conservative element, that without some such
+substantial and consistent resistance to innovation as is offered
+by the conservative well-to-do classes, social innovation and
+experiment would hurry the community into untenable and
+intolerable situations; the only possible result of which would
+be discontent and disastrous reaction. All this, however, is
+beside the present argument.
+
+But apart from all deprecation, and aside from all question as to
+the indispensability of some such check on headlong innovation,
+the leisure class, in the nature of things, consistently acts to
+retard that adjustment to the environment which is called social
+advance or development. The characteristic attitude of the class
+may be summed up in the maxim: "Whatever is, is right" whereas
+the law of natural selection, as applied to human institutions,
+gives the axiom: "Whatever is, is wrong." Not that the
+institutions of today are wholly wrong for the purposes of the
+life of today, but they are, always and in the nature of things,
+wrong to some extent. They are the result of a more or less
+inadequate adjustment of the methods of living to a situation
+which prevailed at some point in the past development; and they
+are therefore wrong by something more than the interval which
+separates the present situation from that of the past. "Right"
+and "wrong" are of course here used without conveying any
+rejection as to what ought or ought not to be. They are applied
+simply from the (morally colorless) evolutionary standpoint, and
+are intended to designate compatibility or incompatibility with
+the effective evolutionary process. The institution of a leisure
+class, by force or class interest and instinct, and by precept
+and prescriptive example, makes for the perpetuation of the
+existing maladjustment of institutions, and even favors a
+reversion to a somewhat more archaic scheme of life; a scheme
+which would be still farther out of adjustment with the
+exigencies of life under the existing situation even than the
+accredited, obsolescent scheme that has come down from the
+immediate past.
+
+But after all has been said on the head of conservation of the
+good old ways, it remains true that institutions change and
+develop. There is a cumulative growth of customs and habits of
+thought; a selective adaptation of conventions and methods of
+life. Something is to be said of the office of the leisure class
+in guiding this growth as well as in retarding it; but little can
+be said here of its relation to institutional growth except as it
+touches the institutions that are primarily and immediately of an
+economic character. These institutions -- the economic structure
+-- may be roughly distinguished into two classes or categories,
+according as they serve one or the other of two divergent
+purposes of economic life.
+
+To adapt the classical terminology, they are institutions of
+acquisition or of production; or to revert to terms already
+employed in a different connection in earlier chapters, they are
+pecuniary or industrial institutions; or in still other terms,
+they are institutions serving either the invidious or the
+non-invidious economic interest. The former category have to do
+with "business," the latter with industry, taking the latter word
+in the mechanical sense. The latter class are not often
+recognized as institutions, in great part because they do not
+immediately concern the ruling class, and are, therefore, seLdom
+the subject of legislation or of deliberate convention. When they
+do receive attention they are commonly approached from the
+pecuniary or business side; that being the side or phase of
+economic life that chiefly occupies men's deliberations in our
+time, especially the deliberations of the upper classes. These
+classes have little else than a business interest in things
+economic, and on them at the same time it is chiefly incumbent to
+deliberate upon the community's affairs.
+
+The relation of the leisure (that is, propertied non-industrial)
+class to the economic process is a pecuniary relation -- a
+relation of acquisition, not of production; of exploitation, not
+of serviceability. indirectly their economic office may, of
+course, be of the utmost importance to the economic life process;
+and it is by no means here intended to depreciate the economic
+function of the propertied class or of the captains of industry,
+The purpose is simply to point out what is the nature of the
+relation of these classes to the industrial process and to
+economic institutions. Their office is of a parasitic character,
+and their interest is to divert what substance they may to their
+own use, and to retain whatever is under their hand. The
+conventions of the business world have grown up under the
+selective surveillance of this principle of predation or
+parasitism. They are conventions of ownership; derivatives, more
+or less remote, of the ancient predatory culture. But these
+pecuniary institutions do not entirely fit the situation of
+today, for they have grown up under a past situation differing
+somewhat from the present. Even for effectiveness in the
+pecuniary way, therefore, they are not as apt as might be. The
+changed industrial life requires changed methods of acquisition;
+and the pecuniary classes have some interest in so adapting the
+pecuniary institutions as to give them the best effect for
+acquisition of private gain that is compatible with the
+continuance of the industrial process out of which this gain
+arises. Hence there is a more or less consistent trend in the
+leisure-class guidance of institutional growth, answering to the
+pecuniary ends which shape leisure-class economic life.
+
+The effect of the pecuniary interest and the pecuniary habit of
+mind upon the growth of institutions is seen in those
+enactments and conventions that make for security of property,
+enforcement of contracts, facility of pecuniary transactions,
+vested interests. Of such bearing are changes affecting
+bankruptcy and receiverships, limited liability, banking and
+currency, coalitions of laborers or employers, trusts and pools.
+The community's institutional furniture of this kind is of
+immediate consequence only to the propertied classes, and in
+proportion as they are propertied; that is to say, in proportion
+as they are to be ranked with the leisure class. But indirectly
+these conventions of business life are of the gravest consequence
+for the industrial process and for the life of the community. And
+in guiding the institutional growth in this respect, the
+pecuniary classes, therefore, serve a purpose of the most serious
+importance to the community, not only in the conservation of the
+accepted social scheme, but also in shaping the industrial
+process proper. The immediate end of this pecuniary institutional
+structure and of its amelioration is the greater facility of
+peaceable and orderly exploitation; but its remoter effects far
+outrun this immediate object. Not only does the more facile
+conduct of business permit industry and extra-industrial life to
+go on with less perturbation; but the resulting elimination of
+disturbances and complications calling for an exercise of astute
+discrimination in everyday affairs acts to make the pecuniary
+class itself superfluous. As fast as pecuniary transactions are
+reduced to routine, the captain of industry can be dispensed
+with. This consummation, it is needless to say, lies yet in the
+indefinite future. The ameliorations wrought in favor of the
+pecuniary interest in modern institutions tend, in another field,
+to substitute the "soulless" joint-stock corporation for the
+captain, and so they make also for the dispensability, of the
+great leisure-class function of ownership. Indirectly, therefore,
+the bent given to the growth of economic institutions by the
+leisure-class influence is of very considerable industrial
+consequence.
+
+Chapter Nine
+
+The Conservation of Archaic Traits
+
+The institution of a leisure class has an effect not only upon
+social structure but also upon the individual character of the
+members of society. So soon as a given proclivity or a given
+point of view has won acceptance as an authoritative standard or
+norm of life it will react upon the character of the members of
+the society which has accepted it as a norm. It will to some
+extent shape their habits of thought and will exercise a
+selective surveillance over the development of men's aptitudes
+and inclinations. This effect is wrought partly by a coercive,
+educational adaptation of the habits of all individuals, partly
+by a selective elimination of the unfit individuals and lines of
+descent. Such human material as does not lend itself to the
+methods of life imposed by the accepted scheme suffers more or
+less elimination as well as repression. The principles of
+pecuniary emulation and of industrial exemption have in this way
+been erected into canons of life, and have become coercive
+factors of some importance in the situation to which men have to
+adapt themselves.
+
+These two broad principles of conspicuous waste and
+industrial exemption affect the cultural development both by
+guiding men's habits of thought, and so controlling the growth of
+institutions, and by selectively conserving certain traits of
+human nature that conduce to facility of life under the
+leisure-class scheme, and so controlling the effective temper of
+the community. The proximate tendency of the institution of a
+leisure class in shaping human character runs in the direction of
+spiritual survival and reversion. Its effect upon the temper of a
+community is of the nature of an arrested spiritual development.
+In the later culture especially, the institution has, on the
+whole, a conservative trend. This proposition is familiar enough
+in substance, but it may to many have the appearance of novelty
+in its present application. Therefore a summary review of its
+logical grounds may not be uncalled for, even at the risk of some
+tedious repetition and formulation of commonplaces.
+
+Social evolution is a process of selective adaptation of
+temperament and habits of thought under the stress of the
+circumstances of associated life. The adaptation of habits of
+thought is the growth of institutions. But along with the growth
+of institutions has gone a change of a more substantial
+character. Not only have the habits of men changed with the
+changing exigencies of the situation, but these changing
+exigencies have also brought about a correlative change in human
+nature. The human material of society itself varies with the
+changing conditions of life. This variation of human nature is
+held by the later ethnologists to be a process of selection
+between several relatively stable and persistent ethnic types or
+ethnic elements. Men tend to revert or to breed true, more or
+less closely, to one or another of certain types of human nature
+that have in their main features been fixed in approximate
+conformity to a situation in the past which differed from the
+situation of today. There are several of these relatively stable
+ethnic types of mankind comprised in the populations of the
+Western culture. These ethnic types survive in the race
+inheritance today, not as rigid and invariable moulds, each of a
+single precise and specific pattern, but in the form of a greater
+or smaller number of variants. Some variation of the ethnic types
+has resulted under the protracted selective process to which the
+several types and their hybrids have been subjected during the
+prehistoric and historic growth of culture.
+
+This necessary variation of the types themselves, due to a
+selective process of considerable duration and of a consistent
+trend, has not been sufficiently noticed by the writers who have
+discussed ethnic survival. The argument is here concerned with
+two main divergent variants of human nature resulting from this,
+relatively late, selective adaptation of the ethnic types
+comprised in the Western culture; the point of interest being the
+probable effect of the situation of today in furthering variation
+along one or the other of these two divergent lines.
+
+The ethnological position may be briefly summed up; and in order
+to avoid any but the most indispensable detail the schedule of
+types and variants and the scheme of reversion and survival in
+which they are concerned are here presented with a diagrammatic
+meagerness and simplicity which would not be admissible for any
+other purpose. The man of our industrial communities tends to
+breed true to one or the other of three main ethic types; the
+dolichocephalic-blond, the brachycephalic-brunette, and the
+Mediterranean -- disregarding minor and outlying elements of our
+culture. But within each of these main ethnic types the reversion
+tends to one or the other of at least two main directions of
+variation; the peaceable or antepredatory variant and the
+predatory variant. The former of these two characteristic
+variants is nearer to the generic type in each case, being the
+reversional representative of its type as it stood at the
+earliest stage of associated life of which there is available
+evidence, either archaeological or psychological. This variant is
+taken to represent the ancestors of existing civilized man at the
+peaceable, savage phase of life which preceded the predatory
+culture, the regime of status, and the growth of pecuniary
+emulation. The second or predatory variant of the types is taken
+to be a survival of a more recent modification of the main ethnic
+types and their hybrids -- of these types as they were modified,
+mainly by a selective adaptation, under the discipline of the
+predatory culture and the latter emulative culture of the
+quasi-peaceable stage, or the pecuniary culture proper.
+
+Under the recognized laws of heredity there may be a survival
+from a more or less remote past phase. In the ordinary, average,
+or normal case, if the type has varied, the traits of the type
+are transmitted approximately as they have stood in the recent
+past -- which may be called the hereditary present. For the
+purpose in hand this hereditary present is represented by the
+later predatory and the quasi-peaceable culture.
+
+It is to the variant of human nature which is characteristic of
+this recent -- hereditarily still existing -- predatory or
+quasipredatory culture that the modern civilized man tends to
+breed true in the common run of cases. This proposition requires
+some qualification so far as concerns the descendants of the
+servile or repressed classes of barbarian times, but the
+qualification necessary is probably not so great as might at
+first thought appear. Taking the population as a whole, this
+predatory, emulative variant does not seem to have attained a
+high degree of consistency or stability. That is to say, the
+human nature inherited by modern Occidental man is not nearly
+uniform in respect of the range or the relative strength of the
+various aptitudes and propensities which go to make it up. The
+man of the hereditary present is slightly archaic as judged for
+the purposes of the latest exigencies of associated life. And the
+type to which the modern man chiefly tends to revert under the
+law of variation is a somewhat more archaic human nature. On the
+other hand, to judge by the reversional traits which show
+themselves in individuals that vary from the prevailing predatory
+style of temperament, the ante-predatory variant seems to have a
+greater stability and greater symmetry in the distribution or
+relative force of its temperamental elements.
+
+This divergence of inherited human nature, as between an earlier
+and a later variant of the ethnic type to which the individual
+tends to breed true, is traversed and obscured by a similar
+divergence between the two or three main ethnic types that go to
+make up the Occidental populations. The individuals in these
+communities are conceived to be, in virtually every
+instance, hybrids of the prevailing ethnic elements combined in
+the most varied proportions; with the result that they tend to
+take back to one or the other of the component ethnic types.
+These ethnic types differ in temperament in a way somewhat
+similar to the difference between the predatory and the
+antepredatory variants of the types; the dolicho-blond type
+showing more of the characteristics of the predatory temperament
+-- or at least more of the violent disposition -- than the
+brachycephalic-brunette type, and especially more than the
+Mediterranean. When the growth of institutions or of the
+effective sentiment of a given community shows a divergence from
+the predatory human nature, therefore, it is impossible to say
+with certainty that such a divergence indicates a reversion to
+the ante-predatory variant. It may be due to an increasing
+dominance of the one or the other of the "lower" ethnic elements
+in the population. Still, although the evidence is not as
+conclusive as might be desired, there are indications that the
+variations in the effective temperament of modern communities is
+not altogether due to a selection between stable ethnic types. It
+seems to be to some appreciable extent a selection between the
+predatory and the peaceable variants of the several types.
+This conception of contemporary human evolution is not
+indispensable to the discussion. The general conclusions reached
+by the use of these concepts of selective adaptation would remain
+substantially true if the earlier, Darwinian and Spencerian,
+terms and concepts were substituted. Under the circumstances,
+some latitude may be admissible in the use of terms. The word
+"type" is used loosely, to denote variations of temperament which
+the ethnologists would perhaps recognize only as trivial variants
+of the type rather than as distinct ethnic types. Wherever a
+closer discrimination seems essential to the argument, the effort
+to make such a closer discrimination will be evident from the
+context.
+
+The ethnic types of today, then, are variants of the
+primitive racial types. They have suffered some alteration, and
+have attained some degree of fixity in their altered form, under
+the discipline of the barbarian culture. The man of the
+hereditary present is the barbarian variant, servile or
+aristocratic, of the ethnic elements that constitute him. But
+this barbarian variant has not attained the highest degree of
+homogeneity or of stability. The barbarian culture -- the
+predatory and quasi-peaceable cultural stages -- though of great
+absolute duration, has been neither protracted enough nor
+invariable enough in character to give an extreme fixity of type.
+Variations from the barbarian human nature occur with some
+frequency, and these cases of variation are becoming more
+noticeable today, because the conditions of modern life no longer
+act consistently to repress departures from the barbarian normal.
+The predatory temperament does not lead itself to all the
+purposes of modern life, and more especially not to modern
+industry.
+
+Departures from the human nature of the hereditary present are
+most frequently of the nature of reversions to an earlier variant
+of the type. This earlier variant is represented by the
+temperament which characterizes the primitive phase of peaceable
+savagery. The circumstances of life and the ends of effort that
+prevailed before the advent of the barbarian culture, shaped
+human nature and fixed it as regards certain fundamental traits.
+And it is to these ancient, generic features that modern men are
+prone to take back in case of variation from the human nature of
+the hereditary present. The conditions under which men lived in
+the most primitive stages of associated life that can properly be
+called human, seem to have been of a peaceful kind; and the
+character -- the temperament and spiritual attitude of men under
+these early conditions or environment and institutions seems to
+have been of a peaceful and unaggressive, not to say an indolent,
+cast. For the immediate purpose this peaceable cultural stage may
+be taken to mark the initial phase of social development. So far
+as concerns the present argument, the dominant spiritual feature
+of this presumptive initial phase of culture seems to have been
+an unreflecting, unformulated sense of group solidarity, largely
+expressing itself in a complacent, but by no means strenuous,
+sympathy with all facility of human life, and an uneasy revulsion
+against apprehended inhibition or futility of life. Through its
+ubiquitous presence in the habits of thought of the
+ante-predatory savage man, this pervading but uneager sense of
+the generically useful seems to have exercised an appreciable
+constraining force upon his life and upon the manner of his
+habitual contact with other members of the group.
+
+The traces of this initial, undifferentiated peaceable phase of
+culture seem faint and doubtful if we look merely to such
+categorical evidence of its existence as is afforded by usages
+and views in vogue within the historical present, whether in
+civilized or in rude communities; but less dubious evidence of
+its existence is to be found in psychological survivals, in the
+way of persistent and pervading traits of human character. These
+traits survive perhaps in an especial degree among those ethic
+elements which were crowded into the background during the
+predatory culture. Traits that were suited to the earlier habits
+of life then became relatively useless in the individual struggle
+for existence. And those elements of the population, or those
+ethnic groups, which were by temperament less fitted to the
+predatory life were repressed and pushed into the background.
+On the transition to the predatory culture the character of the
+struggle for existence changed in some degree from a struggle of
+the group against a non-human environment to a struggle against a
+human environment. This change was accompanied by an increasing
+antagonism and consciousness of antagonism between the individual
+members of the group. The conditions of success within the group,
+as well as the conditions of the survival of the group, changed
+in some measure; and the dominant spiritual attitude for the
+group gradually changed, and brought a different range of
+aptitudes and propensities into the position of legitimate
+dominance in the accepted scheme of life. Among these archaic
+traits that are to be regarded as survivals from the peaceable
+cultural phase, are that instinct of race solidarity which we
+call conscience, including the sense of truthfulness and equity,
+and the instinct of workmanship, in its naive, non-invidious
+expression.
+
+Under the guidance of the later biological and psychological
+science, human nature will have to be restated in terms of habit;
+and in the restatement, this, in outline, appears to be the only
+assignable place and ground of these traits. These habits of life
+are of too pervading a character to be ascribed to the influence
+of a late or brief discipline. The ease with which they are
+temporarily overborne by the special exigencies of recent and
+modern life argues that these habits are the surviving effects of
+a discipline of extremely ancient date, from the teachings of
+which men have frequently been constrained to depart in detail
+under the altered circumstances of a later time; and the almost
+ubiquitous fashion in which they assert themselves whenever the
+pressure of special exigencies is relieved, argues that the
+process by which the traits were fixed and incorporated into the
+spiritual makeup of the type must have lasted for a relatively
+very long time and without serious intermission. The point is not
+seriously affected by any question as to whether it was a process
+of habituation in the old-fashioned sense of the word or a
+process of selective adaptation of the race.
+
+The character and exigencies of life, under that regime of status
+and of individual and class antithesis which covers the entire
+interval from the beginning of predatory culture to the present,
+argue that the traits of temperament here under discussion could
+scarcely have arisen and acquired fixity during that interval. It
+is entirely probable that these traits have come down from an
+earlier method of life, and have survived through the interval of
+predatory and quasi-peaceable culture in a condition of
+incipient, or at least imminent, desuetude, rather than that they
+have been brought out and fixed by this later culture. They
+appear to be hereditary characteristics of the race, and to have
+persisted in spite of the altered requirements of success under
+the predatory and the later pecuniary stages of culture. They
+seem to have persisted by force of the tenacity of transmission
+that belongs to an hereditary trait that is present in some
+degree in every member of the species, and which therefore rests
+on a broad basis of race continuity.
+
+Such a generic feature is not readily eliminated, even under a
+process of selection so severe and protracted as that to which
+the traits here under discussion were subjected during the
+predatory and quasi-peaceable stages. These peaceable traits are
+in great part alien to the methods and the animus of barbarian
+life. The salient characteristic of the barbarian culture is an
+unremitting emulation and antagonism between classes and between
+individuals. This emulative discipline favors those individuals
+and lines of descent which possess the peaceable savage traits in
+a relatively slight degree. It therefore tends to eliminate these
+traits, and it has apparently weakened them, in an appreciable
+degree, in the populations that have been subject to it. Even
+where the extreme penalty for non-conformity to the barbarian
+type of temperament is not paid, there results at least a more or
+less consistent repression of the non-conforming individuals and
+lines of descent. Where life is largely a struggle between
+individuals within the group, the possession of the ancient
+peaceable traits in a marked degree would hamper an individual in
+the struggle for life.
+
+Under any known phase of culture, other or later than the
+presumptive initial phase here spoken of, the gifts of
+good-nature, equity, and indiscriminate sympathy do not
+appreciably further the life of the individual. Their possession
+may serve to protect the individual from hard usage at the hands
+of a majority that insists on a modicum of these ingredients in
+their ideal of a normal man; but apart from their indirect and
+negative effect in this way, the individual fares better under
+the regime of competition in proportion as he has less of these
+gifts. Freedom from scruple, from sympathy, honesty and regard
+for life, may, within fairly wide limits, he said to further the
+success of the individual in the pecuniary culture. The highly
+successful men of all times have commonly been of this type;
+except those whose success has not been scored in terms of either
+wealth or power. It is only within narrow limits, and then only
+in a Pickwickian sense, that honesty is the best policy.
+
+As seen from the point of view of life under modern
+civilized conditions in an enlightened community of the Western
+culture, the primitive, ante-predatory savage, whose character it
+has been attempted to trace in outline above, was not a great
+success. Even for the purposes of that hypothetical culture to
+which his type of human nature owes what stability it has -- even
+for the ends of the peaceable savage group -- this primitive man
+has quite as many and as conspicuous economic failings as he has
+economic virtues -- as should be plain to any one whose sense of
+the case is not biased by leniency born of a fellow-feeling. At
+his best he is "a clever, good-for-nothing fellow." The
+shortcomings of this presumptively primitive type of character
+are weakness, inefficiency, lack of initiative and ingenuity, and
+a yielding and indolent amiability, together with a lively but
+inconsequential animistic sense. Along with these traits go
+certain others which have some value for the collective life
+process, in the sense that they further the facility of life in
+the group. These traits are truthfulness, peaceableness,
+good-will, and a non-emulative, non-invidious interest in men and
+things.
+
+With the advent of the predatory stage of life there comes a
+change in the requirements of the successful human character.
+Men's habits of life are required to adapt themselves to new
+exigencies under a new scheme of human relations. The same
+unfolding of energy, which had previously found expression in the
+traits of savage life recited above, is now required to find
+expression along a new line of action, in a new group of habitual
+responses to altered stimuli. The methods which, as counted in
+terms of facility of life, answered measurably under the earlier
+conditions, are no longer adequate under the new conditions. The
+earlier situation was characterized by a relative absence of
+antagonism or differentiation of interests, the later situation
+by an emulation constantly increasing in relative absence of
+antagonism or differentiation of interests, the later situation
+by an emulation constantly increasing in intensity and narrowing
+in scope. The traits which characterize the predatory and
+subsequent stages of culture, and which indicate the types of man
+best fitted to survive under the regime of status, are (in their
+primary expression) ferocity, self-seeking, clannishness, and
+disingenuousness -- a free resort to force and fraud.
+
+Under the severe and protracted discipline of the regime of
+competition, the selection of ethnic types has acted to give a
+somewhat pronounced dominance to these traits of character, by
+favoring the survival of those ethnic elements which are most
+richly endowed in these respects. At the same time the earlier --
+acquired, more generic habits of the race have never ceased to
+have some usefulness for the purpose of the life of the
+collectivity and have never fallen into definitive abeyance.
+It may be worth while to point out that the dolicho-blond type of
+European man seems to owe much of its dominating
+influence and its masterful position in the recent culture to its
+possessing the characteristics of predatory man in an exceptional
+degree. These spiritual traits, together with a large endowment
+of physical energy -- itself probably a result of selection
+between groups and between lines of descent -- chiefly go to
+place any ethnic element in the position of a leisure or master
+class, especially during the earlier phases of the development of
+the institution of a leisure class. This need not mean that
+precisely the same complement of aptitudes in any individual
+would insure him an eminent personal success. Under the
+competitive regime, the conditions of success for the individual
+are not necessarily the same as those for a class. The success of
+a class or party presumes a strong element of clannishness, or
+loyalty to a chief, or adherence to a tenet; whereas the
+competitive individual can best achieve his ends if he combines
+the barbarian's energy, initiative, self-seeking and
+disingenuousness with the savage's lack of loyalty or
+clannishness. It may be remarked by the way, that the men who
+have scored a brilliant (Napoleonic) success on the basis of an
+impartial self-seeking and absence of scruple, have not
+uncommonly shown more of the physical characteristics of the
+brachycephalic-brunette than of the dolicho-blond. The greater
+proportion of moderately successful individuals, in a
+self-seeking way, however, seem, in physique, to belong to the
+last-named ethnic element.
+
+The temperament induced by the predatory habit of life makes for
+the survival and fullness of life of the individual under a
+regime of emulation; at the same time it makes for the survival
+and success of the group if the group's life as a collectivity is
+also predominantly a life of hostile competition with other
+groups. But the evolution of economic life in the industrially
+more mature communities has now begun to take such a turn that
+the interest of the community no longer coincides with the
+emulative interests of the individual. In their corporate
+capacity, these advanced industrial communities are ceasing to be
+competitors for the means of life or for the right to live --
+except in so far as the predatory propensities of their ruling
+classes keep up the tradition of war and rapine. These
+communities are no longer hostile to one another by force of
+circumstances, other than the circumstances of tradition and
+temperament. Their material interests -- apart, possibly, from
+the interests of the collective good fame -- are not only no
+longer incompatible, but the success of any one of the
+communities unquestionably furthers the fullness of life of any
+other community in the group, for the present and for an
+incalculable time to come. No one of them any longer has any
+material interest in getting the better of any other. The same is
+not true in the same degree as regards individuals and their
+relations to one another.
+
+The collective interests of any modern community center in
+industrial efficiency. The individual is serviceable for the ends
+of the community somewhat in proportion to his efficiency in the
+productive employments vulgarly so called. This collective
+interest is best served by honesty, diligence, peacefulness,
+good-will, an absence of self-seeking, and an habitual
+recognition and apprehension of causal sequence, without
+admixture of animistic belief and without a sense of dependence
+on any preternatural intervention in the course of events. Not
+much is to be said for the beauty, moral excellence, or general
+worthiness and reputability of such a prosy human nature as these
+traits imply; and there is little ground of enthusiasm for the
+manner of collective life that would result from the prevalence
+of these traits in unmitigated dominance. But that is beside the
+point. The successful working of a modern industrial community is
+best secured where these traits concur, and it is attained in the
+degree in which the human material is characterized by their
+possession. Their presence in some measure is required in order
+to have a tolerable adjustment to the circumstances of the modern
+industrial situation. The complex, comprehensive. essentially
+peaceable, and highly organized mechanism of the modern
+industrial community works to the best advantage when these
+traits, or most of them, are present in the highest practicable
+degree. These traits are present in a markedly less degree in the
+man of the predatory type than is useful for the purposes of the
+modern collective life.
+
+On the other hand, the immediate interest of the individual under
+the competitive regime is best served by shrewd trading and
+unscrupulous management. The characteristics named above as
+serving the interests of the community are disserviceable to the
+individual, rather than otherwise. The presence of these
+aptitudes in his make-up diverts his energies to other ends than
+those of pecuniary gain; and also in his pursuit of gain they
+lead him to seek gain by the indirect and ineffectual channels of
+industry, rather than by a free and unfaltering career of sharp
+practice. The industrial aptitudes are pretty consistently a
+hindrance to the individual. Under the regime of emulation the
+members of a modern industrial community are rivals, each of whom
+will best attain his individual and immediate advantage if,
+through an exceptional exemption from scruple, he is able
+serenely to overreach and injure his fellows when the chance
+offers.
+
+It has already been noticed that modern economic institutions
+fall into two roughly distinct categories -- the pecuniary and
+the industrial. The like is true of employments. Under the former
+head are employments that have to do with ownership or
+acquisition; under the latter head, those that have to do with
+workmanship or production. As was found in speaking of the growth
+of institutions, so with regard to employments. The economic
+interests of the leisure class lie in the pecuniary employments;
+those of the working classes lie in both classes of employments,
+but chiefly in the industrial. Entrance to the leisure class lies
+through the pecuniary employments.
+
+These two classes of employment differ materially in respect of
+the aptitudes required for each; and the training which they give
+similarly follows two divergent lines. The discipline of the
+pecuniary employments acts to conserve and to cultivate certain
+of the predatory aptitudes and the predatory animus. It does this
+both by educating those individuals and classes who are occupied
+with these employments and by selectively repressing and
+eliminating those individuals and lines of descent that are unfit
+in this respect. So far as men's habits of thought are shaped by
+the competitive process of acquisition and tenure; so far as
+their economic functions are comprised within the range of
+ownership of wealth as conceived in terms of exchange value, and
+its management and financiering through a permutation of values;
+so far their experience in economic life favors the survival and
+accentuation of the predatory temperament and habits of thought.
+Under the modern, peaceable system, it is of course the peaceable
+range of predatory habits and aptitudes that is chiefly fostered
+by a life of acquisition. That is to say, the pecuniary
+employments give proficiency in the general line of practices
+comprised under fraud, rather than in those that belong under the
+more archaic method of forcible seizure.
+
+These pecuniary employments, tending to conserve the
+predatory temperament, are the employments which have to do with
+ownership -- the immediate function of the leisure class proper
+-- and the subsidiary functions concerned with acquisition and
+accumulation. These cover the class of persons and that range of
+duties in the economic process which have to do with the
+ownership of enterprises engaged in competitive industry;
+especially those fundamental lines of economic management which
+are classed as financiering operations. To these may be added the
+greater part of mercantile occupations. In their best and
+clearest development these duties make up the economic office of
+the "captain of industry." The captain of industry is an astute
+man rather than an ingenious one, and his captaincy is a
+pecuniary rather than an industrial captaincy. Such
+administration of industry as he exercises is commonly of a
+permissive kind. The mechanically effective details of production
+and of industrial organization are delegated to subordinates of a
+less "practical" turn of mind -- men who are possessed of a gift
+for workmanship rather than administrative ability. So far as
+regards their tendency in shaping human nature by education and
+selection, the common run of non-economic employments are to be
+classed with the pecuniary employments. Such are politics and
+ecclesiastical and military employments.
+
+The pecuniary employments have also the sanction of
+reputability in a much higher degree than the industrial
+employments. In this way the leisure-class standards of good
+repute come in to sustain the prestige of those aptitudes that
+serve the invidious purpose; and the leisure-class scheme of
+decorous living, therefore, also furthers the survival and
+culture of the predatory traits. Employments fall into a
+hierarchical gradation of reputability. Those which have to do
+immediately with ownership on a large scale are the most
+reputable of economic employments proper. Next to these in good
+repute come those employments that are immediately subservient to
+ownership and financiering -- such as banking and the law.
+Banking employments also carry a suggestion of large ownership,
+and this fact is doubtless accountable for a share of the
+prestige that attaches to the business. The profession of the law
+does not imply large ownership ; but since no taint of
+usefulness, for other than the competitive purpose, attaches to
+the lawyer's trade, it grades high in the conventional scheme.
+The lawyer is exclusively occupied with the details of predatory
+fraud, either in achieving or in checkmating chicanery, and
+success in the profession is therefore accepted as marking a
+large endowment of that barbarian astuteness which has always
+commanded men's respect and fear. Mercantile pursuits are only
+half-way reputable, unless they involve a large element of
+ownership and a small element of usefulness. They grade high or
+low somewhat in proportion as they serve the higher or the lower
+needs; so that the business of retailing the vulgar necessaries
+of life descends to the level of the handicrafts and factory
+labor. Manual labor, or even the work of directing mechanical
+processes, is of course on a precarious footing as regards
+respectability. A qualification is necessary as regards the
+discipline given by the pecuniary employments. As the scale of
+industrial enterprise grows larger, pecuniary management comes to
+bear less of the character of chicanery and shrewd competition in
+detail. That is to say, for an ever-increasing proportion of the
+persons who come in contact with this phase of economic life,
+business reduces itself to a routine in which there is less
+immediate suggestion of overreaching or exploiting a competitor.
+The consequent exemption from predatory habits extends chiefly to
+subordinates employed in business. The duties of ownership and
+administration are virtually untouched by this qualification.
+The case is different as regards those individuals or classes who
+are immediately occupied with the technique and manual operations
+of production. Their daily life is not in the same degree a
+course of habituation to the emulative and invidious motives and
+maneuvers of the pecuniary side of industry. They are
+consistently held to the apprehension and coOrdination of
+mechanical facts and sequences, and to their appreciation and
+utilization for the purposes of human life. So far as concerns
+this portion of the population, the educative and selective
+action of the industrial process with which they are immediately
+in contact acts to adapt their habits of thought to the
+non-invidious purposes of the collective life. For them,
+therefore, it hastens the obsolescence of the distinctively
+predatory aptitudes and propensities carried over by heredity and
+tradition from the barbarian past of the race.
+
+The educative action of the economic life of the community,
+therefore, is not of a uniform kind throughout all its
+manifestations. That range of economic activities which is
+concerned immediately with pecuniary competition has a tendency
+to conserve certain predatory traits; while those indusstrial
+occupations which have to do immediately with the production of
+goods have in the main the contrary tendency. But with regard to
+the latter class of employments it is to be noticed in
+qualification that the persons engaged in them are nearly all to
+some extent also concerned with matters of pecuniary competition
+(as, for instance, in the competitive fixing of wages and
+salaries, in the purchase of goods for consumption, etc.).
+Therefore the distinction here made between classes of
+employments is by no means a hard and fast distinction between
+classes of persons.
+
+The employments of the leisure classes in modernindustry are such
+as to keep alive certain of the predatory habits and
+aptitudes. So far as the members of those classes take part in
+the industrial process, their training tends to conserve in them
+the barbarian temperament. But there is something to be said on
+the other side. Individuals so placed as to be exempt from strain
+may survive and transmit their characteristics even if they
+differ widely from the average of the species both in physique
+and in spiritual make-up. the chances for a survival and
+transmission of atavistic traits are greatest in those classes
+that are most sheltered from the stress of circumstances. The
+leisure class is in some degree sheltered from the stress of the
+industrial situation, and should, therefore, afford an
+exceptionally great proportion of reversions to the peaceable or
+savage temperament. It should be possible for such aberrant or
+atavistic individuals to unfold their life activity on
+ante-predatory lines without suffering as prompt a repression Or
+elimination as in the lower walks of life.
+
+Something of the sort seems to be true in fact. there is, for
+instance, an appreciable proportion of the upper classes whose
+inclinations lead them into philanthropic work, and there is a
+considerable body of sentiment in the class going to support
+efforts of reform and amelioration, And much of this
+philanthropic and reformatory effort, moreover, bears the marks
+of that amiable "cleverness" and incoherence that is
+characteristic of the primitive savage. But it may still be
+doubtful whether these facts are evidence of a larger proportion
+of reversions in the higher than in the lower strata, Even if the
+same inclinations were present in the impecunious classes, it
+would not as easily find expression there; since those classes
+lack the means and the time and energy to give effect to their
+inclinations in this respect. The prima facie evidence of the
+facts can scarcely go unquestioned.
+
+In further qualification it is to be noted that the leisure class
+of today is recruited from those who have been successful in a
+pecuniary way, and who, therefore, are presumably endowed with
+more than an even complement of the predatory traits. Entrance
+into the leisure class lies through the pecuniary employments,
+and these employments, by selection and adaptation, act to admit
+to the upper levels only those lines of descent that are
+pecuniarily fit to survive under the predatory test. And so soon
+as a case of reversion to non-predatory human nature shows itself
+on these upper levels, it is commonly weeded out and thrown back
+to the lower pecuniary levels. In order to hold its place in the
+class, a stock must have the pecuniary temperament; otherwise its
+fortune would he dissipated and it would presently lose caste.
+Instances of this kind are sufficiently frequent. The
+constituency of the leisure class is kept up by a continual
+selective process, whereby the individuals and lines of descent
+that are eminently fitted for an aggressive pecuniary competition
+are withdraw from the lower classes. In order to reach the upper
+levels the aspirant must have, not only a fair average complement
+of the pecuniary aptitudes, but he must have these gifts in such
+an eminent degree as to overcome very material difficulties that
+stand in the way of his ascent. Barring accidents, the nouveaux
+arriváéás are a picked body.
+
+This process of selective admission has, of course, always been
+going on; ever since the fashion of pecuniary emulation set in --
+which is much the same as saying, ever since the
+institution of a leisure class was first installed. But the
+precise ground of selection has not always been the same, and the
+selective process has therefore not always given the same
+results. In the early barbarian, or predatory stage proper, the
+test of fitness was prowess, in the naive sense of the word. to
+gain entrance to the class, the candidate had to he gifted with
+clannishness, massiveness, ferocity , unscrupulousness, and
+tenacity of purpose. these were the qualities that counted toward
+the accumulation and continued tenure of wealth. the economic
+basis of the leisure class, then as later, was the possession of
+wealth; hut the methods of accumulating wealth, and the gifts
+required for holding it, have changed in some degree since the
+early days of the predatory culture. In consequence of the
+selective process the dominant traits of the early barbarian
+leisure class were bold aggression, an alert sense of status, and
+a free resort to fraud. the members of the class held their place
+by tenure of prowess. In the later barbarian culture society
+attained settled methods of acquisition and possession under the
+quasi-peaceable regime of status. Simple aggression and
+unrestrained violence in great measure gave place to shrewd
+practice and chicanery, as the best approved method of
+accumulating wealth. A different range of aptitudes and
+propensities would then be conserved in the leisure class.
+Masterful aggression, and the correlative massiveness, together
+with a ruthlessly consistent sense of status, would still count
+among the most splendid traits of the class. These have remained
+in our traditions as the typical "aristocratic virtues." But with
+these were associated an increasing complement of the less
+obtrusive pecuniary virtues; such as providence, prudence, and
+chicanery. As time has gone on, and the modern peaceable stage of
+pecuniary culture has been approached, the last-named range of
+aptitudes and habits has gained in relative effectiveness for
+pecuniary ends, and they have counted for relatively more in the
+selective process under which admission is gained and place is
+held in the leisure class.
+
+The ground of selection has changed, until the aptitudes which
+now qualify for admission to the class are the pecuniary
+aptitudes only. What remains of the predatory barbarian traits is
+the tenacity of purpose or consistency of aim which distinguished
+the successful predatory barbarian from the peaceable savage whom
+he supplanted. But this trait can not be said characteristically
+to distinguish the pecuniarily successful upper-class man from
+the rank and file of the industrial classes. The training and the
+selection to which the latter are exposed in modernindustrial
+life give a similarly decisive weight to this trait. Tenacity of
+purpose may rather be said to distinguish both these classes from
+two others; the shiftless ne'er do-well and the lower-class
+delinquent. In point of natural endowment the pecuniary man
+compares with the delinquent in much the same way as the
+industrial man compares with the good-natured shiftless
+dependent. The ideal pecuniary man is like the ideal delinquent
+in his unscrupulous conversion of goods and persons to his own
+ends, and in a callous disregard of the feelings and wishes of
+others and of the remoter effects of his actions; but he is
+unlike him in possessing a keener sense of status, and in working
+more consistently and farsightedly to a remoter end. The kinship
+of the two types of temperament is further shown in a proclivity
+to "sport" and gambling, and a relish of aimless emulation. The
+ideal pecuniary man also shows a curious kinship with the
+delinquent in one of the concomitant variations of the predatory
+human nature. The delinquent is very commonly of a superstitious
+habit of mind; he is a great believer in luck, spells, divination
+and destiny, and in omens and shamanistic ceremony. Where
+circumstances are favorable, this proclivity is apt to express
+itself in a certain servile devotional fervor and a punctilious
+attention to devout observances; it may perhaps be better
+characterized as devoutness than as religion. At this point the
+temperament of the delinquent has more in common with the
+pecuniary and leisure classes than with the industrial man or
+with the class of shiftless dependents.
+
+Life in a modern industrial community, or in other words life
+under the pecuniary culture, acts by a process of selection to
+develop and conserve a certain range of aptitudes and
+propensities. The present tendency of this selective process is
+not simply a reversion to a given, immutable ethnic type. It
+tends rather to a modification of human nature differing in some
+respects from any of the types or variants transmitted out of the
+past. The objective point of the evolution is not a single one.
+The temperament which the evolution acts to establish as normal
+differs from any one of the archaic variants of human nature in
+its greater stability of aim -- greater singleness of purpose and
+greater persistence in effort. So far as concerns economic
+theory, the objective point of the selective process is on the
+whole single to this extent; although there are minor tendencies
+of considerable importance diverging from this line of
+development. But apart from this general trend the line of
+development is not single. As concerns economic theory, the
+development in other respects runs on two divergent lines. So far
+as regards the selective conservation of capacities or aptitudes
+in individuals, these two lines may be called the pecuniary and
+the industrial. As regards the conservation of propensities,
+spiritual attitude, or animus, the two may be called the
+invidious or self-regarding and the non-invidious or economical.
+As regards the intellectual or cognitive bent of the two
+directions of growth, the former may he characterized as the
+personal standpoint, of conation, qualitative relation, status,
+or worth; the latter as the impersonal standpoint, of sequence,
+quantitative relation, mechanical efficiency, or use.
+
+The pecuniary employments call into action chiefly the former of
+these two ranges of aptitudes and propensities, and act
+selectively to conserve them in the population. The industrial
+employments, on the other hand, chiefly exercise the latter
+range, and act to conserve them. An exhaustive psychological
+analysis will show that each of these two ranges of aptitudes and
+propensities is but the multiform expression of a given
+temperamental bent. By force of the unity or singleness of the
+individual, the aptitudes, animus, and interests comprised in the
+first-named range belong together as expressions of a given
+variant of human nature. The like is true of the latter range.
+The two may be conceived as alternative directions of human life,
+in such a way that a given individual inclines more or less
+consistently to the one or the other. The tendency of the
+pecuniary life is, in a general way, to conserve the barbarian
+temperament, but with the substitution of fraud and prudence, or
+administrative ability, in place of that predilection for
+physical damage that characterizes the early barbarian. This
+substitution of chicanery in place of devastation takes place
+only in an uncertain degree. Within the pecuniary employments the
+selective action runs pretty consistently in this direction, but
+the discipline of pecuniary life, outside the competition for
+gain, does not work consistently to the same effect. The
+discipline of modernlife in the consumption of time and goods
+does not act unequivocally to eliminate the aristocratic virtues
+or to foster the bourgeois virtues. The conventional scheme of
+decent living calls for a considerable exercise of the earlier
+barbarian traits. Some details of this traditional scheme of
+life, bearing on this point, have been noticed in earlier
+chapters under the head of leisure, and further details will be
+shown in later chapters.
+
+From what has been said, it appears that the leisure-class life
+and the leisure-class scheme of life should further the
+conservation of the barbarian temperament; chiefly of the
+quasi-peaceable, or bourgeois, variant, but also in some measure
+of the predatory variant. In the absence of disturbing factors,
+therefore, it should be possible to trace a difference of
+temperament between the classes of society. The aristocratic and
+the bourgeois virtues -- that is to say the destructive and
+pecuniary traits -- should be found chiefly among the upper
+classes, and the industrial virtues -- that is to say the
+peaceable traits -- chiefly among the classes given to mechanical
+industry.
+
+In a general and uncertain way this holds true, hut the test is
+not so readily applied nor so conclusive as might be wished.
+There are several assignable reasons for its partial failure. All
+classes are in a measure engaged in the pecuniary struggle, and
+in all classes the possession of the pecuniary traits counts
+towards the success and survival of the individual. Wherever the
+pecuniary culture prevails, the selective process by which men's
+habits of thought are shaped, and by which the survival of rival
+lines of descent is decided, proceeds proximately on the basis of
+fitness for acquisition. Consequently, if it were not for the
+fact that pecuniary efficiency is on the whole incompatible with
+industrial efficiency, the selective action of all occupations
+would tend to the unmitigated dominance of the pecuniary
+temperament. The result would be the installation of what has
+been known as the "economic man," as the normal and definitive
+type of human nature. But the "economic man," whose only interest
+is the self-regarding one and whose only human trait is prudence
+is useless for the purposes of modern industry.
+
+The modern industry requires an impersonal, non-invidious
+interest in the work in hand. Without this the elaborate
+processes of industry would be impossible, and would, indeed,
+never have been conceived. This interest in work differentiates
+the workman from the criminal on the one hand, and from the
+captain of industry on the other. Since work must be done in
+order to the continued life of the community, there results a
+qualified selection favoring the spiritual aptitude for work,
+within a certain range of occupations. This much, however, is to
+be conceded, that even within the industrial occupations the
+selective elimination of the pecuniary traits is an uncertain
+process, and that there is consequently an appreciable survival
+of the barbarian temperament even within these occupations. On
+this account there is at present no broad distinction in this
+respect between the leisure-class character and the character of
+the common run of the population.
+
+The whole question as to a class distinction in respect to
+spiritual make-up is also obscured by the presence, in all
+classes of society, of acquired habits of life that closely
+simulate inherited traits and at the same time act to develop in
+the entire body of the population the traits which they simulate.
+These acquired habits, or assumed traits of character, are most
+commonly of an aristocratic cast. The prescriptive position of
+the leisure class as the exemplar of reputability has imposed
+many features of the leisure-class theory of life upon the lower
+classes; with the result that there goes on, always and
+throughout society, a more or less persistent cultivation of
+these aristocratic traits. On this ground also these traits have
+a better chance of survival among the body of the people than
+would be the case if it were not for the precept and example of
+the leisure class. As one channel, and an important one, through
+which this transfusion of aristocratic views of life, and
+consequently more or less archaic traits of character goes on,
+may be mentioned the class of domestic servants. these have their
+notions of what is good and beautiful shaped by contact with the
+master class and carry the preconceptions so acquired back among
+their low-born equals, and so disseminate the higher ideals
+abroad through the community without the loss of time which this
+dissemination might otherwise suffer. The saying "Like master,
+like man, " has a greater significance than is commonly
+appreciated for the rapid popular acceptance of many elements of
+upper-class culture.
+
+There is also a further range of facts that go to lessen class
+differences as regards the survival of the pecuniary virtues. The
+pecuniary struggle produces an underfed class, of large
+proportions. This underfeeding consists in a deficiency of the
+necessaries of life or of the necessaries of a decent
+expenditure. In either case the result is a closely enforced
+struggle for the means with which to meet the daily needs;
+whether it be the physical or the higher needs. The strain of
+self-assertion against odds takes up the whole energy of the
+individual; he bends his efforts to compass his own invidious
+ends alone, and becomes continually more narrowly self-seeking.
+The industrial traits in this way tend to obsolescence through
+disuse. Indirectly, therefore, by imposing a scheme of pecuniary
+decency and by withdrawing as much as may be of the means of life
+from the lower classes, the institution of a leisure class acts
+to conserve the pecuniary traits in the body of the population.
+The result is an assimilation of the lower classes to the type of
+human nature that belongs primarily to the upper classes only.
+It appears, therefore, that there is no wide difference in
+temperament between the upper and the lower classes; but it
+appears also that the absence of such a difference is in good
+part due to the prescriptive example of the leisure class and to
+the popular acceptance of those broad principles of conspicuous
+waste and pecuniary emulation on which the institution of a
+leisure class rests. The institution acts to lower the industrial
+efficiency of the community and retard the adaptation of human
+nature to the exigencies of modern industrial life. It affects
+the prevalent or effective human nature in a conservative
+direction, (1) by direct transmission of archaic traits, through
+inheritance within the class and wherever the leisure-class blood
+is transfused outside the class, and (2) by conserving and
+fortifying the traditions of the archaic regime, and so making
+the chances of survival of barbarian traits greater also outside
+the range of transfusion of leisure-class blood.
+
+But little if anything has been done towards collecting or
+digesting data that are of special significance for the question
+of survival or elimination of traits in the modern populations.
+Little of a tangible character can therefore be offered in
+support of the view here taken, beyond a discursive review of
+such everyday facts as lie ready to hand. Such a recital can
+scarcely avoid being commonplace and tedious, but for all that it
+seems necessary to the completeness of the argument, even in the
+meager outline in which it is here attempted. A degree of
+indulgence may therefore fairly be bespoken for the succeeding
+chapters, which offer a fragmentary recital of this kind.
+
+Chapter Ten
+
+Modern Survivals of Prowess
+
+The leisure class lives by the industrial community rather than
+in it. Its relations to industry are of a pecuniary rather than
+an industrial kind. Admission to the class is gained by exercise
+of the pecuniary aptitudes -- aptitudes for acquisition rather
+than for serviceability. There is, therefore, a continued
+selective sifting of the human material that makes up the leisure
+class, and this selection proceeds on the ground of fitness for
+pecuniary pursuits. But the scheme of life of the class is in
+large part a heritage from the past, and embodies much of the
+habits and ideals of the earlier barbarian period. This archaic,
+barbarian scheme of life imposes itself also on the lower orders,
+with more or less mitigation. In its turn the scheme of life, of
+conventions, acts selectively and by education to shape the human
+material, and its action runs chiefly in the direction of
+conserving traits, habits, and ideals that belong to the early
+barbarian age -- the age of prowess and predatory life.
+
+The most immediate and unequivocal expression of that archaic
+human nature which characterizes man in the predatory stage is
+the fighting propensity proper. In cases where the predatory
+activity is a collective one, this propensity is frequently
+called the martial spirit, or, latterly, patriotism. It needs no
+insistence to find assent to the proposition that in the
+countries of civilized Europe the hereditary leisure class is
+endowed with this martial spirit in a higher degree than the
+middle classes. Indeed, the leisure class claims the distinction
+as a matter of pride, and no doubt with some grounds. War is
+honorable, and warlike prowess is eminently honorific in the eyes
+of the generality of men; and this admiration of warlike prowess
+is itself the best voucher of a predatory temperament in the
+admirer of war. The enthusiasm for war, and the predatory temper
+of which it is the index, prevail in the largest measure among
+the upper classes, especially among the hereditary leisure class.
+Moreover, the ostensible serious occupation of the upper class is
+that of government, which, in point of origin and developmental
+content, is also a predatory occupation.
+
+The only class which could at all dispute with the
+hereditary leisure class the honor of an habitual bellicose frame
+of mind is that of the lower-class delinquents. In ordinary
+times, the large body of the industrial classes is relatively
+apathetic touching warlike interests. When unexcited, this body
+of the common people, which makes up the effective force of the
+industrial community, is rather averse to any other than a
+defensive fight; indeed, it responds a little tardily even to a
+provocation which makes for an attitude of defense. In the more
+civilized communities, or rather in the communities which have
+reached an advanced industrial development, the spirit of warlike
+aggression may be said to be obsolescent among the common people.
+This does not say that there is not an appreciable number of
+individuals among the industrial classes in whom the martial
+spirit asserts itself obtrusively. Nor does it say that the body
+of the people may not be fired with martial ardor for a time
+under the stimulus of some special provocation, such as is seen
+in operation today in more than one of the countries of Europe,
+and for the time in America. But except for such seasons of
+temporary exaltation, and except for those individuals who are
+endowed with an archaic temperament of the predatory type,
+together with the similarly endowed body of individuals among the
+higher and the lowest classes, the inertness of the mass of any
+modern civilized community in this respect is probably so great
+as would make war impracticable, except against actual invasion.
+The habits and aptitudes of the common run of men make for an
+unfolding of activity in other, less picturesque directions than
+that of war.
+
+This class difference in temperament may be due in part to a
+difference in the inheritance of acquired traits in the several
+classes, but it seems also, in some measure, to correspond with a
+difference in ethnic derivation. The class difference is in this
+respect visibly less in those countries whose population is
+relatively homogeneous, ethnically, than in the countries where
+there is a broader divergence between the ethnic elements that
+make up the several classes of the community. In the same
+connection it may be noted that the later accessions to the
+leisure class in the latter countries, in a general way, show
+less of the martial spirit than contemporary representatives of
+the aristocracy of the ancient line. These nouveaux arrivés have
+recently emerged from the commonplace body of the population and
+owe their emergence into the leisure class to the exercise of
+traits and propensities which are not to be classed as prowess in
+the ancient sense.
+
+Apart from warlike activity proper, the institution of the duel
+is also an expression of the same superior readiness for combat;
+and the duel is a leisure-class institution. The duel is in
+substance a more or less deliberate resort to a fight as a final
+settlement of a difference of opinion. In civilized communities
+it prevails as a normal phenomenon only where there is an
+hereditary leisure class, and almost exclusively among that
+class. The exceptions are (1) military and naval officers who are
+ordinarily members of the leisure class, and who are at the same
+time specially trained to predatory habits of mind and (2) the
+lower-class delinquents -- who are by inheritance, or training,
+or both, of a similarly predatory disposition and habit. It is
+only the high-bred gentleman and the rowdy that normally resort
+to blows as the universal solvent of differences of opinion. The
+plain man will ordinarily fight only when excessive momentary
+irritation or alcoholic exaltation act to inhibit the more
+complex habits of response to the stimuli that make for
+provocation. He is then thrown back upon the simpler, less
+differentiated forms of the instinct of self-assertion; that is
+to say, he reverts temporarily and without reflection to an
+archaic habit of mind.
+
+This institution of the duel as a mode of finally settling
+disputes and serious questions of precedence shades off into the
+obligatory, unprovoked private fight, as a social obligation due
+to one's good repute. As a leisure-class usage of this kind we
+have, particularly, that bizarre survival of bellicose chivalry,
+the German student duel. In the lower or spurious leisure class
+of the delinquents there is in all countries a similar, though
+less formal, social obligation incumbent on the rowdy to assert
+his manhood in unprovoked combat with his fellows. And spreading
+through all grades of society, a similar usage prevails among the
+boys of the community. The boy usually knows to nicety, from day
+to day, how he and his associates grade in respect of relative
+fighting capacity; and in the community of boys there is
+ordinarily no secure basis of reputability for any one who, by
+exception, will not or can not fight on invitation.
+
+All this applies especially to boys above a certain somewhat
+vague limit of maturity. The child's temperament does not
+commonly answer to this description during infancy and the years
+of close tutelage, when the child still habitually seeks contact
+with its mother at every turn of its daily life. During this
+earlier period there is little aggression and little propensity
+for antagonism. The transition from this peaceable temper to the
+predaceous, and in extreme cases malignant, mischievousness of
+the boy is a gradual one, and it is accomplished with more
+completeness, covering a larger range of the individual's
+aptitudes, in some cases than in others. In the earlier stage of
+his growth, the child, whether boy or girl, shows less of
+initiative and aggressive self-assertion and less of an
+inclination to isolate himself and his interests from the
+domestic group in which he lives, and he shows more of
+sensitiveness to rebuke, bashfulness, timidity, and the need of
+friendly human contact. In the common run of cases this early
+temperament passes, by a gradual but somewhat rapid obsolescence
+of the infantile features, into the temperament of the boy
+proper; though there are also cases where the predaceous futures
+of boy life do not emerge at all, or at the most emerge in but a
+slight and obscure degree.
+
+In girls the transition to the predaceous stage is seldom
+accomplished with the same degree of completeness as in boys; and
+in a relatively large proportion of cases it is scarcely
+undergone at all. In such cases the transition from infancy to
+adolescence and maturity is a gradual and unbroken process of the
+shifting of interest from infantile purposes and aptitudes to the
+purposes, functions, and relations of adult life. In the girls
+there is a less general prevalence of a predaceous interval in
+the development; and in the cases where it occurs, the predaceous
+and isolating attitude during the interval is commonly less
+accentuated.
+
+In the male child the predaceous interval is ordinarily fairly
+well marked and lasts for some time, but it is commonly
+terminated (if at all) with the attainment of maturity. This last
+statement may need very material qualification. The cases are by
+no means rare in which the transition from the boyish to the
+adult temperament is not made, or is made only partially --
+understanding by the "adult" temperament the average temperament
+of those adult individuals in modern industrial life who have
+some serviceability for the purposes of the collective life
+process, and who may therefore be said to make up the effective
+average of the industrial community.
+
+The ethnic composition of the European populations varies. In
+some cases even the lower classes are in large measure made up of
+the peace-disturbing dolicho-blond; while in others this ethnic
+element is found chiefly among the hereditary leisure class. The
+fighting habit seems to prevail to a less extent among the
+working-class boys in the latter class of populations than among
+the boys of the upper classes or among those of the
+populations first named.
+
+If this generalization as to the temperament of the boy among the
+working classes should be found true on a fuller and closer
+scrutiny of the field, it would add force to the view that the
+bellicose temperament is in some appreciable degree a race
+characteristic; it appears to enter more largely into the make-up
+of the dominant, upper-class ethnic type -- the dolicho-blond --
+of the European countries than into the subservient, lower-class
+types of man which are conceived to constitute the body of the
+population of the same communities.
+
+The case of the boy may seem not to bear seriously on the
+question of the relative endowment of prowess with which the
+several classes of society are gifted; but it is at least of some
+value as going to show that this fighting impulse belongs to a
+more archaic temperament than that possessed by the average adult
+man of the industrious classes. In this, as in many other
+features of child life, the child reproduces, temporarily and in
+miniature, some of the earlier phases of the development of adult
+man. Under this interpretation, the boy's predilection for
+exploit and for isolation of his own interest is to be taken as a
+transient reversion to the human nature that is normal to the
+early barbarian culture -- the predatory culture proper. In this
+respect, as in much else, the leisure-class and the
+delinquent-class character shows a persistence into adult life of
+traits that are normal to childhood and youth, and that are
+likewise normal or habitual to the earlier stages of culture.
+Unless the difference is traceable entirely to a fundamental
+difference between persistent ethnic types, the traits that
+distinguish the swaggering delinquent and the punctilious
+gentleman of leisure from the common crowd are, in some measure,
+marks of an arrested spiritual development. They mark an immature
+phase, as compared with the stage of development attained by the
+average of the adults in the modern industrial community. And it
+will appear presently that the puerile spiritual make-up of these
+representatives of the upper and the lowest social strata shows
+itself also in the presence of other archaic traits than this
+proclivity to ferocious exploit and isolation.
+
+As if to leave no doubt about the essential immaturity of the
+fighting temperament, we have, bridging the interval between
+legitimate boyhood and adult manhood, the aimless and playful,
+but more or less systematic and elaborate, disturbances of the
+peace in vogue among schoolboys of a slightly higher age. In the
+common run of cases, these disturbances are confined to the
+period of adolescence. They recur with decreasing frequency and
+acuteness as youth merges into adult life, and so they reproduce,
+in a general way, in the life of the individual, the sequence by
+which the group has passed from the predatory to a more settled
+habit of life. In an appreciable number of cases the spiritual
+growth of the individual comes to a close before he emerges from
+this puerile phase; in these cases the fighting temper persists
+through life. Those individuals who in spiritual development
+eventually reach man's estate, therefore, ordinarily pass through
+a temporary archaic phase corresponding to the permanent
+spiritual level of the fighting and sporting men. Different
+individuals will, of course, achieve spiritual maturity and
+sobriety in this respect in different degrees; and those who fail
+of the average remain as an undissolved residue of crude humanity
+in the modern industrial community and as a foil for that
+selective process of adaptation which makes for a heightened
+industrial efficiency and the fullness of life of the
+collectivity. This arrested spiritual development may express
+itself not only in a direct participation by adults in youthful
+exploits of ferocity, but also indirectly in aiding and abetting
+disturbances of this kind on the part of younger persons. It
+thereby furthers the formation of habits of ferocity which may
+persist in the later life of the growing generation, and so
+retard any movement in the direction of a more peaceable
+effective temperament on the part of the community. If a person
+so endowed with a proclivity for exploits is in a position to
+guide the development of habits in the adolescent members of the
+community, the influence which he exerts in the direction of
+conservation and reversion to prowess may be very considerable.
+This is the significance, for instance, of the fostering care
+latterly bestowed by many clergymen and other pillars of society
+upon "boys' brigades" and similar pseudo-military organizations.
+The same is true of the encouragement given to the growth of
+"college spirit," college athletics, and the like, in the higher
+institutions of learning.
+
+These manifestations of the predatory temperament are all to be
+classed under the head of exploit. They are partly simple and
+unreflected expressions of an attitude of emulative ferocity,
+partly activities deliberately entered upon with a view to
+gaining repute for prowess. Sports of all kinds are of the same
+general character, including prize-fights, bull-fights,
+athletics, shooting, angling, yachting, and games of skill, even
+where the element of destructive physical efficiency is not an
+obtrusive feature. Sports shade off from the basis of hostile
+combat, through skill, to cunning and chicanery, without its
+being possible to draw a line at any point. The ground of an
+addiction to sports is an archaic spiritual constitution -- the
+possession of the predatory emulative propensity in a relatively
+high potency, A strong proclivity to adventuresome exploit and to
+the infliction of damage is especially pronounced in those
+employments which are in colloquial usage specifically called
+sportsmanship.
+
+It is perhaps truer, or at least more evident, as regards sports
+than as regards the other expressions of predatory emulation
+already spoken of, that the temperament which inclines men to
+them is essentially a boyish temperament. The addiction to
+sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested
+development of the man's moral nature. This peculiar boyishness
+of temperament in sporting men immediately becomes apparent when
+attention is directed to the large element of make-believe that
+is present in all sporting activity. Sports share this character
+of make-believe with the games and exploits to which children,
+especially boys, are habitually inclined. Make-believe does not
+enter in the same proportion into all sports, but it is present
+in a very appreciable degree in all. It is apparently present in
+a larger measure in sportsmanship proper and in athletic contests
+than in set games of skill of a more sedentary character;
+although this rule may not be found to apply with any great
+uniformity. It is noticeable, for instance, that even very
+mild-mannered and matter-of-fact men who go out shooting are apt
+to carry an excess of arms and accoutrements in order to impress
+upon their own imagination the seriousness of their undertaking.
+These huntsmen are also prone to a histrionic, prancing gait and
+to an elaborate exaggeration of the motions, whether of stealth
+or of onslaught, involved in their deeds of exploit. Similarly in
+athletic sports there is almost invariably present a good share
+of rant and swagger and ostensible mystification -- features
+which mark the histrionic nature of these employments. In all
+this, of course, the reminder of boyish make-believe is plain
+enough. The slang of athletics, by the way, is in great part made
+up of extremely sanguinary locutions borrowed from the
+terminology of warfare. Except where it is adopted as a necessary
+means of secret communication, the use of a special slang in any
+employment is probably to be accepted as evidence that the
+occupation in question is substantially make-believe.
+
+A further feature in which sports differ from the duel and
+similar disturbances of the peace is the peculiarity that they
+admit of other motives being assigned for them besides the
+impulses of exploit and ferocity. There is probably little if any
+other motive present in any given case, but the fact that other
+reasons for indulging in sports are frequently assigned goes to
+say that other grounds are sometimes present in a subsidiary way.
+Sportsmen -- hunters and anglers -- are more or less in the habit
+of assigning a love of nature, the need of recreation, and the
+like, as the incentives to their favorite pastime. These motives
+are no doubt frequently present and make up a part of the
+attractiveness of the sportsman's life; but these can not be the
+chief incentives. These ostensible needs could be more readily
+and fully satisfied without the accompaniment of a systematic
+effort to take the life of those creatures that make up an
+essential feature of that "nature" that is beloved by the
+sportsman. It is, indeed, the most noticeable effect of the
+sportsman's activity to keep nature in a state of chronic
+desolation by killing off all living thing whose destruction he
+can compass.
+
+Still, there is ground for the sportsman's claim that under the
+existing conventionalities his need of recreation and of contact
+with nature can best be satisfied by the course which he takes.
+Certain canons of good breeding have been imposed by the
+prescriptive example of a predatory leisure class in the past and
+have been somewhat painstakingly conserved by the usage of the
+latter-day representatives of that class; and these canons will
+not permit him, without blame, to seek contact with nature on
+other terms. From being an honorable employment handed down from
+the predatory culture as the highest form of everyday leisure,
+sports have come to be the only form of outdoor activity that has
+the full sanction of decorum. Among the proximate incentives to
+shooting and angling, then, may be the need of recreation and
+outdoor life. The remoter cause which imposes the necessity of
+seeking these objects under the cover of systematic slaughter is
+a prescription that can not be violated except at the risk of
+disrepute and consequent lesion to one's self-respect.
+
+The case of other kinds of sport is somewhat similar. Of these,
+athletic games are the best example. Prescriptive usage with
+respect to what forms of activity, exercise, and recreation are
+permissible under the code of reputable living is of course
+present here also. Those who are addicted to athletic sports, or
+who admire them, set up the claim that these afford the best
+available means of recreation and of "physical culture." And
+prescriptive usage gives countenance to the claim. The canons of
+reputable living exclude from the scheme of life of the leisure
+class all activity that can not be classed as conspicuous
+leisure. And consequently they tend by prescription to exclude it
+also from the scheme of life of the community generally. At the
+same time purposeless physical exertion is tedious and
+distasteful beyond tolerance. As has been noticed in another
+connection, recourse is in such a case had to some form of
+activity which shall at least afford a colorable pretense of
+purpose, even if the object assigned be only a make-believe.
+Sports satisfy these requirements of substantial futility
+together with a colorable make-believe of purpose. In addition to
+this they afford scope for emulation, and are attractive also on
+that account. In order to be decorous, an employment must conform
+to the leisure-class canon of reputable waste; at the same time
+all activity, in order to be persisted in as an habitual, even if
+only partial, expression of life, must conform to the generically
+human canon of efficiency for some serviceable objective end. The
+leisure-class canon demands strict and comprehensive futility,
+the instinct of workmanship demands purposeful action. The
+leisure-class canon of decorum acts slowly and pervasively, by a
+selective elimination of all substantially useful or purposeful
+modes of action from the accredited scheme of life; the instinct
+of workmanship acts impulsively and may be satisfied,
+provisionally, with a proximate purpose. It is only as the
+apprehended ulterior futility of a given line of action enters
+the reflective complex of consciousness as an element essentially
+alien to the normally purposeful trend of the life process that
+its disquieting and deterrent effect on the consciousness of the
+agent is wrought.
+
+The individual's habits of thought make an organic complex, the
+trend of which is necessarily in the direction of
+serviceability to the life process. When it is attempted to
+assimilate systematic waste or futility, as an end in life, into
+this organic complex, there presently supervenes a revulsion. But
+this revulsion of the organism may be avoided if the attention
+can be confined to the proximate, unreflected purpose of
+dexterous or emulative exertion. Sports -- hunting, angling,
+athletic games, and the like -- afford an exercise for dexterity
+and for the emulative ferocity and astuteness characteristic of
+predatory life. So long as the individual is but slightly gifted
+with reflection or with a sense of the ulterior trend of his
+actions so long as his life is substantially a life of naive
+impulsive action -- so long the immediate and unreflected
+purposefulness of sports, in the way of an expression of
+dominance, will measurably satisfy his instinct of workmanship.
+This is especially true if his dominant impulses are the
+unreflecting emulative propensities of the predaceous
+temperament. At the same time the canons of decorum will commend
+sports to him as expressions of a pecuniarily blameless life. It
+is by meeting these two requirements, of ulterior wastefulness
+and proximate purposefulness, that any given employment holds its
+place as a traditional and habitual mode of decorous recreation.
+In the sense that other forms of recreation and exercise are
+morally impossible to persons of good breeding and delicate
+sensibilities, then, sports are the best available means of
+recreation under existing circumstances.
+
+But those members of respectable society who advocate athletic
+games commonly justify their attitude on this head to themselves
+and to their neighbors on the ground that these games serve as an
+invaluable means of development. They not only improve the
+contestant's physique, but it is commonly added that they also
+foster a manly spirit, both in the participants and in the
+spectators. Football is the particular game which will probably
+first occur to any one in this community when the question of the
+serviceability of athletic games is raised, as this form of
+athletic contest is at present uppermost in the mind of those who
+plead for or against games as a means of physical or moral
+salvation. This typical athletic sport may, therefore, serve to
+illustrate the bearing of athletics upon the development of the
+contestant's character and physique. It has been said, not
+inaptly, that the relation of football to physical culture is
+much the same as that of the bull-fight to agriculture.
+Serviceability for these lusory institutions requires sedulous
+training or breeding. The material used, whether brute or human,
+is subjected to careful selection and discipline, in order to
+secure and accentuate certain aptitudes and propensities which
+are characteristic of the ferine state, and which tend to
+obsolescence under domestication. This does not mean that the
+result in either case is an all around and consistent
+rehabilitation of the ferine or barbarian habit of mind and body.
+The result is rather a one-sided return to barbarism or to the
+feroe natura -- a rehabilitation and accentuation of those ferine
+traits which make for damage and desolation, without a
+corresponding development of the traits which would serve the
+individual's self-preservation and fullness of life in a ferine
+environment. The culture bestowed in football gives a product of
+exotic ferocity and cunning. It is a rehabilitation of the early
+barbarian temperament, together with a suppression of those
+details of temperament, which, as seen from the standpoint of the
+social and economic exigencies, are the redeeming features of the
+savage character.
+
+The physical vigor acquired in the training for athletic games --
+so far as the training may be said to have this effect  -- is of
+advantage both to the individual and to the collectivity, in
+that, other things being equal, it conduces to economic
+serviceability. The spiritual traits which go with athletic
+sports are likewise economically advantageous to the individual,
+as contradistinguished from the interests of the collectivity.
+This holds true in any community where these traits are present
+in some degree in the population. Modern competition is in large
+part a process of self-assertion on the basis of these traits of
+predatory human nature. In the sophisticated form in which they
+enter into the modern, peaceable emulation, the possession of
+these traits in some measure is almost a necessary of life to the
+civilized man. But while they are indispensable to the
+competitive individual, they are not directly serviceable to the
+community. So far as regards the serviceability of the individual
+for the purposes of the collective life, emulative efficiency is
+of use only indirectly if at all. Ferocity and cunning are of no
+use to the community except in its hostile dealings with other
+communities; and they are useful to the individual only because
+there is so large a proportion of the same traits actively
+present in the human environment to which he is exposed. Any
+individual who enters the competitive struggle without the due
+endowment of these traits is at a disadvantage, somewhat as a
+hornless steer would find himself at a disadvantage in a drove of
+horned cattle.
+
+The possession and the cultivation of the predatory traits of
+character may, of course, be desirable on other than economic
+grounds. There is a prevalent aesthetic or ethical predilection
+for the barbarian aptitudes, and the traits in question minister
+so effectively to this predilection that their serviceability in
+the aesthetic or ethical respect probably offsets any economic
+unserviceability which they may give. But for the present purpose
+that is beside the point. Therefore nothing is said here as to
+the desirability or advisability of sports on the whole, or as to
+their value on other than economic grounds.
+
+In popular apprehension there is much that is admirable in the
+type of manhood which the life of sport fosters. There is
+self-reliance and good-fellowship, so termed in the somewhat
+loose colloquial use of the words. From a different point of view
+the qualities currently so characterized might be described as
+truculence and clannishness. The reason for the current approval
+and admiration of these manly qualities, as well as for their
+being called manly, is the same as the reason for their
+usefulness to the individual. The members of the community, and
+especially that class of the community which sets the pace in
+canons of taste, are endowed with this range of propensities in
+sufficient measure to make their absence in others felt as a
+shortcoming, and to make their possession in an exceptional
+degree appreciated as an attribute of superior merit. The traits
+of predatory man are by no means obsolete in the common run of
+modern populations. They are present and can be called out in
+bold relief at any time by any appeal to the sentiments in which
+they express themselves -- unless this appeal should clash with
+the specific activities that make up our habitual occupations and
+comprise the general range of our everyday interests. The common
+run of the population of any industrial community is emancipated
+from these, economically considered, untoward propensities only
+in the sense that, through partial and temporary disuse, they
+have lapsed into the background of sub-conscious motives. With
+varying degrees of potency in different individuals, they remain
+available for the aggressive shaping of men's actions and
+sentiments whenever a stimulus of more than everyday intensity
+comes in to call them forth. And they assert themselves forcibly
+in any case where no occupation alien to the predatory culture
+has usurped the individual's everyday range of interest and
+sentiment. This is the case among the leisure class and among
+certain portions of the population which are ancillary to that
+class. Hence the facility with which any new accessions to the
+leisure class take to sports; and hence the rapid growth of
+sports and of the sporting sentient in any industrial community
+where wealth has accumulated sufficiently to exempt a
+considerable part of the population from work.
+
+A homely and familiar fact may serve to show that the predaceous
+impulse does not prevail in the same degree in all classes. Taken
+simply as a feature of modern life, the habit of carrying a
+walking-stick may seem at best a trivial detail; but the usage
+has a significance for the point in question. The classes among
+whom the habit most prevails -- the classes with whom the
+walking-stick is associated in popular apprehension -- are the
+men of the leisure class proper, sporting men, and the
+lower-class delinquents. To these might perhaps be added the men
+engaged in the pecuniary employments. The same is not true of the
+common run of men engaged in industry and it may be noted by the
+way that women do not carry a stick except in case of infirmity,
+where it has a use of a different kind. The practice is of course
+in great measure a matter of polite usage; but the basis of
+polite usage is, in turn, the proclivities of the class which
+sets the pace in polite usage. The walking-stick serves the
+purpose of an advertisement that the bearer's hands are employed
+otherwise than in useful effort, and it therefore has utility as
+an evidence of leisure. But it is also a weapon, and it meets a
+felt need of barbarian man on that ground. The handling of so
+tangible and primitive a means of offense is very comforting to
+any one who is gifted with even a moderate share of ferocity.
+The exigencies of the language make it impossible to avoid an
+apparent implication of disapproval of the aptitudes,
+propensities, and expressions of life here under discussion. It
+is, however, not intended to imply anything in the way of
+deprecation or commendation of any one of these phases of human
+character or of the life process. The various elements of the
+prevalent human nature are taken up from the point of view of
+economic theory, and the traits discussed are gauged and graded
+with regard to their immediate economic bearing on the facility
+of the collective life process. That is to say, these phenomena
+are here apprehended from the economic point of view and are
+valued with respect to their direct action in furtherance or
+hindrance of a more perfect adjustment of the human collectivity
+to the environment and to the institutional structure required by
+the economic situation of the collectivity for the present and
+for the immediate future. For these purposes the traits handed
+down from the predatory culture are less serviceable than might
+be. Although even in this connection it is not to be overlooked
+that the energetic aggressiveness and pertinacity of predatory
+man is a heritage of no mean value. The economic value -- with
+some regard also to the social value in the narrower sense -- of
+these aptitudes and propensities is attempted to be passed upon
+without reflecting on their value as seen from another point of
+view. When contrasted with the prosy mediocrity of the latter-day
+industrial scheme of life, and judged by the accredited standards
+of morality, and more especially by the standards of aesthetics
+and of poetry, these survivals from a more primitive type of
+manhood may have a very different value from that here assigned
+them. But all this being foreign to the purpose in hand, no
+expression of opinion on this latter head would be in place here.
+All that is admissible is to enter the caution that these
+standards of excellence, which are alien to the present purpose,
+must not be allowed to influence our economic appreciation of
+these traits of human character or of the activities which foster
+their growth. This applies both as regards those persons who
+actively participate in sports and those whose sporting
+experience consists in contemplation only. What is here said of
+the sporting propensity is likewise pertinent to sundry
+reflections presently to be made in this connection on what would
+colloquially be known as the religious life.
+
+The last paragraph incidentally touches upon the fact that
+everyday speech can scarcely be employed in discussing this class
+of aptitudes and activities without implying deprecation or
+apology. The fact is significant as showing the habitual attitude
+of the dispassionate common man toward the propensities which
+express themselves in sports and in exploit generally. And this
+is perhaps as convenient a place as any to discuss that undertone
+of deprecation which runs through all the voluminous discourse in
+defense or in laudation of athletic sports, as well as of other
+activities of a predominantly predatory character. The same
+apologetic frame of mind is at least beginning to be observable
+in the spokesmen of most other institutions handed down from the
+barbarian phase of life. Among these archaic institutions which
+are felt to need apology are comprised, with others, the entire
+existing system of the distribution of wealth, together with the
+resulting class distinction of status; all or nearly all forms of
+consumption that come under the head of conspicuous waste; the
+status of women under the patriarchal system; and many features
+of the traditional creeds and devout observances, especially the
+exoteric expressions of the creed and the naive apprehension of
+received observances. What is to be said in this connection of
+the apologetic attitude taken in commending sports and the
+sporting character will therefore apply, with a suitable change
+in phraseology, to the apologies offered in behalf of these
+other, related elements of our social heritage.
+
+There is a feeling -- usually vague and not commonly avowed in so
+many words by the apologist himself, but ordinarily
+perceptible in the manner of his discourse -- that these sports,
+as well as the general range of predaceous impulses and habits of
+thought which underlie the sporting character, do not altogether
+commend themselves to common sense. "As to the majority of
+murderers, they are very incorrect characters." This aphorism
+offers a valuation of the predaceous temperament, and of the
+disciplinary effects of its overt expression and exercise, as
+seen from the moralist's point of view. As such it affords an
+indication of what is the deliverance of the sober sense of
+mature men as to the degree of availability of the predatory
+habit of mind for the purposes of the collective life. It is felt
+that the presumption is against any activity which involves
+habituation to the predatory attitude, and that the burden of
+proof lies with those who speak for the rehabilitation of the
+predaceous temper and for the practices which strengthen it.
+There is a strong body of popular sentiment in favor of
+diversions and enterprises of the kind in question; but there is
+at the same time present in the community a pervading sense that
+this ground of sentiment wants legitimation. The required
+legitimation is ordinarily sought by showing that although sports
+are substantially of a predatory, socially disintegrating effect;
+although their proximate effect runs in the direction of
+reversion to propensities that are industrially disserviceable;
+yet indirectly and remotely -- by some not readily comprehensible
+process of polar induction, or counter-irritation perhaps --
+sports are conceived to foster a habit of mind that is
+serviceable for the social or industrial purpose. That is to say,
+although sports are essentially of the nature of invidious
+exploit, it is presumed that by some remote and obscure effect
+they result in the growth of a temperament conducive to
+non-invidious work. It is commonly attempted to show all this
+empirically or it is rather assumed that this is the empirical
+generalization which must be obvious to any one who cares to see
+it. In conducting the proof of this thesis the treacherous ground
+of inference from cause to effect is somewhat shrewdly avoided,
+except so far as to show that the "manly virtues" spoken of above
+are fostered by sports. But since it is these manly virtues that
+are (economically) in need of legitimation, the chain of proof
+breaks off where it should begin. In the most general economic
+terms, these apologies are an effort to show that, in spite of
+the logic of the thing, sports do in fact further what may
+broadly be called workmanship. So long as he has not succeeded in
+persuading himself or others that this is their effect the
+thoughtful apologist for sports will not rest content, and
+commonly, it is to be admitted, he does not rest content. His
+discontent with his own vindication of the practice in question
+is ordinarily shown by his truculent tone and by the eagerness
+with which he heaps up asseverations in support of his position.
+But why are apologies needed? If there prevails a body of popular
+sentient in favor of sports, why is not that fact a sufficient
+legitimation? The protracted discipline of prowess to which the
+race has been subjected under the predatory and quasi-peaceable
+culture has transmitted to the men of today a temperament that
+finds gratification in these expressions of ferocity and cunning.
+So, why not accept these sports as legitimate expressions of a
+normal and wholesome human nature? What other norm is there that
+is to be lived up to than that given in the aggregate range of
+propensities that express themselves in the sentiments of this
+generation, including the hereditary strain of prowess? The
+ulterior norm to which appeal is taken is the instinct of
+workmanship, which is an instinct more fundamental, of more
+ancient prescription, than the propensity to predatory emulation.
+The latter is but a special development of the instinct of
+workmanship, a variant, relatively late and ephemeral in spite of
+its great absolute antiquity. The emulative predatory impulse --
+or the instinct of sportsmanship, as it might well be called --
+is essentially unstable in comparison with the primordial
+instinct of workmanship out of which it has been developed and
+differentiated. Tested by this ulterior norm of life, predatory
+emulation, and therefore the life of sports, falls short.
+
+The manner and the measure in which the institution of a leisure
+class conduces to the conservation of sports and
+invidious exploit can of course not be succinctly stated. From
+the evidence already recited it appears that, in sentient and
+inclinations, the leisure class is more favorable to a warlike
+attitude and animus than the industrial classes. Something
+similar seems to be true as regards sports. But it is chiefly in
+its indirect effects, though the canons of decorous living, that
+the institution has its influence on the prevalent sentiment with
+respect to the sporting life. This indirect effect goes almost
+unequivocally in the direction of furthering a survival of the
+predatory temperament and habits; and this is true even with
+respect to those variants of the sporting life which the higher
+leisure-class code of proprieties proscribes; as, e.g.,
+prize-fighting, cock-fighting, and other like vulgar expressions
+of the sporting temper. Whatever the latest authenticated
+schedule of detail proprieties may say, the accredited canons of
+decency sanctioned by the institution say without equivocation
+that emulation and waste are good and their opposites are
+disreputable. In the crepuscular light of the social nether
+spaces the details of the code are not apprehended with all the
+facility that might be desired, and these broad underlying canons
+of decency are therefore applied somewhat unreflectingly, with
+little question as to the scope of their competence or the
+exceptions that have been sanctioned in detail.
+
+Addiction to athletic sports, not only in the way of direct
+participation, but also in the way of sentiment and moral
+support, is, in a more or less pronounced degree, a
+characteristic of the leisure class; and it is a trait which that
+class shares with the lower-class delinquents, and with such
+atavistic elements throughout the body of the community as are
+endowed with a dominant predaceous trend. Few individuals among
+the populations of Western civilized countries are so far devoid
+of the predaceous instinct as to find no diversion in
+contemplating athletic sports and games, but with the common run
+of individuals among the industrial classes the inclination to
+sports does not assert itself to the extent of constituting what
+may fairly be called a sporting habit. With these classes sports
+are an occasional diversion rather than a serious feature of
+life. This common body of the people can therefore not be said to
+cultivate the sporting propensity. Although it is not obsolete in
+the average of them, or even in any appreciable number of
+individuals, yet the predilection for sports in the commonplace
+industrial classes is of the nature of a reminiscence, more or
+less diverting as an occasional interest, rather than a vital and
+permanent interest that counts as a dominant factor in shaping
+the organic complex of habits of thought into which it enters.
+As it manifests itself in the sporting life of today, this
+propensity may not appear to be an economic factor of grave
+consequence. Taken simply by itself it does not count for a great
+deal in its direct effects on the industrial efficiency or the
+consumption of any given individual; but the prevalence and the
+growth of the type of human nature of which this propensity is a
+characteristic feature is a matter of some consequence. It
+affects the economic life of the collectivity both as regards the
+rate of economic development and as regards the character of the
+results attained by the development. For better or worse, the
+fact that the popular habits of thought are in any degree
+dominated by this type of character can not but greatly affect
+the scope, direction, standards, and ideals of the collective
+economic life, as well as the degree of adjustment of the
+collective life to the environment.
+
+Something to a like effect is to be said of other traits that go
+to make up the barbarian character. For the purposes of economic
+theory, these further barbarian traits may be taken as
+concomitant variations of that predaceous temper of which prowess
+is an expression. In great measure they are not primarily of an
+economic character, nor do they have much direct economic
+bearing. They serve to indicate the stage of economic evolution
+to which the individual possessed of them is adapted. They are of
+importance, therefore, as extraneous tests of the degree of
+adaptation of the character in which they are comprised to the
+economic exigencies of today, but they are also to some extent
+important as being aptitudes which themselves go to increase or
+diminish the economic serviceability of the individual.
+
+As it finds expression in the life of the barbarian, prowess
+manifests itself in two main directions -- force and fraud. In
+varying degrees these two forms of expression are similarly
+present in modern warfare, in the pecuniary occupations, and in
+sports and games. Both lines of aptitudes are cultivated and
+strengthened by the life of sport as well as by the more serious
+forms of emulative life. Strategy or cunning is an element
+invariably present in games, as also in warlike pursuits and in
+the chase. In all of these employments strategy tends to develop
+into finesse and chicanery. Chicanery, falsehood, browbeating,
+hold a well-secured place in the method of procedure of any
+athletic contest and in games generally. The habitual employment
+of an umpire, and the minute technical regulations governing the
+limits and details of permissible fraud and strategic advantage,
+sufficiently attest the fact that fraudulent practices and
+attempts to overreach one's opponents are not adventitious
+features of the game. In the nature of the case habituation to
+sports should conduce to a fuller development of the aptitude for
+fraud; and the prevalence in the community of that predatory
+temperament which inclines men to sports connotes a prevalence of
+sharp practice and callous disregard of the interests of others,
+inDividually and collectively. Resort to fraud, in any guise and
+under any legitimation of law or custom, is an expression of a
+narrowly self-regarding habit of mind. It is needless to dwell at
+any length on the economic value of this feature of the sporting
+character.
+
+In this connection it is to be noteD that the most obvious
+characteristic of the physiognomy affected by athletic and other
+sporting men is that of an extreme astuteness. The gifts and
+exploits of Ulysses are scarcely second to those of Achilles,
+either in their substantial furtherance of the game or in the
+éclat which they give the astute sporting man among his
+associates. The pantomime of astuteness is commonly the first
+step in that assimilation to the professional sporting man which
+a youth undergoes after matriculation in any reputable school, of
+the secondary or the higher education, as the case may be. And
+the physiognomy of astuteness, as a decorative feature, never
+ceases to receive the thoughtful attention of men whose serious
+interest lies in athletic games, races, or other contests of a
+similar emulative nature. As a further indication of their
+spiritual kinship, it may be pointed out that the members of the
+lower delinquent class usually show this physiognomy of
+astuteness in a marked degree, and that they very commonly show
+the same histrionic exaggeration of it that is often seen in the
+young candidate for athletic honors. This, by the way, is the
+most legible mark of what is vulgarly called "toughness" in
+youthful aspirants for a bad name.
+
+The astute man, it may be remarked, is of no economic value to
+the community -- unless it be for the purpose of sharp
+practice in dealings with other communities. His functioning is
+not a furtherance of the generic life process. At its best, in
+its direct economic bearing, it is a conversion of the economic
+substance of the collectivity to a growth alien to the collective
+life process -- very much after the analogy of what in medicine
+would be called a benign tumor, with some tendency to transgress
+the uncertain line that divides the benign from the malign
+growths. The two barbarian traits, ferocity and astuteness, go to
+make up the predaceous temper or spiritual attitude. They are the
+expressions of a narrowly self-regarding habit of mind. Both are
+highly serviceable for individual expediency in a life looking to
+invidious success. Both also have a high aesthetic value. Both
+are fostered by the pecuniary culture. But both alike are of no
+use for the purposes of the collective life.
+
+Chapter Eleven
+
+The Belief in Luck
+
+The gambling propensity is another subsidiary trait of the
+barbarian temperament. It is a concomitant variation of character
+of almost universal prevalence among sporting men and among men
+given to warlike and emulative activities generally. This trait
+also has a direct economic value. It is recognized to be a
+hindrance to the highest industrial efficiency of the aggregate
+in any community where it prevails in an appreciable degree.
+The gambling proclivity is doubtfully to be classed as a feature
+belonging exclusively to the predatory type of human nature. The
+chief factor in the gambling habit is the belief in luck; and
+this belief is apparently traceable, at least in its elements, to
+a stage in human evolution antedating the predatory culture. It
+may well have been under the predatory culture that the belief in
+luck was developed into the form in which it is present, as the
+chief element of the gambling proclivity, in the sporting
+temperament. It probably owes the specific form under which it
+occurs in the modern culture to the predatory discipline. But the
+belief in luck is in substance a habit of more ancient date than
+the predatory culture. It is one form of the artistic
+apprehension of things. The belief seems to be a trait carried
+over in substance from an earlier phase into the barbarian
+culture, and transmuted and transmitted through that culture to a
+later stage of human development under a specific form imposed by
+the predatory discipline. But in any case, it is to be taken as
+an archaic trait, inherited from a more or less remote past, more
+or less incompatible with the requirements of the modern
+industrial process, and more or less of a hindrance to the
+fullest efficiency of the collective economic life of the
+present.
+
+While the belief in luck is the basis of the gambling habit, it
+is not the only element that enters into the habit of betting.
+Betting on the issue of contests of strength and skill proceeds
+on a further motive, without which the belief in luck would
+scarcely come in as a prominent feature of sporting life. This
+further motive is the desire of the anticipated winner, or the
+partisan of the anticipated winning side, to heighten his side's
+ascendency at the cost of the loser. Not only does the stronger
+side score a more signal victory, and the losing side suffer a
+more painful and humiliating defeat, in proportion as the
+pecuniary gain and loss in the wager is large; although this
+alone is a consideration of material weight. But the wager is
+commonly laid also with a view, not avowed in words nor even
+recognized in set terms in petto, to enhancing the chances of
+success for the contestant on which it is laid. It is felt that
+substance and solicitude expended to this end can not go for
+naught in the issue. There is here a special manifestation of the
+instinct of workmanship, backed by an even more manifest sense
+that the animistic congruity of things must decide for a
+victorious outcome for the side in whose behalf the propensity
+inherent in events has been propitiated and fortified by so much
+of conative and kinetic urging. This incentive to the wager
+expresses itself freely under the form of backing one's favorite
+in any contest, and it is unmistakably a predatory feature. It is
+as ancillary to the predaceous impulse proper that the belief in
+luck expresses itself in a wager. So that it may be set down that
+in so far as the belief in luck comes to expression in the form
+of laying a wager, it is to be accounted an integral element of
+the predatory type of character. The belief is, in its elements,
+an archaic habit which belongs substantially to early,
+undifferentiated human nature; but when this belief is helped out
+by the predatory emulative impulse, and so is differentiated into
+the specific form of the gambling habit, it is, in this
+higher-developed and specific form, to be classed as a trait of
+the barbarian character.
+
+The belief in luck is a sense of fortuitous necessity in the
+sequence of phenomena. In its various mutations and expressions,
+it is of very serious importance for the economic efficiency of
+any community in which it prevails to an appreciable extent. So
+much so as to warrant a more detailed discussion of its origin
+and content and of the bearing of its various ramifications upon
+economic structure and function, as well as a discussion of the
+relation of the leisure class to its growth, differentiation, and
+persistence. In the developed, integrated form in which it is
+most readily observed in the barbarian of the predatory culture
+or in the sporting man of modern communities, the belief
+comprises at least two distinguishable elements -- which are to
+be taken as two different phases of the same fundamental habit of
+thought, or as the same psychological factor in two successive
+phases of its evolution. The fact that these two elements are
+successive phases of the same general line of growth of belief
+does not hinder their coexisting in the habits of thought of any
+given individual. The more primitive form (or the more archaic
+phase) is an incipient animistic belief, or an animistic sense of
+relations and things, that imputes a quasi-personal character to
+facts. To the archaic man all the obtrusive and obviously
+consequential objects and facts in his environment have a
+quasiªpersonal individuality. They are conceived to be possessed
+of volition, or rather of propensities, which enter into the
+complex of causes and affect events in an inscrutable manner. The
+sporting man's sense of luck and chance, or of fortuitous
+necessity, is an inarticulate or inchoate animism. It applies to
+objects and situations, often in a very vague way; but it is
+usually so far defined as to imply the possibility of
+propitiating, or of deceiving and cajoling, or otherwise
+disturbing the holding of propensities resident in the objects
+which constitute the apparatus and accessories of any game of
+skill or chance. There are few sporting men who are not in the
+habit of wearing charms or talismans to which more or less of
+efficacy is felt to belong. And the proportion is not much less
+of those who instinctively dread the "hoodooing" of the
+contestants or the apparatus engaged in any contest on which they
+lay a wager; or who feel that the fact of their backing a given
+contestant or side in the game does and ought to strengthen that
+side; or to whom the "mascot" which they cultivate means
+something more than a jest.
+
+In its simple form the belief in luck is this instinctive sense
+of an inscrutable teleological propensity in objects or
+situations. Objects or events have a propensity to eventuate in a
+given end, whether this end or objective point of the sequence is
+conceiveD to be fortuitously given or deliberately sought. From
+this simple animism the belief shaDes off by insensible
+gradations into the second, derivative form or phase above
+referred to, which is a more or less articulate belief in an
+inscrutable preternatural agency. The preternatural agency works
+through the visible objects with which it is associated, but is
+not identified with these objects in point of individuality. The
+use of the term "preternatural agency" here carries no further
+implication as to the nature of the agency spoken of as
+preternatural. This is only a farther development of animistic
+belief. The preternatural agency is not necessarily conceived to
+be a personal agent in the full sense, but it is an agency which
+partakes of the attributes of personality to the extent of
+somewhat arbitrarily influencing the outcome of any enterprise,
+and especially of any contest. The pervading belief in the
+hamingia or gipta (gaefa, authna) which lends so much of color to
+the Icelandic sagas specifically, and to early Germanic
+folk-legends, is an illustration of this sense of an
+extra-physical propensity in the course of events.
+
+In this expression or form of the belief the propensity is
+scarcely personified although to a varying extent an
+individuality is imputed to it; and this individuated propensity
+is sometimes conceived to yield to circumstances, commonly to
+circumstances of a spiritual or preternatural character. A
+well-known and striking exemplification of the belief -- in a
+fairly advanced stage of differentiation and involving an
+anthropomorphic personification of the preternatural agent
+appealed to -- is afforded by the wager of battle. Here the
+preternatural agent was conceived to act on request as umpire,
+anD to shape the outcome of the contest in accordance with some
+stipulated ground of decision, such as the equity or legality of
+the respective contestants' claims. The like sense of an
+inscrutable but spiritually necessary tendency in events is still
+traceable as an obscure element in current popular belief, as
+shown, for instance, by the well-accredited maxim, "Thrice is he
+armed who knows his quarrel just," -- a maxim which retains much
+of its significance for the average unreflecting person even in
+the civilized communities of today. The modern reminiscence of
+the belief in the hamingia, or in the guidance of an unseen hand,
+which is traceable in the acceptance of this maxim is faint and
+perhaps uncertain; and it seems in any case to be blended with
+other psychological moments that are not clearly of an animistic
+character.
+
+For the purpose in hand it is unnecessary to look more closely
+into the psychological process or the ethnological line of
+descent by which the later of these two animistic
+apprehensions of propensity is derived from the earlier. This
+question may be of the gravest importance to folk-psychology or
+to the theory of the evolution of creeds and cults. The same is
+true of the more fundamental question whether the two are related
+at all as successive phases in a sequence of development.
+Reference is here made to the existence of these questions only
+to remark that the interest of the present discussion does not
+lie in that direction. So far as concerns economic theory, these
+two elements or phases of the belief in luck, or in an
+extra-causal trend or propensity in things, are of substantially
+the same character. They have an economic significance as habits
+of thought which affect the individual's habitual view of the
+facts and sequences with which he comes in contact, and which
+thereby affect the individual's serviceability for the industrial
+purpose. Therefore, apart from all question of the beauty, worth,
+or beneficence of any animistic belief, there is place for a
+discussion of their economic bearing on the serviceability of the
+individual as an economic factor, and especially as an industrial
+agent.
+
+It has already been noted in an earlier connection, that in order
+to have the highest serviceability in the complex
+industrial processes of today, the individual must be endowed
+with the aptitude and the habit of readily apprehending and
+relating facts in terms of causal sequence. Both as a whole and
+in its details, the industrial process is a process of
+quantitative causation. The "intelligence" demanded of the
+workman, as well as of the director of an industrial process, is
+little else than a degree of facility in the apprehension of and
+adaptation to a quantitatively determined causal sequence. This
+facility of apprehension and adaptation is what is lacking in
+stupid workmen, and the growth of this facility is the end sought
+in their education -- so far as their education aims to enhance
+their industrial efficiency.
+
+In so far as the individual's inherited aptitudes or his training
+incline him to account for facts and sequences in other terms
+than those of causation or matter-of-fact, they lower his
+productive efficiency or industrial usefulness. This lowering of
+efficiency through a penchant for animistic methods of
+apprehending facts is especially apparent when taken in the
+mass-when a given population with an animistic turn is viewed as
+a whole. The economic drawbacks of animism are more patent and
+its consequences are more far-reaching under the modern system of
+large industry than under any other. In the modern industrial
+communities, industry is, to a constantly increasing extent,
+being organized in a comprehensive system of organs and functions
+mutually conditioning one another; and therefore freedom from all
+bias in the causal apprehension of phenomena grows constantly
+more requisite to efficiency on the part of the men concerned in
+industry. Under a system of handicraft an advantage in dexterity,
+diligence, muscular force, or endurance may, in a very large
+measure, offset such a bias in the habits of thought of the
+workmen.
+
+Similarly in agricultural industry of the traditional kind, which
+closely resembles handicraft in the nature of the demands made
+upon the workman. In both, the workman is himself the prime mover
+chiefly depended upon, and the natural forces engaged are in
+large part apprehended as inscrutable and fortuitous agencies,
+whose working lies beyond the workman's control or discretion. In
+popular apprehension there is in these forms of industry
+relatively little of the industrial process left to the fateful
+swing of a comprehensive mechanical sequence which must be
+comprehended in terms of causation and to which the operations of
+industry and the movements of the workmen must be adapted. As
+industrial methods develop, the virtues of the handicraftsman
+count for less and less as an offset to scanty. intelligence or a
+halting acceptance of the sequence of cause and effect. The
+industrial organization assumes more and more of the character of
+a mechanism, in which it is man's office to discriminate and
+select what natural forces shall work out their effects in his
+service. The workman's part in industry changes from that of a
+prime mover to that of discrimination and valuation of
+quantitative sequences and mechanical facts. The faculty of a
+ready apprehension and unbiased appreciation of causes in his
+environment grows in relative economic importance and any element
+in the complex of his habits of thought which intrudes a bias at
+variance with this ready appreciation of matter-of-fact sequence
+gains proportionately in importance as a disturbing element
+acting to lower his industrial usefulness. Through its cumulative
+effect upon the habitual attitude of the population, even a
+slight or inconspicuous bias towards accounting for everyday
+facts by recourse to other ground than that of quantitative
+causation may work an appreciable lowering of the collective
+industrial efficiency of a community.
+
+The animistic habit of mind may occur in the early,
+undifferentiated form of an inchoate animistic belief, or in the
+later and more highly integrated phase in which there is an
+anthropomorphic personification of the propensity imputed to
+facts. The industrial value of such a lively animistic sense, or
+of such recourse to a preternatural agency or the guidance of an
+unseen hand, is of course very much the same in either case. As
+affects the industrial serviceability of the individual, the
+effect is of the same kind in either case; but the extent to
+which this habit of thought dominates or shapes the complex of
+his habits of thought varies with the degree of immediacy,
+urgency, or exclusiveness with which the individual habitually
+applies the animistic or anthropomorphic formula in dealing with
+the facts of his environment. The animistic habit acts in all
+cases to blur the appreciation of causal sequence; but the
+earlier, less reflected, less defined animistic sense of
+propensity may be expected to affect the intellectual processes
+of the individual in a more pervasive way than the higher forms
+of anthropomorphism. Where the animistic habit is present in the
+naive form, its scope and range of application are not defined or
+limited. It will therefore palpably affect his thinking at every
+turn of the person's life -- wherever he has to do with the
+material means of life. In the later, maturer development of
+animism, after it has been defined through the process of
+anthropomorphic elaboration, when its application has been
+limited in a somewhat consistent fashion to the remote and the
+invisible, it comes about that an increasing range of everyday
+facts are provisionally accounted for without recourse to the
+preternatural agency in which a cultivated animism expresses
+itself. A highly integrated, personified preternatural agency is
+not a convenient means of handling the trivial occurrences of
+life, and a habit is therefore easily fallen into of accounting
+for many trivial or vulgar phenomena in terms of sequence. The
+provisional explanation so arrived at is by neglect allowed to
+stand as definitive, for trivial purposes, until special
+provocation or perplexity recalls the individual to his
+allegiance. But when special exigencies arise, that is to say,
+when there is peculiar need of a full and free recourse to the
+law of cause and effect, then the individual commonly has
+recourse to the preternatural agency as a universal solvent, if
+he is possessed of an anthropomorphic belief.
+
+The extra-causal propensity or agent has a very high utility as a
+recourse in perplexity, but its utility is altogether of a
+non-economic kind. It is especially a refuge and a fund of
+comfort where it has attained the degree of consistency and
+specialization that belongs to an anthropomorphic divinity. It
+has much to commend it even on other grounds than that of
+affording the perplexed individual a means of escape from the
+difficulty of accounting for phenomena in terms of causal
+sequence. It would scarcely be in place here to dwell on the
+obvious and well-accepted merits of an anthropomorphic divinity,
+as seen from the point of view of the aesthetic, moral, or
+spiritual interest, or even as seen from the less remote
+standpoint of political, military, or social policy. The question
+here concerns the less picturesque and less urgent economic value
+of the belief in such a preternatural agency, taken as a habit of
+thought which affects the industrial serviceability of the
+believer. And even within this narrow, economic range, the
+inquiry is perforce confined to the immediate bearing of this
+habit of thought upon the believer's workmanlike serviceability,
+rather than extended to include its remoter economic effects.
+These remoter effects are very difficult to trace. The inquiry
+into them is so encumbered with current preconceptions as to the
+degree in which life is enhanced by spiritual contact with such a
+divinity, that any attempt to inquire into their economic value
+must for the present be fruitless.
+
+The immediate, direct effect of the animistic habit of thought
+upon the general frame of mind of the believer goes in the
+direction of lowering his effective intelligence in the respect
+in which intelligence is of especial consequence for modern
+industry. The effect follows, in varying degree, whether the
+preternatural agent or propensity believed in is of a higher or a
+lower cast. This holds true of the barbarian's and the sporting
+man's sense of luck and propensity, and likewise of the somewhat
+higher developed belief in an anthropomorphic divinity, such as
+is commonly possessed by the same class. It must be taken to hold
+true also -- though with what relative degree of cogency is not
+easy to say -- of the more adequately developed anthropomorphic
+cults, such as appeal to the devout civilized man. The industrial
+disability entailed by a popular adherence to one of the higher
+anthropomorphic cults may be relatively slight, but it is not to
+be overlooked. And even these high-class cults of the Western
+culture do not represent the last dissolving phase of this human
+sense of extra-causal propensity. Beyond these the same animistic
+sense shows itself also in such attenuations of anthropomorphism
+as the eighteenth-century appeal to an order of nature and
+natural rights, and in their modern representative, the
+ostensibly post-Darwinian concept of a meliorative trend in the
+process of evolution. This animistic explanation of phenomena is
+a form of the fallacy which the logicians knew by the name of
+ignava ratio. For the purposes of industry or of science it
+counts as a blunder in the apprehension and valuation of facts.
+Apart from its direct industrial consequences, the animistic
+habit has a certain significance for economic theory on other
+grounds. (1) It is a fairly reliable indication of the presence,
+and to some extent even of the degree of potency, of certain
+other archaic traits that accompany it and that are of
+substantial economic consequence; and (2) the material
+consequences of that code of devout proprieties to which the
+animistic habit gives rise in the development of an
+anthropomorphic cult are of importance both (a) as affecting the
+community's consumption of goods and the prevalent canons of
+taste, as already suggested in an earlier chapter, and (b) by
+inducing and conserving a certain habitual recognition of the
+relation to a superior, and so stiffening the current sense of
+status and allegiance.
+
+As regards the point last named (b), that body of habits of
+thought which makes up the character of any individual is in some
+sense an organic whole. A marked variation in a given direction
+at any one point carries with it, as its correlative, a
+concomitant variation in the habitual expression of life in other
+directions or other groups of activities. These various habits of
+thought, or habitual expressions of life, are all phases of the
+single life sequence of the individual; therefore a habit formed
+in response to a given stimulus will necessarily affect the
+character of the response made to other stimuli. A modification
+of human nature at any one point is a modification of human
+nature as a whole. On this ground, and perhaps to a still greater
+extent on obscurer grounds that can not be discussed here, there
+are these concomitant variations as between the different traits
+of human nature. So, for instance, barbarian peoples with a
+well-developed predatory scheme of life are commonly also
+possessed of a strong prevailing animistic habit, a well-formed
+anthropomorphic cult, and a lively sense of status. On the other
+hand, anthropomorphism and the realizing sense of an animistic
+propensity in material are less obtrusively present in the life
+of the peoples at the cultural stages which precede and which
+follow the barbarian culture. The sense of status is also
+feebler; on the whole, in peaceable communities. It is to be
+remarked that a lively, but slightly specialized, animistic
+belief is to be found in most if not all peoples living in the
+ante-predatory, savage stage of culture. The primitive savage
+takes his animism less seriously than the barbarian or the
+degenerate savage. With him it eventuates in fantastic
+myth-making, rather than in coercive superstition. The barbarian
+culture shows sportsmanship, status, and anthropomorphism. There
+is commonly observable a like concomitance of variations in the
+same respects in the individual temperament of men in the
+civilized communities of today. Those modern representatives of
+the predaceous barbarian temper that make up the sporting element
+are commonly believers in luck; at least they have a strong sense
+of an animistic propensity in things, by force of which they are
+given to gambling. So also as regards anthropomorphism in this
+class. Such of them as give in their adhesion to some creed
+commonly attach themselves to one of the naively and consistently
+anthropomorphic creeds; there are relatively few sporting men who
+seek spiritual comfort in the less anthropomorphic cults, such as
+the Unitarian or the Universalist.
+
+Closely bound up with this correlation of anthropomorphism and
+prowess is the fact that anthropomorphic cults act to
+conserve, if not to initiate, habits of mind favorable to a
+regime of status. As regards this point, it is quite impossible
+to say where the disciplinary effect of the cult ends and where
+the evidence of a concomitance of variations in inherited traits
+begins. In their finest development, the predatory temperament,
+the sense of status, and the anthropomorphic cult all together
+belong to the barbarian culture; and something of a mutual causal
+relation subsists between the three phenomena as they come into
+sight in communities on that cultural level. The way in which
+they recur in correlation in the habits and attitudes of
+individuals and classes today goes far to imply a like causal or
+organic relation between the same psychological phenomena
+considered as traits or habits of the individual. It has appeared
+at an earlier point in the discussion that the relation of
+status, as a feature of social structure, is a consequence of the
+predatory habit of life. As regards its line of derivation, it is
+substantially an elaborated expression of the predatory attitude.
+On the other hand, an anthropomorphic cult is a code of detailed
+relations of status superimposed upon the concept of a
+preternatural, inscrutable propensity in material things. So
+that, as regards the external facts of its derivation, the cult
+may be taken as an outgrowth of archaic man's pervading animistic
+sense, defined and in some degree transformed by the predatory
+habit of life, the result being a personified preternatural
+agency, which is by imputation endowed with a full complement of
+the habits of thought that characterize the man of the predatory
+culture.
+
+The grosser psychological features in the case, which have an
+immediate bearing on economic theory and are consequently to be
+taken account of here, are therefore: (a) as has appeared in an
+earlier chapter, the predatory, emulative habit of mind here
+called prowess is but the barbarian variant of the generically
+human instinct of workmanship, which has fallen into this
+specific form under the guidance of a habit of invidious
+comparison of persons; (b) the relation of status is a formal
+expression of such an invidious comparison duly gauged and graded
+according to a sanctioned schedule; (c) an anthropomorphic cult,
+in the days of its early vigor at least, is an institution the
+characteristic element of which is a relation of status between
+the human subject as inferior and the personified preternatural
+agency as superior. With this in mind, there should be no
+difficulty in recognizing the intimate relation which subsists
+between these three phenomena of human nature and of human life;
+the relation amounts to an identity in some of their substantial
+elements. On the one hand, the system of status and the predatory
+habit of life are an expression of the instinct of workmanship as
+it takes form under a custom of invidious comparison; on the
+other hand, the anthropomorphic cult and the habit of devout
+observances are an expression of men's animistic sense of a
+propensity in material things, elaborated under the guidance of
+substantially the same general habit of invidious comparison. The
+two categories -- the emulative habit of life and the habit of
+devout observances -- are therefore to be taken as complementary
+elements of the barbarian type of human nature and of its modern
+barbarian variants. They are expressions of much the same range
+of aptitudes, made in response to different sets of stimuli.    
+
+Chapter Twelve
+
+Devout Observances
+
+A discoursive rehearsal of certain incidents of modern life will
+show the organic relation of the anthropomorphic cults to the
+barbarian culture and temperament. It will likewise serve to show
+how the survival and efficacy of the cults and he prevalence of
+their schedule of devout observances are related to the
+institution of a leisure class and to the springs of action
+underlying that institution. Without any intention to commend or
+to deprecate the practices to be spoken of under the head of
+devout observances, or the spiritual and intellectual traits of
+which these observances are the expression, the everyday
+phenomena of current anthropomorphic cults may be taken up from
+the point of view of the interest which they have for economic
+theory. What can properly be spoken of here are the tangible,
+external features of devout observances. The moral, as well as
+the devotional value of the life of faith lies outside of the
+scope of the present inquiry. Of course no question is here
+entertained as to the truth or beauty of the creeds on which the
+cults proceed. And even their remoter economic bearing can not be
+taken up here; the subject is too recondite and of too grave
+import to find a place in so slight a sketch.
+
+Something has been said in an earlier chapter as to the influence
+which pecuniary standards of value exert upon the processes of
+valuation carried out on other bases, not related to the
+pecuniary interest. The relation is not altogether one-sided. The
+economic standards or canons of valuation are in their turn
+influenced by extra-economic standards of value. Our judgments of
+the economic bearing of facts are to some extent shaped by the
+dominant presence of these weightier interests. There is a point
+of view, indeed, from which the economic interest is of weight
+only as being ancillary to these higher, non-economic interests.
+For the present purpose, therefore, some thought must he taken to
+isolate the economic interest or the economic hearing of these
+phenomena of anthropomorphic cults. It takes some effort to
+divest oneself of the more serious point of view, and to reach an
+economic appreciation of these facts, with as little as may be of
+the bias due to higher interests extraneous to economic theory.
+In the discussion of the sporting temperament, it has
+appeared that the sense of an animistic propensity in material
+things and events is what affords the spiritual basis of the
+sporting man's gambling habit. For the economic purpose, this
+sense of propensity is substantially the same psychological
+element as expresses itself, under a variety of forms, in
+animistic beliefs and anthropomorphic creeds. So far as concerns
+those tangible psychological features with which economic theory
+has to deal, the gambling spirit which pervades the sporting
+element shades off by insensible gradations into that frame of
+mind which finds gratification in devout observances. As seen
+from the point of view of economic theory, the sporting character
+shades off into the character of a religious devotee. Where the
+betting man's animistic sense is helped out by a somewhat
+consistent tradition, it has developed into a more or less
+articulate belief in a preternatural or hyperphysical agency,
+with something of an anthropomorphic content. And where this is
+the case, there is commonly a perceptible inclination to make
+terms with the preternatural agency by some approved method of
+approach and conciliation. This element of propitiation and
+cajoling has much in common with the crasser forms of worship --
+if not in historical derivation, at least in actual psychological
+content. It obviously shades off in unbroken continuity into what
+is recognized as superstitious practice and belief, and so
+asserts its claim to kinship with the grosser anthropomorphic
+cults.
+
+The sporting or gambling temperament, then, comprises some of the
+substantial psychological elements that go to make a believer in
+creeds and an observer of devout forms, the chief point of
+coincidence being the belief in an inscrutable propensity or a
+preternatural interposition in the sequence of events. For the
+purpose of the gambling practice the belief in preternatural
+agency may be, and ordinarily is, less closely formulated,
+especially as regards the habits of thought and the scheme of
+life imputed to the preternatural agent; or, in other words, as
+regards his moral character and his purposes in interfering in
+events. With respect to the individuality or personality of the
+agency whose presence as luck, or chance, or hoodoo, or mascot,
+etc., he feels and sometimes dreads and endeavors to evade, the
+sporting man's views are also less specific, less integrated and
+differentiated. The basis of his gambling activity is, in great
+measure, simply an instinctive sense of the presence of a
+pervasive extraphysical and arbitrary force or propensity in
+things or situations, which is scarcely recognized as a personal
+agent. The betting man is not infrequently both a believer in
+luck, in this naive sense, and at the same time a pretty staunch
+adherent of some form of accepted creed. He is especially prone
+to accept so much of the creed as concerts the inscrutable power
+and the arbitrary habits of the divinity which has won his
+confidence. In such a case he is possessed of two, or sometimes
+more than two, distinguishable phases of animism. Indeed, the
+complete series of successive phases of animistic belief is to be
+found unbroken in the spiritual furniture of any sporting
+community. Such a chain of animistic conceptions will comprise
+the most elementary form of an instinctive sense of luck and
+chance and fortuitous necessity at one end of the series,
+together with the perfectly developed anthropomorphic divinity at
+the other end, with all intervening stages of integration.
+Coupled with these beliefs in preternatural agency goes an
+instinctive shaping of conduct to conform with the surmised
+requirements of the lucky chance on the one hand, and a more or
+less devout submission to the inscrutable decrees of the divinity
+on the other hand.
+
+There is a relationship in this respect between the sporting
+temperament and the temperament of the delinquent classes; and
+the two are related to the temperament which inclines to an
+anthropomorphic cult. Both the delinquent and the sporting man
+are on the average more apt to be adherents of some accredited
+creed, and are also rather more inclined to devout observances,
+than the general average of the community. it is also noticeable
+that unbelieving members of these classes show more of a
+proclivity to become proselytes to some accredited faith than the
+average of unbelievers. This fact of observation is avowed by the
+spokesmen of sports, especially in apologizing for the more
+naively predatory athletic sports. Indeed, it is somewhat
+insistently claimed as a meritorious feature of sporting life
+that the habitual participants in athletic games are in some
+degree peculiarly given to devout practices. And it is observable
+that the cult to which sporting men and the predaceous delinquent
+classes adhere, or to which proselytes from these classes
+commonly attach themselves, is ordinarily not one of the
+so-called higher faiths, but a cult which has to do with a
+thoroughly anthropomorphic divinity. Archaic, predatory human
+nature is not satisfied with abstruse conceptions of a dissolving
+personality that shades off into the concept of quantitative
+causal sequence, such as the speculative, esoteric creeds of
+Christendom impute to the First Cause, Universal Intelligence,
+World Soul, or Spiritual Aspect. As an instance of a cult of the
+character which the habits of mind of the athlete and the
+delinquent require, may be cited that branch of the church
+militant known as the Salvation Army. This is to some extent
+recruited from the lower-class delinquents, and it appears to
+comprise also, among its officers especially, a larger proportion
+of men with a sporting record than the proportion of such men in
+the aggregate population of the community.
+
+College athletics afford a case in point. It is contended by
+exponents of the devout element in college life -- and there
+seems to be no ground for disputing the claim -- that the
+desirable athletic material afforded by any student body in this
+country is at the same time predominantly religious; or that it
+is at least given to devout observances to a greater degree than
+the average of those students whose interest in athletics and
+other college sports is less. This is what might be expected on
+theoretical grounds. It may be remarked, by the way, that from
+one point of view this is felt to reflect credit on the college
+sporting life, on athletic games, and on those persons who occupy
+themselves with these matters. It happens not frequently that
+college sporting men devote themselves to religious propaganda,
+either as a vocation or as a by-occupation; and it is observable
+that when this happens they are likely to become propagandists of
+some one of the more anthropomorphic cults. In their teaching
+they are apt to insist chiefly on the personal relation of status
+which subsists between an anthropomorphic divinity and the human
+subject.
+
+This intimate relation between athletics and devout
+observance among college men is a fact of sufficient notoriety;
+but it has a special feature to which attention has not been
+called, although it is obvious enough. The religious zeal which
+pervades much of the college sporting element is especially prone
+to express itself in an unquestioning devoutness and a naive and
+complacent submission to an inscrutable Providence. It therefore
+by preference seeks affliation with some one of those lay
+religious organizations which occupy themselves with the spread
+of the exoteric forms of faith -- as, e.g., the Young Men's
+Christian Association or the Young People's Society for Christian
+Endeavor. These lay bodies are organized to further "practical"
+religion; and as if to enforce the argument and firmly establish
+the close relationship between the sporting temperament and the
+archaic devoutness, these lay religious bodies commonly devote
+some appreciable portion of their energies to the furtherance of
+athletic contests and similar games of chance and skill. It might
+even be said that sports of this kind are apprehended to have
+some efficacy as a means of grace. They are apparently useful as
+a means of proselyting, and as a means of sustaining the devout
+attitude in converts once made. That is to say, the games which
+give exercise to the animistic sense and to the emulative
+propensity help to form and to conserve that habit of mind to
+which the more exoteric cults are congenial. Hence, in the hands
+of the lay organizations, these sporting activities come to do
+duty as a novitiate or a means of induction into that fuller
+unfolding of the life of spiritual status which is the privilege
+of the full communicant along.
+
+That the exercise of the emulative and lower animistic
+proclivities are substantially useful for the devout purpose
+seems to be placed beyond question by the fact that the
+priesthood of many denominations is following the lead of the lay
+organizations in this respect. Those ecclesiastical organizations
+especially which stand nearest the lay organizations in their
+insistence on practical religion have gone some way towards
+adopting these or analogous practices in connection with the
+traditional devout observances. So there are "boys' brigades,"
+and other organizations, under clerical sanction, acting to
+develop the emulative proclivity and the sense of status in the
+youthful members of the congregation. These pseudo-military
+organizations tend to elaborate and accentuate the proclivity to
+emulation and invidious comparison, and so strengthen the native
+facility for discerning and approving the relation of personal
+mastery and subservience. And a believer is eminently a person
+who knows how to obey and accept chastisement with good grace.
+But the habits of thought which these practices foster and
+conserve make up but one half of the substance of the
+anthropomorphic cults. The other, complementary element of devout
+life -- the animistic habit of mind -- is recruited and conserved
+by a second range of practices organized under clerical sanction.
+These are the class of gambling practices of which the church
+bazaar or raffle may be taken as the type. As indicating the
+degree of legitimacy of these practices in connection with devout
+observances proper, it is to be remarked that these raffles, and
+the like trivial opportunities for gambling, seem to appeal with
+more effect to the common run of the members of religious
+organizations than they do to persons of a less devout habit of
+mind.
+
+All this seems to argue, on the one hand, that the same
+temperament inclines people to sports as inclines them to the
+anthropomorphic cults, and on the other hand that the habituation
+to sports, perhaps especially to athletic sports, acts to develop
+the propensities which find satisfaction in devout observances.
+Conversely; it also appears that habituation to these observances
+favors the growth of a proclivity for athletic sports and for all
+games that give play to the habit of invidious comparison and of
+the appeal to luck. Substantially the same range of propensities
+finds expression in both these directions of the spiritual life.
+That barbarian human nature in which the predatory instinct and
+the animistic standpoint predominate is normally prone to both.
+The predatory habit of mind involves an accentuated sense of
+personal dignity and of the relative standing of individuals. The
+social structure in which the predatory habit has been the
+dominant factor in the shaping of institutions is a structure
+based on status. The pervading norm in the predatory community's
+scheme of life is the relation of superior and inferior, noble
+and base, dominant and subservient persons and classes, master
+and slave. The anthropomorphic cults have come down from that
+stage of industrial development and have been shaped by the same
+scheme of economic differentiation -- a differentiation into
+consumer and producer -- and they are pervaded by the same
+dominant principle of mastery and subservience. The cults impute
+to their divinity the habits of thought answering to the stage of
+economic differentiation at which the cults took shape. The
+anthropomorphic divinity is conceived to be punctilious in all
+questions of precedence and is prone to an assertion of mastery
+and an arbitrary exercise of power -- an habitual resort to force
+as the final arbiter.
+
+In the later and maturer formulations of the anthropomorphic
+creed this imputed habit of dominance on the part of a divinity
+of awful presence and inscrutable power is chastened into "the
+fatherhood of God." The spiritual attitude and the aptitudes
+imputed to the preternatural agent are still such as belong under
+the regime of status, but they now assume the patriarchal cast
+characteristic of the quasi-peaceable stage of culture. Still it
+is to be noted that even in this advanced phase of the cult the
+observances in which devoutness finds expression consistently aim
+to propitiate the divinity by extolling his greatness and glory
+and by professing subservience and fealty. The act of
+propitiation or of worship is designed to appeal to a sense of
+status imputed to the inscrutable power that is thus approached.
+The propitiatory formulas most in vogue are still such as carry
+or imply an invidious comparison. A loyal attachment to the
+person of an anthropomorphic divinity endowed with such an
+archaic human nature implies the like archaic propensities in the
+devotee. For the purposes of economic theory, the relation of
+fealty, whether to a physical or to an extraphysical person, is
+to be taken as a variant of that personal subservience which
+makes up so large a share of the predatory and the
+quasi-peaceable scheme of life.
+
+The barbarian conception of the divinity, as a warlike chieftain
+inclined to an overbearing manner of government, has been greatly
+softened through the milder manners and the soberer habits of
+life that characterize those cultural phases which lie between
+the early predatory stage and the present. But even after this
+chastening of the devout fancy, and the consequent mitigation of
+the harsher traits of conduct and character that are currently
+imputed to the divinity, there still remains in the popular
+apprehension of the divine nature and temperament a very
+substantial residue of the barbarian conception. So it comes
+about, for instance, that in characterizing the divinity and his
+relations to the process of human life, speakers and writers are
+still able to make effective use of similes borrowed from the
+vocabulary of war and of the predatory manner of life, as well as
+of locutions which involve an invidious comparison. Figures of
+speech of this import are used with good effect even in
+addressing the less warlike modern audiences, made up of
+adherents of the blander variants of the creed. This effective
+use of barbarian epithets and terms of comparison by popular
+speakers argues that the modern generation has retained a lively
+appreciation of the dignity and merit of the barbarian virtues;
+and it argues also that there is a degree of congruity between
+the devout attitude and the predatory habit of mind. It is only
+on second thought, if at all, that the devout fancy of modern
+worshippers revolts at the imputation of ferocious and vengeful
+emotions and actions to the object of their adoration. It is a
+matter of common observation that sanguinary epithets applied to
+the divinity have a high aesthetic and honorific value in the
+popular apprehension. That is to say, suggestions which these
+epithets carry are very acceptable to our unreflecting
+apprehension.
+
+Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
+
+He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are
+stored;
+
+He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;
+
+His truth is marching on.
+
+The guiding habits of thought of a devout person move on the
+plane of an archaic scheme of life which has outlived much of its
+usefulness for the economic exigencies of the collective life of
+today. In so far as the economic organization fits the exigencies
+of the collective life of today, it has outlived the regime of
+status, and has no use and no place for a relation of personal
+subserviency. So far as concerns the economic efficiency of the
+community, the sentiment of personal fealty, and the general
+habit of mind of which that sentiment is an expression, are
+survivals which cumber the ground and hinder an adequate
+adjustment of human institutions to the existing situation. The
+habit of mind which best lends itself to the purposes of a
+peaceable, industrial community, is that matter-of-fact temper
+which recognizes the value of material facts simply as opaque
+items in the mechanical sequence. It is that frame of mind which
+does not instinctively impute an animistic propensity to things,
+nor resort to preternatural intervention as an explanation of
+perplexing phenomena, nor depend on an unseen hand to shape the
+course of events to human use. To meet the requirements of the
+highest economic efficiency under modern conditions, the world
+process must habitually be apprehended in terms of quantitative,
+dispassionate force and sequence.
+
+As seen from the point of view of the later economic
+exigencies, devoutness is, perhaps in all cases, to be looked
+upon as a survival from an earlier phase of associated life -- a
+mark of arrested spiritual development. Of course it remains true
+that in a community where the economic structure is still
+substantially a system of status; where the attitude of the
+average of persons in the community is consequently shaped by and
+adapted to the relation of personal dominance and personal
+subservience; or where for any other reason -- of tradition or of
+inherited aptitude -- the population as a whole is strongly
+inclined to devout observances; there a devout habit of mind in
+any individual, not in excess of the average of the community,
+must be taken simply as a detail of the prevalent habit of life.
+In this light, a devout individual in a devout community can not
+be called a case of reversion, since he is abreast of the average
+of the community. But as seen from the point of view of the
+modern industrial situation, exceptional devoutness -- devotional
+zeal that rises appreciably above the average pitch of devoutness
+in the community -- may safely be set down as in all cases an
+atavistic trait.
+
+It is, of course, equally legitimate to consider these phenomena
+from a different point of view. They may be appreciated for a
+different purpose, and the characterization here offered may be
+turned about. In speaking from the point of view of the
+devotional interest, or the interest of devout taste, it may,
+with equal cogency, be said that the spiritual attitude bred in
+men by the modern industrial life is unfavorable to a free
+development of the life of faith. It might fairly be objected to
+the later development of the industrial process that its
+discipline tends to "materialism," to the elimination of filial
+piety. From the aesthetic point of view, again, something to a
+similar purport might be said. But, however legitimate and
+valuable these and the like reflections may be for their purpose,
+they would not be in place in the present inquiry, which is
+exclusively concerned with the valuation of these phenomena from
+the economic point of view.
+
+The grave economic significance of the anthropomorphic habit of
+mind and of the addiction to devout observances must serve as
+apology for speaking further on a topic which it can not but be
+distasteful to discuss at all as an economic phenomenon in a
+community so devout as ours. Devout observances are of economic
+importance as an index of a concomitant variation of temperament,
+accompanying the predatory habit of mind and so indicating the
+presence of industrially disserviceable traits. They indicate the
+presence of a mental attitude which has a certain economic value
+of its own by virtue of its influence upon the industrial
+serviceability of the individual. But they are also of importance
+more directly, in modifying the economic activities of the
+community, especially as regards the distribution and consumption
+of goods.
+
+The most obvious economic bearing of these observances is seen in
+the devout consumption of goods and services. The
+consumption of ceremonial paraphernalia required by any cult, in
+the way of shrines, temples, churches, vestments, sacrifices,
+sacraments, holiday attire, etc., serves no immediate material
+end. All this material apparatus may, therefore, without implying
+deprecation, be broadly characterized as items of conspicuous
+waste. The like is true in a general way of the personal service
+consumed under this head; such as priestly education, priestly
+service, pilgrimages, fasts, holidays, household devotions, and
+the like. At the same time the observances in the execution of
+which this consumption takes place serve to extend and protract
+the vogue of those habits of thought on which an anthropomorphic
+cult rests. That is to say, they further the habits of thought
+characteristic of the regime of status. They are in so far an
+obstruction to the most effective organization of industry under
+modern circumstances; and are, in the first instance,
+antagonistic to the development of economic institutions in the
+direction required by the situation of today. For the present
+purpose, the indirect as well as the direct effects of this
+consumption are of the nature of a curtailment of the community's
+economic efficiency. In economic theory, then, and considered in
+its proximate consequences, the consumption of goods and effort
+in the service of an anthropomorphic divinity means a lowering of
+the vitality of the community. What may be the remoter, indirect,
+moral effects of this class of consumption does not admit of a
+succinct answer, and it is a question which can not be taken up
+here.
+
+It will be to the point, however, to note the general economic
+character of devout consumption, in comparison with consumption
+for other purposes. An indication of the range of motives and
+purposes from which devout consumption of goods proceeds will
+help toward an appreciation of the value both of this consumption
+itself and of the general habit of mind to which it is congenial.
+There is a striking parallelism, if not rather a substantial
+identity of motive, between the consumption which goes to the
+service of an anthropomorphic divinity and that which goes to the
+service of a gentleman of leisure chieftain or patriarch -- in
+the upper class of society during the barbarian culture. Both in
+the case of the chieftain and in that of the divinity there are
+expensive edifices set apart for the behoof of the person served.
+These edifices, as well as the properties which supplement them
+in the service, must not be common in kind or grade; they always
+show a large element of conspicuous waste. It may also be noted
+that the devout edifices are invariably of an archaic cast in
+their structure and fittings. So also the servants, both of the
+chieftain and of the divinity, must appear in the presence
+clothed in garments of a special, ornate character. The
+characteristic economic feature of this apparel is a more than
+ordinarily accentuated conspicuous waste, together with the
+secondary feature -- more accentuated in the case of the priestly
+servants than in that of the servants or courtiers of the
+barbarian potentate -- that this court dress must always be in
+some degree of an archaic fashion. Also the garments worn by the
+lay members of the community when they come into the presence,
+should be of a more expensive kind than their everyday apparel.
+Here, again, the parallelism between the usage of the chieftain's
+audience hall and that of the sanctuary is fairly well marked. In
+this respect there is required a certain ceremonial "cleanness"
+of attire, the essential feature of which, in the economic
+respect, is that the garments worn on these occasions should
+carry as little suggestion as may be of any industrial occupation
+or of any habitual addiction to such employments as are of
+material use.
+
+This requirement of conspicuous waste and of ceremonial cleanness
+from the traces of industry extends also to the apparel, and in a
+less degree to the food, which is consumed on sacred holidays;
+that is to say, on days set apart -- tabu -- for the divinity or
+for some member of the lower ranks of the preternatural leisure
+class. In economic theory, sacred holidays are obviously to be
+construed as a season of vicarious leisure performed for the
+divinity or saint in whose name the tabu is imposed and to whose
+good repute the abstention from useful effort on these days is
+conceived to inure. The characteristic feature of all such
+seasons of devout vicarious leisure is a more or less rigid tabu
+on all activity that is of human use. In the case of fast-days
+the conspicuous abstention from gainful occupations and from all
+pursuits that (materially) further human life is further
+accentuated by compulsory abstinence from such consumption as
+would conduce to the comfort or the fullness of life of the
+consumer.
+
+It may be remarked, parenthetically, that secular holidays are of
+the same origin, by slightly remoter derivation. They shade off
+by degrees from the genuinely sacred days, through an
+intermediate class of semi-sacred birthdays of kings and great
+men who have been in some measure canonized, to the deliberately
+invented holiday set apart to further the good repute of some
+notable event or some striking fact, to which it is intended to
+do honor, or the good fame of which is felt to be in need of
+repair. The remoter refinement in the employment of vicarious
+leisure as a means of augmenting the good repute of a phenomenon
+or datum is seen at its best in its very latest application. A
+day of vicarious leisure has in some communities been set apart
+as Labor Day. This observance is designed to augment the prestige
+of the fact of labor, by the archaic, predatory method of a
+compulsory abstention from useful effort. To this datum of
+labor-in-general is imputed the good repute attributable to the
+pecuniary strength put in evidence by abstaining from labor.
+Sacred holidays, and holidays generally, are of the nature of a
+tribute levied on the body of the people. The tribute is paid in
+vicarious leisure, and the honorific effect which emerges is
+imputed to the person or the fact for whose good repute the
+holiday has been instituted. Such a tithe of vicarious leisure is
+a perquisite of all members of the preternatural leisure class
+and is indispensable to their good fame. Un saint qu'on ne chôme
+pas is indeed a saint fallen on evil days.
+
+Besides this tithe of vicarious leisure levied on the laity,
+there are also special classes of persons -- the various grades
+of priests and hierodules -- whose time is wholly set apart for a
+similar service. It is not only incumbent on the priestly class
+to abstain from vulgar labor, especially so far as it is
+lucrative or is apprehended to contribute to the temporal
+well-being of mankind. The tabu in the case of the priestly class
+goes farther and adds a refinement in the form of an injunction
+against their seeking worldly gain even where it may be had
+without debasing application to industry. It is felt to he
+unworthy of the servant of the divinity, or rather unworthy the
+dignity of the divinity whose servant he is, that he should seek
+material gain or take thought for temporal matters. "Of all
+contemptible things a man who pretends to be a priest of God and
+is a priest to his own comforts and ambitions is the most
+contemptible." There is a line of discrimination, which a
+cultivated taste in matters of devout observance finds little
+difficulty in drawing, between such actions and conduct as
+conduce to the fullness of human life and such as conduce to the
+good fame of the anthropomorphic divinity; and the activity of
+the priestly class, in the ideal barbarian scheme, falls wholly
+on the hither side of this line. What falls within the range of
+economics falls below the proper level of solicitude of the
+priesthood in its best estate. Such apparent exceptions to this
+rule as are afforded, for instance, by some of the medieval
+orders of monks (the members of which actually labored to some
+useful end), scarcely impugn the rule. These outlying orders of
+the priestly class are not a sacerdotal element in the full sense
+of the term. And it is noticeable also that these doubtfully
+sacerdotal orders, which countenanced their members in earning a
+living, fell into disrepute through offending the sense of
+propriety in the communities where they existed.
+
+The priest should not put his hand to mechanically
+productive work; but he should consume in large measure. But even
+as regards his consumption it is to be noted that it should take
+such forms as do not obviously conduce to his own comfort or
+fullness of life; it should conform to the rules governing
+vicarious consumption, as explained under that head in an earlier
+chapter. It is not ordinarily in good form for the priestly class
+to appear well fed or in hilarious spirits. Indeed, in many of
+the more elaborate cults the injunction against other than
+vicarious consumption by this class frequently goes so far as to
+enjoin mortification of the flesh. And even in those modern
+denominations which have been organized under the latest
+formulations of the creed, in a modern industrial community, it
+is felt that all levity and avowed zest in the enjoyment of the
+good things of this world is alien to the true clerical decorum.
+Whatever suggests that these servants of an invisible master are
+living a life, not of devotion to their master's good fame, but
+of application to their own ends, jars harshly on our
+sensibilities as something fundamentally and eternally wrong.
+They are a servant class, although, being servants of a very
+exalted master, they rank high in the social scale by virtue of
+this borrowed light. Their consumption is vicarious consumption;
+and since, in the advanced cults, their master has no need of
+material gain, their occupation is vicarious leisure in the full
+sense. "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do,
+do all to the glory of God." It may be added that so far as the
+laity is assimilated to the priesthood in the respect that they
+are conceived to he servants of the divinity. so far this imputed
+vicarious character attaches also to the layman's life. The range
+of application of this corollary is somewhat wide. It applies
+especially to such movements for the reform or rehabilitation of
+the religious life as are of an austere, pietistic, ascetic cast
+-- where the human subject is conceived to hold his life by a
+direct servile tenure from his spiritual sovereign. That is to
+say, where the institution of the priesthood lapses, or where
+there is an exceptionally lively sense of the immediate and
+masterful presence of the divinity in the affairs of life, there
+the layman is conceived to stand in an immediate servile relation
+to the divinity, and his life is construed to be a performance of
+vicarious leisure directed to the enhancement of his master's
+repute. In such cases of reversion there is a return to the
+unmediated relation of subservience, as the dominant fact of the
+devout attitude. The emphasis is thereby throw on an austere and
+discomforting vicarious leisure, to the neglect of conspicuous
+consumption as a means of grace.
+
+A doubt will present itself as to the full legitimacy of this
+characterization of the sacerdotal scheme of life, on the ground
+that a considerable proportion of the modern priesthood departs
+from the scheme in many details. The scheme does not hold good
+for the clergy of those denominations which have in some measure
+diverged from the old established schedule of beliefs or
+observances. These take thought, at least ostensibly or
+permissively, for the temporal welfare of the laity, as well as
+for their own. Their manner of life, not only in the privacy of
+their own household, but often even before the public, does not
+differ in an extreme degree from that of secular-minded persons,
+either in its ostensible austerity or in the archaism of its
+apparatus. This is truest for those denominations that have
+wandered the farthest. To this objection it is to be said that we
+have here to do not with a discrepancy in the theory of
+sacerdotal life, but with an imperfect conformity to the scheme
+on the part of this body of clergy. They are but a partial and
+imperfect representative of the priesthood, and must not be taken
+as exhibiting the sacerdotal scheme of life in an authentic and
+competent manner. The clergy of the sects and denominations might
+be characterized as a half-caste priesthood, or a priesthood in
+process of becoming or of reconstitution. Such a priesthood may
+be expected to show the characteristics of the sacerdotal office
+only as blended and obscured with alien motives and traditions,
+due to the disturbing presence of other factors than those of
+animism and status in the purposes of the organizations to which
+this non-conforming fraction of the priesthood belongs.
+
+Appeal may be taken direct to the taste of any person with a
+discriminating and cultivated sense of the sacerdotal
+proprieties, or to the prevalent sense of what constitutes
+clerical decorum in any community at all accustomed to think or
+to pass criticism on what a clergyman may or may not do without
+blame. Even in the most extremely secularized denominations,
+there is some sense of a distinction that should be observed
+between the sacerdotal and the lay scheme of life. There is no
+person of sensibility but feels that where the members of this
+denominational or sectarian clergy depart from traditional usage,
+in the direction of a less austere or less archaic demeanor and
+apparel, they are departing from the ideal of priestly decorum.
+There is probably no community and no sect within the range of
+the Western culture in which the bounds of permissible indulgence
+are not drawn appreciably closer for the incumbent of the
+priestly office than for the common layman. If the priest's own
+sense of sacerdotal propriety does not effectually impose a
+limit, the prevalent sense of the proprieties on the part of the
+community will commonly assert itself so obtrusively as to lead
+to his conformity or his retirement from office.
+
+Few if any members of any body of clergy, it may be added, would
+avowedly seek an increase of salary for gain's sake; and if such
+avowal were openly made by a clergyman, it would be found
+obnoxious to the sense of propriety among his congregation. It
+may also be noted in this connection that no one but the scoffers
+and the very obtuse are not instinctively grieved inwardly at a
+jest from the pulpit; and that there are none whose respect for
+their pastor does not suffer through any mark of levity on his
+part in any conjuncture of life, except it be levity of a
+palpably histrionic kind -- a constrained unbending of dignity.
+The diction proper to the sanctuary and to the priestly office
+should also carry little if any suggestion of effective everyday
+life, and should not draw upon the vocabulary of modern trade or
+industry. Likewise, one's sense of the proprieties is readily
+offended by too detailed and intimate a handling of industrial
+and other purely human questions at the hands of the clergy.
+There is a certain level of generality below which a cultivated
+sense of the proprieties in homiletical discourse will not permit
+a well-bred clergyman to decline in his discussion of temporal
+interests. These matters that are of human and secular
+consequence simply, should properly be handled with such a degree
+of generality and aloofness as may imply that the speaker
+represents a master whose interest in secular affairs goes only
+so far as to permissively countenance them.
+
+It is further to be noticed that the non-conforming sects and
+variants whose priesthood is here under discussion, vary among
+themselves in the degree of their conformity to the ideal scheme
+of sacerdotal life. In a general way it will be found that the
+divergence in this respect is widest in the case of the
+relatively young denominations, and especially in the case of
+such of the newer denominations as have chiefly a lower
+middle-class constituency. They commonly show a large admixture
+of humanitarian, philanthropic, or other motives which can not be
+classed as expressions of the devotional attitude; such as the
+desire of learning or of conviviality, which enter largely into
+the effective interest shown by members of these organizations.
+The non-conforming or sectarian movements have commonly proceeded
+from a mixture of motives, some of which are at variance with
+that sense of status on which the priestly office rests.
+Sometimes, indeed, the motive has been in good part a revulsion
+against a system of status. Where this is the case the
+institution of the priesthood has broken down in the transition,
+at least partially. The spokesman of such an organization is at
+the outset a servant and representative of the organization,
+rather than a member of a special priestly class and the
+spokesman of a divine master. And it is only by a process of
+gradual specialization that, in succeeding generations, this
+spokesman regains the position of priest, with a full investiture
+of sacerdotal authority, and with its accompanying austere,
+archaic and vicarious manner of life. The like is true of the
+breakdown and redintegration of devout ritual after such a
+revulsion. The priestly office, the scheme of sacerdotal life,
+and the schedule of devout observances are rehabilitated only
+gradually, insensibly, and with more or less variation in
+details, as a persistent human sense of devout propriety
+reasserts its primacy in questions touching the interest in the
+preternatural -- and it may be added, as the organization
+increases in wealth, and so acquires more of the point of view
+and the habits of thought of a leisure class.
+
+Beyond the priestly class, and ranged in an ascending
+hierarchy,ordinarily comes a superhuman vicarious leisure class
+of saints, angels, etc. -- or their equivalents in the ethnic
+cults. These rise in grade, one above another, according to
+elaborate system of status. The principle of status runs through
+the entire hierarchical system, both visible and invisible. The
+good fame of these several orders of the supernatural hierarchy
+also commonly requires a certain tribute of vicarious consumption
+and vicarious leisure. In many cases they accordingly have
+devoted to their service sub-orders of attendants or dependents
+who perform a vicarious leisure for them, after much the same
+fashion as was found in an earlier chapter to be true of the
+dependent leisure class under the patriarchal system.
+
+It may not appear without reflection how these devout observances
+and the peculiarity of temperament which they imply, or the
+consumption of goods and services which is comprised in the cult,
+stand related to the leisure class of a modern community, or to
+the economic motives of which that class is the exponent in the
+modern scheme of life to this end a summary review of certain
+facts bearing on this relation will be useful. It appears from an
+earlier passage in this discussion that for the purpose of the
+collective life of today, especially so far as concerns the
+industrial efficiency of the modern community, the characteristic
+traits of the devout temperament are a hindrance rather than a
+help. It should accordingly be found that the modern industrial
+life tends selectively to eliminate these traits of human nature
+from the spiritual constitution of the classes that are
+immediately engaged in the industrial process. It should hold
+true, approximately, that devoutness is declining or tending to
+obsolescence among the members of what may be called the
+effective industrial community. At the same time it should appear
+that this aptitude or habit survives in appreciably greater vigor
+among those classes which do not immediately or primarily enter
+into the community's life process as an industrial factor.
+
+It has already been pointed out that these latter classes, which
+live by, rather than in, the industrial process, are roughly
+comprised under two categories (1) the leisure class proper,
+which is shielded from the stress of the economic situation; and
+(2) the indigent classes, including the lower-class delinquents,
+which are unduly exposed to the stress. In the case of the former
+class an archaic habit of mind persists because no effectual
+economic pressure constrains this class to an adaptation of its
+habits of thought to the changing situation; while in the latter
+the reason for a failure to adjust their habits of thought to the
+altered requirements of industrial efficiency is innutrition,
+absence of such surplus of energy as is needed in order to make
+the adjustment with facility, together with a lack of opportunity
+to acquire and become habituated to the modern point of view. The
+trend of the selective process runs in much the same direction in
+both cases.
+
+From the point of view which the modern industrial life
+inculcates, phenomena are habitually subsumed under the
+quantitative relation of mechanical sequence. The indigent
+classes not only fall short of the modicum of leisure necessary
+in order to appropriate and assimilate the more recent
+generalizations of science which this point of view involves, but
+they also ordinarily stand in such a relation of personal
+dependence or subservience to their pecuniary superiors as
+materially to retard their emancipation from habits of thought
+proper to the regime of status. The result is that these classes
+in some measure retain that general habit of mind the chief
+expression of which is a strong sense of personal status, and of
+which devoutness is one feature.
+
+In the older communities of the European culture, the hereditary
+leisure class, together with the mass of the indigent population,
+are given to devout observances in an appreciably higher degree
+than the average of the industrious middle class, wherever a
+considerable class of the latter character exists. But in some of
+these countries, the two categories of conservative humanity
+named above comprise virtually the whole population. Where these
+two classes greatly preponderate, their bent shapes popular
+sentiment to such an extent as to bear down any possible
+divergent tendency in the inconsiderable middle class, and
+imposes a devout attitude upon the whole community.
+
+This must, of course, not be construed to say that such
+communities or such classes as are exceptionally prone to devout
+observances tend to conform in any exceptional degree to the
+specifications of any code of morals that we may be accustomed to
+associate with this or that confession of faith. A large measure
+of the devout habit of mind need not carry with it a strict
+observance of the injunctions of the Decalogue or of the common
+law. Indeed, it is becoming somewhat of a commonplace with
+observers of criminal life in European communities that the
+criminal and dissolute classes are, if anything, rather more
+devout, and more naively so, than the average of the population.
+It is among those who constitute the pecuniary middle class and
+the body of law-abiding citizens that a relative exemption from
+the devotional attitude is to be looked for. Those who best
+appreciate the merits of the higher creeds and observances would
+object to all this and say that the devoutness of the low-class
+delinquents is a spurious, or at the best a superstitious
+devoutness; and the point is no doubt well taken and goes
+directly and cogently to the purpose intended. But for the
+purpose of the present inquiry these extra-economic,
+extra-psychological distinctions must perforce be neglected,
+however valid and however decisive they may be for the purpose
+for which they are made.
+
+What has actually taken place with regard to class
+emancipation from the habit of devout observance is shown by the
+latter-day complaint of the clergy -- that the churches are
+losing the sympathy of the artisan classes, and are losing their
+hold upon them. At the same time it is currently believed that
+the middle class, commonly so called, is also falling away in the
+cordiality of its support of the church, especially so far as
+regards the adult male portion of that class. These are currently
+recognized phenomena, and it might seem that a simple reference
+to these facts should sufficiently substantiate the general
+position outlined. Such an appeal to the general phenomena of
+popular church attendance and church membership may be
+sufficiently convincing for the proposition here advanced. But it
+will still be to the purpose to trace in some detail the course
+of events and the particular forces which have wrought this
+change in the spiritual attitude of the more advanced industrial
+communities of today. It will serve to illustrate the manner in
+which economic causes work towards a secularization of men's
+habits of thought. In this respect the American community should
+afford an exceptionally convincing illustration, since this
+community has been the least trammelled by external circumstances
+of any equally important industrial aggregate.
+
+After making due allowance for exceptions and sporadic departures
+from the normal, the situation here at the present time may be
+summarized quite briefly. As a general rule the classes that are
+low in economic efficiency, or in intelligence, or both, are
+peculiarly devout -- as, for instance, the Negro population of
+the South, much of the lower-class foreign
+population, much of the rural population, especially in those
+sections which are backward in education, in the stage of
+development of their industry, or in respect of their industrial
+contact with the rest of the community. So also such fragments as
+we possess of a specialized or hereditary indigent class, or of a
+segregated criminal or dissolute class; although among these
+latter the devout habit of mind is apt to take the form of a
+naive animistic belief in luck and in the efficacy of shamanistic
+practices perhaps more frequently than it takes the form of a
+formal adherence to any accredited creed. The artisan class, on
+the other hand, is notoriously falling away from the accredited
+anthropomorphic creeds and from all devout observances. This
+class is in an especial degree exposed to the characteristic
+intellectual and spiritual stress of modern organized industry,
+which requires a constant recognition of the undisguised
+phenomena of impersonal, matter-of-fact sequence and an
+unreserved conformity to the law of cause and effect. This class
+is at the same time not underfed nor over-worked to such an
+extent as to leave no margin of energy for the work of
+adaptation.
+
+The case of the lower or doubtful leisure class in America -- the
+middle class commonly so called -- is somewhat peculiar. It
+differs in respect of its devotional life from its European
+counterpart, but it differs in degree and method rather than in
+substance. The churches still have the pecuniary support of this
+class; although the creeds to which the class adheres with the
+greatest facility are relatively poor in anthropomorphic content.
+At the same time the effective middle-class congregation tends,
+in many cases, more or less remotely perhaps, to become a
+congregation of women and minors. There is an appreciable lack of
+devotional fervor among the adult males of the middle class,
+although to a considerable extent there survives among them a
+certain complacent, reputable assent to the outlines of the
+accredited creed under which they were born. Their everyday life
+is carried on in a more or less close contact with the industrial
+process.
+
+This peculiar sexual differentiation, which tends to
+delegate devout observances to the women and their children, is
+due, at least in part, to the fact that the middle-class women
+are in great measure a (vicarious) leisure class. The same is
+true in a less degree of the women of the lower, artisan classes.
+They live under a regime of status handed down from an earlier
+stage of industrial development, and thereby they preserve a
+frame of mind and habits of thought which incline them to an
+archaic view of things generally. At the same time they stand in
+no such direct organic relation to the industrial process at
+large as would tend strongly to break down those habits of
+thought which, for the modern industrial purpose, are obsolete.
+That is to say, the peculiar devoutness of women is a particular
+expression of that conservatism which the women of civilized
+communities owe, in great measure, to their economic position.
+For the modern man the patriarchal relation of status is by no
+means the dominant feature of life; but for the women on the
+other hand, and for the upper middle-class women especially,
+confined as they are by prescription and by economic
+circumstances to their "domestic sphere," this relation is the
+most real and most formative factor of life. Hence a habit of
+mind favorable to devout observances and to the interpretation of
+the facts of life generally in terms of personal status. The
+logic, and the logical processes, of her everyday domestic life
+are carried over into the realm of the supernatural, and the
+woman finds herself at home and content in a range of ideas which
+to the man are in great measure alien and imbecile. 
+
+Still the men of this class are also not devoid of piety,
+although it is commonly not piety of an aggressive or exuberant
+kind. The men of the upper middle class commonly take a more
+complacent attitude towards devout observances than the men of
+the artisan class. This may perhaps be explained in part by
+saying that what is true of the women of the class is true to a
+less extent also of the men. They are to an appreciable extent a
+sheltered class; and the patriarchal relation of status which
+still persists in their conjugal life and in their habitual use
+of servants, may also act to conserve an archaic habit of mind
+and may exercise a retarding influence upon the process of
+secularization which their habits of thought are undergoing. The
+relations of the American middle-class man to the economic
+community, however, are usually pretty close and exacting;
+although it may be remarked, by the way and in qualification,
+that their economic activity frequently also partakes in some
+degree of the patriarchal or quasi-predatory character. The
+occupations which are in good repute among this class and which
+have most to do with shaping the class habits of thought, are the
+pecuniary occupations which have been spoken of in a similar
+connection in an earlier chapter. There is a good deal of the
+relation of arbitrary command and submission, and not a little of
+shrewd practice, remotely akin to predatory fraud. All this
+belongs on the plane of life of the predatory barbarian, to whom
+a devotional attitude is habitual. And in addition to this, the
+devout observances also commend themselves to this class on the
+ground of reputability. But this latter incentive to piety
+deserves treatment by itself and will be spoken of presently.
+There is no hereditary leisure class of any consequence in the
+American community, except in the South. This Southern leisure
+class is somewhat given to devout observances; more so than any
+class of corresponding pecuniary standing in other parts of the
+country. It is also well known that the creeds of the South are
+of a more old-fashioned cast than their counterparts in the
+North. Corresponding to this more archaic devotional life of the
+South is the lower industrial development of that section. The
+industrial organization of the South is at present, and
+especially it has been until quite recently, of a more primitive
+character than that of the American community taken as a whole.
+It approaches nearer to handicraft, in the paucity and rudeness
+of its mechanical appliances, and there is more of the element of
+mastery and subservience. It may also be noted that, owing to the
+peculiar economic circumstances of this section, the greater
+devoutness of the Southern population, both white and black, is
+correlated with a scheme of life which in many ways recalls the
+barbarian stages of industrial development. Among this population
+offenses of an archaic character also are and have been
+relatively more prevalent and are less deprecated than they are
+elsewhere; as, for example, duels, brawls, feuds, drunkenness,
+horse-racing, cock-fighting, gambling, male sexual incontinence
+(evidenced by the considerable number of mulattoes). There is
+also a livelier sense of honor -- an expression of sportsmanship
+and a derivative of predatory life.
+
+As regards the wealthier class of the North, the American leisure
+class in the best sense of the term, it is, to begin with,
+scarcely possible to speak of an hereditary devotional attitude.
+This class is of too recent growth to be possessed of a
+well-formed transmitted habit in this respect, or even of a
+special home-grown tradition. Still, it may be noted in passing
+that there is a perceptible tendency among this class to give in
+at least a nominal, and apparently something of a real, adherence
+to some one of the accredited creeds. Also, weddings, funerals,
+and the like honorific events among this class are pretty
+uniformly solemnized with some especial degree of religious
+circumstance. It is impossible to say how far this adherence to a
+creed is a bona fide reversion to a devout habit of mind, and how
+far it is to be classed as a case of protective mimicry assumed
+for the purpose of an outward assimilation to canons of
+reputability borrowed from foreign ideals. Something of a
+substantial devotional propensity seems to be present, to judge
+especially by the somewhat peculiar degree of ritualistic
+observance which is in process of development in the upper-class
+cults. There is a tendency perceptible among the upper-class
+worshippers to affiliate themselves with those cults which lay
+relatively great stress on ceremonial and on the spectacular
+accessories of worship; and in the churches in which an
+upper-class membership predominates, there is at the same time a
+tendency to accentuate the ritualistic, at the cost of the
+intellectual features in the service and in the apparatus of the
+devout observances. This holds true even where the church in
+question belongs to a denomination with a relatively slight
+general development of ritual and paraphernalia. This peculiar
+development of the ritualistic element is no doubt due in part to
+a predilection for conspicuously wasteful spectacles, but it
+probably also in part indicates something of the devotional
+attitude of the worshippers. So far as the latter is true, it
+indicates a relatively archaic form of the devotional habit. The
+predominance of spectacular effects in devout observances is
+noticeable in all devout communities at a relatively primitive
+stage of culture and with a slight intellectual development. It
+is especially characteristic of the barbarian culture. Here there
+is pretty uniformly present in the devout observances a direct
+appeal to the emotions through all the avenues of sense. And a
+tendency to return to this naive, sensational method of appeal is
+unmistakable in the upper-class churches of today. It is
+perceptible in a less degree in the cults which claim the
+allegiance of the lower leisure class and of the middle classes.
+There is a reversion to the use of colored lights and brilliant
+spectacles, a freer use of symbols, orchestral music and incense,
+and one may even detect in "processionals" and "recessionals" and
+in richly varied genuflexional evolutions, an incipient reversion
+to so antique an accessory of worship as the sacred dance.
+This reversion to spectacular observances is not confined to the
+upper-class cults, although it finds its best exemplification and
+its highest accentuation in the higher pecuniary and social
+altitudes. The cults of the lower-class devout portion of the
+community, such as the Southern Negroes and the backward foreign
+elements of the population, of course also show a strong
+inclination to ritual, symbolism, and spectacular effects; as
+might be expected from the antecedents and the cultural level of
+those classes. With these classes the prevalence of ritual and
+anthropomorphism are not so much a matter of reversion as of
+continued development out of the past. But the use of ritual and
+related features of devotion are also spreading in other
+directions. In the early days of the American community the
+prevailing denominations started out with a ritual and
+paraphernalia of an austere simplicity; but it is a matter
+familiar to every one that in the course of time these
+denominations have, in a varying degree, adopted much of the
+spectacular elements which they once renounced. In a general way,
+this development has gone hand in hand with the growth of the
+wealth and the ease of life of the worshippers and has reached
+its fullest expression among those classes which grade highest in
+wealth and repute.
+
+The causes to which this pecuniary stratification of
+devoutness is due have already been indicated in a general way in
+speaking of class differences in habits of thought. Class
+differences as regards devoutness are but a special expression of
+a generic fact. The lax allegiance of the lower middle class, or
+what may broadly be called the failure of filial piety among this
+class, is chiefly perceptible among the town populations engaged
+in the mechanical industries. In a general way, one does not, at
+the present time, look for a blameless filial piety among those
+classes whose employment approaches that of the engineer and the
+mechanician. These mechanical employments are in a degree a
+modern fact. The handicraftsmen of earlier times, who served an
+industrial end of a character similar to that now served by the
+mechanician, were not similarily refractory under the discipline
+of devoutness. The habitual activity of the men engaged in these
+branches of industry has greatly changed, as regards its
+intellectual discipline, since the modern industrial processes
+have come into vogue; and the discipline to which the mechanician
+is exposed in his daily employment affects the methods and
+standards of his thinking also on topics which lie outside his
+everyday work. Familiarity with the highly organized and highly
+impersonal industrial processes of the present acts to derange
+the animistic habits of thought. The workman's office is becoming
+more and more exclusively that of discretion and supervision in a
+process of mechanical, dispassionate sequences. So long as the
+individual is the chief and typical prime mover in the process;
+so long as the obtrusive feature of the industrial process is the
+dexterity and force of the individual handicraftsman; so long the
+habit of interpreting phenomena in terms of personal motive and
+propensity suffers no such considerable and consistent
+derangement through facts as to lead to its elimination. But
+under the later developed industrial processes, when the prime
+movers and the contrivances through which they work are of an
+impersonal, non-individual character, the grounds of
+generalization habitually present in the workman's mind and the
+point of view from which he habitually apprehends phenomena is an
+enforced cognizance of matter-of-fact sequence. The result, so
+far as concerts the workman's life of faith, is a proclivity to
+undevout scepticism.
+
+It appears, then, that the devout habit of mind attains its best
+development under a relatively archaic culture; the term "devout"
+being of course here used in its anthropological sense simply,
+and not as implying anything with respect to the
+spiritual attitude so characterized, beyond the fact of a
+proneness to devout observances. It appears also that this devout
+attitude marks a type of human nature which is more in consonance
+with the predatory mode of life than with the later-developed,
+more consistently and organically industrial life process of the
+community. It is in large measure an expression of the archaic
+habitual sense of personal status -- the relation of mastery and
+subservience -- and it therefore fits into the industrial scheme
+of the predatory and the quasi-peaceable culture, but does not
+fit into the industrial scheme of the present. It also appears
+that this habit persists with greatest tenacity among those
+classes in the modern communities whose everyday life is most
+remote from the mechanical processes of industry and which are
+the most conservative also in other respects; while for those
+classes that are habitually in immediate contact with modern
+industrial processes, and whose habits of thought are therefore
+exposed to the constraining force of technological necessities,
+that animistic interpretation of phenomena and that respect of
+persons on which devout observance proceeds are in process of
+obsolescence. And also -- as bearing especially on the present
+discussion -- it appears that the devout habit to some extent
+progressively gains in scope and elaboration among those classes
+in the modern communities to whom wealth and leisure accrue in
+the most pronounced degree. In this as in other relations, the
+institution of a leisure class acts to conserve, and even to
+rehabilitate, that archaic type of human nature and those
+elements of the archaic culture which the industrial evolution of
+society in its later stages acts to eliminate.
+
+Chapter Thirteen
+
+Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interests
+
+In an increasing proportion as time goes on, the
+anthropomorphic cult, with its code of devout observations,
+suffers a progressive disintegration through the stress of
+economic exigencies and the decay of the system of status. As
+this disintegration proceeds, there come to be associated and
+blended with the devout attitude certain other motives and
+impulses that are not always of an anthropomorphic origin, nor
+traceable to the habit of personal subservience. Not all of these
+subsidiary impulses that blend with the habit of devoutness in
+the later devotional life are altogether congruous with the
+devout attitude or with the anthropomorphic apprehension of the
+sequence of phenomena. The origin being not the same, their
+action upon the scheme of devout life is also not in the same
+direction. In many ways they traverse the underlying norm of
+subservience or vicarious life to which the code of devout
+observations and the ecclesiastical and sacerdotal institutions
+are to be traced as their substantial basis. Through the presence
+of these alien motives the social and industrial regime of status
+gradually disintegrates, and the canon of personal subservience
+loses the support derived from an unbroken tradition. Extraneous
+habits and proclivities encroach upon the field of action
+occupied by this canon, and it presently comes about that the
+ecclesiastical and sacerdotal structures are partially converted
+to other uses, in some measure alien to the purposes of the
+scheme of devout life as it stood in the days of the most
+vigorous and characteristic development of the priesthood.
+
+Among these alien motives which affect the devout scheme in its
+later growth, may be mentioned the motives of charity and of
+social good-fellowship, or conviviality; or, in more general
+terms, the various expressions of the sense of human solidarity
+and sympathy. It may be added that these extraneous uses of the
+ecclesiastical structure contribute materially to its survival in
+name and form even among people who may be ready to give up the
+substance of it. A still more characteristic and more pervasive
+alien element in the motives which have gone to formally uphold
+the scheme of devout life is that non-reverent sense of aesthetic
+congruity with the environment, which is left as a residue of the
+latter-day act of worship after elimination of its
+anthropomorphic content. This has done good service for the
+maintenance of the sacerdotal institution through blending with
+the motive of subservience. This sense of impulse of aesthetic
+congruity is not primarily of an economic character, but it has a
+considerable indirect effect in shaping the habit of mind of the
+individual for economic purposes in the later stages of
+industrial development; its most perceptible effect in this
+regard goes in the direction of mitigating the somewhat
+pronounced self-regarding bias that has been transmitted by
+tradition from the earlier, more competent phases of the regime
+of status. The economic bearing of this impulse is therefore seen
+to transverse that of the devout attitude; the former goes to
+qualify, if not eliminate, the self-regarding bias, through
+sublation of the antithesis or antagonism of self and not-self;
+while the latter, being and expression of the sense of personal
+subservience and mastery, goes to accentuate this antithesis and
+to insist upon the divergence between the self-regarding interest
+and the interests of the generically human life process.
+
+This non-invidious residue of the religious life -- the sense of
+communion with the environment, or with the generic life process
+-- as well as the impulse of charity or of sociability, act in a
+pervasive way to shape men's habits of thought for the economic
+purpose. But the action of all this class of proclivities is
+somewhat vague, and their effects are difficult to trace in
+detail. So much seems clear, however, as that the action of this
+entire class of motives or aptitudes tends in a direction
+contrary to the underlying principles of the institution of the
+leisure class as already formulated. The basis of that
+institution, as well as of the anthropomorphic cults associated
+with it in the cultural development, is the habit of invidious
+comparison; and this habit is incongruous with the exercise of
+the aptitudes now in question. The substantial canons of the
+leisure-class scheme of life are a conspicuous waste of time and
+substance and a withdrawal from the industrial process; while the
+particular aptitudes here in question assert themselves, on the
+economic side, in a deprecation of waste and of a futile manner
+of life, and in an impulse to participation in or identification
+with the life process, whether it be on the economic side or in
+any other of its phases or aspects.
+
+It is plain that these aptitudes and habits of life to which they
+give rise where circumstances favor their expression, or where
+they assert themselves in a dominant way, run counter to the
+leisure-class scheme of life; but it is not clear that life under
+the leisure-class scheme, as seen in the later stages of its
+development, tends consistently to the repression of these
+aptitudes or to exemption from the habits of thought in which
+they express themselves. The positive discipline of the
+leisureªclass scheme of life goes pretty much all the other way.
+In its positive discipline, by prescription and by selective
+elimination, the leisure-class scheme favors the all-pervading
+and all-dominating primacy of the canons of waste and invidious
+comparison at every conjuncture of life. But in its negative
+effects the tendency of the leisure-class discipline is not so
+unequivocally true to the fundamental canons of the scheme. In
+its regulation of human activity for the purpose of pecuniary
+decency the leisure-class canon insists on withdrawal from the
+industrial process. That is to say, it inhibits activity in the
+directions in which the impecunious members of the community
+habitually put forth their efforts. Especially in the case of
+women, and more particularly as regards the upper-class and
+upper-middle-class women of advanced industrial communities, this
+inhibition goes so far as to insist on withdrawal even from the
+emulative process of accumulation by the quasi-predator methods
+of the pecuniary occupations.
+
+The pecuniary or the leisure-class culture, which set out as an
+emulative variant of the impulse of workmanship, is in its latest
+development beginning to neutralize its own ground, by
+eliminating the habit of invidious comparison in respect of
+efficiency, or even of pecuniary standing. On the other hand, the
+fact that members of the leisure class, both men and women, are
+to some extent exempt from the necessity of finding a livelihood
+in a competitive struggle with their fellows, makes it possible
+for members of this class not only to survive, but even, within
+bounds, to follow their bent in case they are not gifted with the
+aptitudes which make for success in the competitive struggle.
+That is to say, in the latest and fullest development of the
+institution, the livelihood of members of this class does not
+depend on the possession and the unremitting exercise of those
+aptitudes are therefore greater in the higher grades of the
+leisure class than in the general average of a population living
+under the competitive system.
+
+In an earlier chapter, in discussing the conditions of survival
+of archaic traits, it has appeared that the peculiar position of
+the leisure class affords exceptionally favorable chances for the
+survival of traits which characterize the type of human nature
+proper to an earlier and obsolete cultural stage. The class is
+sheltered from the stress of economic exigencies, and is in this
+sense withdrawn from the rude impact of forces which make for
+adaptation to the economic situation. The survival in the leisure
+class, and under the leisure-class scheme of life, of traits and
+types that are reminiscent of the predatory culture has already
+been discussed. These aptitudes and habits have an exceptionally
+favorable chance of survival under the leisureªclass regime. Not
+only does the sheltered pecuniary position of the leisure class
+afford a situation favorable to the survival of such individuals
+as are not gifted with the complement of aptitudes required for
+serviceability in the modern industrial process; but the
+leisure-class canons of reputability at the same time enjoin the
+conspicuous exercise of certain predatory aptitudes. The
+employments in which the predatory aptitudes find exercise serve
+as an evidence of wealth, birth, and withdrawal from the
+industrial process. The survival of the predatory traits under
+the leisure-class culture is furthered both negatively, through
+the industrial exemption of the class, and positively, through
+the sanction of the leisure-class canons of decency.
+
+With respect to the survival of traits characteristic of the
+ante-predatory savage culture the case is in some degree
+different. The sheltered position of the leisure class favors the
+survival also of these traits; but the exercise of the aptitudes
+for peace and good-will does not have the affirmative sanction of
+the code of proprieties. Individuals gifted with a temperament
+that is reminiscent of the ante-predatory culture are placed at
+something of an advantage within the leisure class, as compared
+with similarly gifted individuals outside the class, in that they
+are not under a pecuniary necessity to thwart these aptitudes
+that make for a non-competitive life; but such individuals are
+still exposed to something of a moral constraint which urges them
+to disregard these inclinations, in that the code of proprieties
+enjoins upon them habits of life based on the predatory
+aptitudes. So long as the system of status remains intact, and so
+long as the leisure class has other lines of nonªindustrial
+activity to take to than obvious killing of time in aimless and
+wasteful fatigation, so long no considerable departure from the
+leisure-class scheme of reputable life is to be looked for. The
+occurrence of non-predatory temperament with the class at that
+stage is to be looked upon as a case of sporadic reversion. But
+the reputable non-industrial outlets for the human propensity to
+action presently fail, through the advance of economic
+development, the disappearance of large game, the decline of war,
+the obsolescence of proprietary government, and the decay of the
+priestly office. When this happens, the situation begins to
+change. Human life must seek expression in one direction if it
+may not in another; and if the predatory outlet fails, relief is
+sought elsewhere.
+
+As indicated above, the exemption from pecuniary stress has been
+carried farther in the case of the leisure-class women of the
+advanced industrial communities than in that of any other
+considerable group of persons. The women may therefore be
+expected to show a more pronounced reversion to a non-invidious
+temperament than the men. But there is also among men of the
+leisure class a perceptible increase in the range and scope of
+activities that proceed from aptitudes which are not to be
+classed as self-regarding, and the end of which is not an
+invidious distinction. So, for instance, the greater number of
+men who have to do with industry in the way of pecuniarily
+managing an enterprise take some interest and some pride in
+seeing that the work is well done and is industrially effective,
+and this even apart from the profit which may result from any
+improvement of this kind. The efforts of commercial clubs and
+manufacturers' organizations in this direction of non-invidious
+advancement of industrial efficiency are also well know.
+
+The tendency to some other than an invidious purpose in life has
+worked out in a multitude of organizations, the purpose of which
+is some work of charity or of social amelioration. These
+organizations are often of a quasi-religious or pseudo-religious
+character, and are participated in by both men and women.
+Examples will present themselves in abundance on reflection, but
+for the purpose of indicating the range of the propensities in
+question and of characterizing them, some of the more obvious
+concrete cases may be cited. Such, for instance, are the
+agitation for temperance and similar social reforms, for prison
+reform, for the spread of education, for the suppression of vice,
+and for the avoidance of war by arbitration, disarmament, or
+other means; such are, in some measure, university settlements,
+neighborhood guilds, the various organizations typified by the
+Young Men's Christian Association and Young People's Society for
+Christian Endeavor, sewing-clubs, art clubs, and even commercial
+clubs; such are also, in some slight measure, the pecuniary
+foundations of semi-public establishments for charity, education,
+or amusement, whether they are endowed by wealthy individuals or
+by contributions collected from persons of smaller means -- in so
+far as these establishments are not of a religious character.
+
+It is of course not intended to say that these efforts proceed
+entirely from other motives than those of a self-regarding kind.
+What can be claimed is that other motives are present in the
+common run of cases, and that the perceptibly greater prevalence
+of effort of this kind under the circumstances of the modern
+industrial life than under the unbroken regime of the principle
+of status, indicates the presence in modern life of an effective
+scepticism with respect to the full legitimacy of an emulative
+scheme of life. It is a matter of sufficient notoriety to have
+become a commonplace jest that extraneous motives are commonly
+present among the incentives to this class of work -- motives of
+a self-regarding kind, and especially the motive of an invidious
+distinction. To such an extent is this true, that many ostensible
+works of disinterested public spirit are no doubt initiated and
+carried on with a view primarily to the enhance repute or even to
+the pecuniary gain, of their promoters. In the case of some
+considerable groups of organizations or establishments of this
+kind the invidious motive is apparently the dominant motive both
+with the initiators of the work and with their supporters. This
+last remark would hold true especially with respect to such works
+as lend distinction to their doer through large and conspicuous
+expenditure; as, for example, the foundation of a university or
+of a public library or museum; but it is also, and perhaps
+equally, true  of the more commonplace work of participation in
+such organizations. These serve to authenticate the pecuniary
+reputability of their members, as well as gratefully to keep them
+in mind of their superior status by pointing the contrast between
+themselves and the lower-lying humanity in whom the work of
+amelioration is to be wrought; as, for example, the university
+settlement, which now has some vogue. But after all allowances
+and deductions have been made, there is left some remainder of
+motives of a non-emulative kind. The fact itself that distinction
+or a decent good fame is sought by this method is evidence of a
+prevalent sense of the legitimacy , and of the presumptive
+effectual presence, of a non-emulative, non-invidious interest,
+as a consistent factor in the habits of thought of modern
+communities.
+
+In all this latter-day range of leisure-class activities that
+proceed on the basis of a non-invidious and non-religious
+interest, it is to be noted that the women participate more
+actively and more persistently than the men -- except, of course,
+in the case of such works as require a large expenditure of
+means. The dependent pecuniary position of the women disables
+them for work requiring large expenditure. As regards the general
+range of ameliorative work, the members of the priesthood or
+clergy of the less naively devout sects, or the secularized
+denominations, are associated with the class of women. This is as
+the theory would have it. In other economic relations, also, this
+clergy stands in a somewhat equivocal position between the class
+of women and that of the men engaged in economic pursuits. By
+tradition and by the prevalent sense of the proprieties, both the
+clergy and the women of the well-to-do classes are placed in the
+position of a vicarious leisure class; with both classes the
+characteristic relation which goes to form the habits of thought
+of the class is a relation of subservience -- that is to say, an
+economic relation conceived in personal terms; in both classes
+there is consequently perceptible a special proneness to construe
+phenomena in terms of personal relation rather than of causal
+sequence; both classes are so inhibited by the canons of decency
+from the ceremonially unclean processes of the lucrative or
+productive occupations as to make participation in the industrial
+life process of today a moral impossibility for them. The result
+of this ceremonial exclusion from productive effort of the vulgar
+sort is to draft a relatively large share of the energies of the
+modern feminine and priestly classes into the service of other
+interests than the self-regarding one. The code leaves no
+alternative direction in which the impulse to purposeful action
+may find expression. The effect of a consistent inhibition on
+industrially useful activity in the case of the leisure-class
+women shows itself in a restless assertion of the impulse to
+workmanship in other directions than that of business activity.
+As has been noticed already, the everyday life of the
+well-to-do women and the clergy contains a larger element of
+status than that of the average of the men, especially than that
+of the men engaged in the modern industrial occupations proper.
+Hence the devout attitude survives in a better state of
+preservation among these classes than among the common run of men
+in the modern communities. Hence an appreciable share of the
+energy which seeks expression in a non-lucrative employment among
+these members of the vicarious leisure classes may be expected to
+eventuate in devout observances and works of piety. Hence, in
+part, the excess of the devout proclivity in women, spoken of in
+the last chapter. But it is more to the present point to note the
+effect of this proclivity in shaping the action and coloring the
+purposes of the non-lucrative movements and organizations here
+under discussion. Where this devout coloring is present it lowers
+the immediate efficiency of the organizations for any economic
+end to which their efforts may be directed. Many organizations,
+charitable and ameliorative, divide their attention between the
+devotional and the secular well-being of the people whose
+interests they aim to further. It can scarcely he doubted that if
+they were to give an equally serious attention and effort
+undividedly to the secular interests of these people, the
+immediate economic value of their work should be appreciably
+higher than it is. It might of course similarly be said, if this
+were the place to say it, that the immediate efficiency of these
+works of amelioration for the devout might be greater if it were
+not hampered with the secular motives and aims which are usually
+present.
+
+Some deduction is to be made from the economic value of this
+class of non-invidious enterprise, on account of the intrusion of
+the devotional interest. But there are also deductions to be made
+on account of the presence of other alien motives which more or
+less broadly traverse the economic trend of this non-emulative
+expression of the instinct of workmanship. To such an extent is
+this seen to be true on a closer scrutiny, that, when all is
+told, it may even appear that this general class of enterprises
+is of an altogether dubious economic value -- as measured in
+terms of the fullness or facility of life of the individuals or
+classes to whose amelioration the enterprise is directed. For
+instance, many of the efforts now in reputable vogue for the
+amelioration of the indigent population of large cities are of
+the nature, in great part, of a mission of culture. It is by this
+means sought to accelerate the rate of speed at which given
+elements of the upper-class culture find acceptance in the
+everyday scheme of life of the lower classes. The solicitude of
+"settlements," for example, is in part directed to enhance the
+industrial efficiency of the poor and to teach them the more
+adequate utilization of the means at hand; but it is also no less
+consistently directed to the inculcation, by precept and example,
+of certain punctilios of upper-class propriety in manners and
+customs. The economic substance of these proprieties will
+commonly be found on scrutiny to be a conspicuous waste of time
+and goods. Those good people who go out to humanize the poor are
+commonly, and advisedly, extremely scrupulous and silently
+insistent in matters of decorum and the decencies of life. They
+are commonly persons of an exemplary life and gifted with a
+tenacious insistence on ceremonial cleanness in the various items
+of their daily consumption. The cultural or civilizing efficacy
+of this inculcation of correct habits of thought with respect to
+the consumption of time and commodities is scarcely to be
+overrated; nor is its economic value to the individual who
+acquires these higher and more reputable ideals inconsiderable.
+Under the circumstances of the existing pecuniary culture, the
+reputability, and consequently the success, of the individual is
+in great measure dependent on his proficiency in demeanor and
+methods of consumption that argue habitual waste of time and
+goods. But as regards the ulterior economic bearing of this
+training in worthier methods of life, it is to be said that the
+effect wrought is in large part a substitution of costlier or
+less efficient methods of accomplishing the same material
+results, in relations where the material result is the fact of
+substantial economic value. The propaganda of culture is in great
+part an inculcation of new tastes, or rather of a new schedule of
+proprieties, which have been adapted to the upper-class scheme of
+life under the guidance of the leisure-class formulation of the
+principles of status and pecuniary decency. This new schedule of
+proprieties is intruded into the lower-class scheme of life from
+the code elaborated by an element of the population whose life
+lies outside the industrial process; and this intrusive schedule
+can scarcely be expected to fit the exigencies of life for these
+lower classes more adequately than the schedule already in vogue
+among them, and especially not more adequately than the schedule
+which they are themselves working out under the stress of modern
+industrial life.
+
+All this of course does not question the fact that the
+prOprieties of the substituted schedule are more decorous than
+those which they displace. The doubt which presents itself is
+simply a doubt as to the economic expediency of this work of
+regeneration -- that is to say, the economic expediency in that
+immediate and material bearing in which the effects of the change
+can be ascertained with some degree of confidence, and as viewed
+from the standpoint not of the individual but of the facility of
+life of the collectivity. For an appreciation of the economic
+expediency of these enterprises of amelioration, therefore, their
+effective work is scarcely to be taken at its face value, even
+where the aim of the enterprise is primarily an economic one and
+where the interest on which it proceeds is in no sense
+self-regarding or invidious. The economic reform wrought is
+largely of the nature of a permutation in the methods of
+conspicuous waste.
+
+But something further is to be said with respect to the character
+of the disinterested motives and canons of procedure in all work
+of this class that is affected by the habits of thought
+characteristic of the pecuniary culture; and this further
+consideration may lead to a further qualification of the
+conclusions already reached. As has been seen in an earlier
+chapter, the canons of reputability or decency under the
+pecuniary culture insist on habitual futility of effort as the
+mark of a pecuniarily blameless life. There results not only a
+habit of disesteem of useful occupations, but there results also
+what is of more decisive consequence in guiding the action of any
+organized body of people that lays claim to social good repute.
+There is a tradition which requires that one should not be
+vulgarly familiar with any of the processes or details that have
+to do with the material necessities of life. One may
+meritoriously show a quantitative interest in the well-being of
+the vulgar, through subscriptions or through work on managing
+committees and the like. One may, perhaps even more
+meritoriously, show solicitude in general and in detail for the
+cultural welfare of the vulgar, in the way of contrivances for
+elevating their tastes and affording them opportunities for
+spiritual amelioration. But one should not betray an intimate
+knowledge of the material circumstances of vulgar life, or of the
+habits of thought of the vulgar classes, such as would
+effectually direct the efforts of these organizations to a
+materially useful end. This reluctance to avow an unduly intimate
+knowledge of the lower-class conditions of life in detail of
+course prevails in very different degrees in different
+individuals; but there is commonly enough of it present
+collectively in any organization of the kind in question
+profoundly to influence its course of action. By its cumulative
+action in shaping the usage and precedents of any such body, this
+shrinking from an imputation of unseemly familiarity with vulgar
+life tends gradually to set aside the initial motives of the
+enterprise, in favor of certain guiding principles of good
+repute, ultimately reducible to terms of pecuniary merit. So that
+in an organization of long standing the initial motive of
+furthering the facility of life in these classes comes gradually
+to be an ostensible motive only, and the vulgarly effective work
+of the organization tends to obsolescence.
+
+What is true of the efficiency of organizations for non-invidious
+work in this respect is true also as regards the work of
+individuals proceeding on the same motives; though it perhaps
+holds true with more qualification for individuals than for
+organized enterprises. The habit of gauging merit by the
+leisure-class canons of wasteful expenditure and unfamiliarity
+with vulgar life, whether on the side of production or of
+consumption, is necessarily strong in the individuals who aspire
+to do some work of public utility. And if the individual should
+forget his station and turn his efforts to vulgar effectiveness,
+the common sense of the community-the sense of pecuniary decency
+-- would presently reject his work and set him right. An example
+of this is seen in the administration of bequests made by
+public-spirited men for the single purpose (at least ostensibly)
+of furthering the facility of human life in some particular
+respect. The objects for which bequests of this class are most
+frequently made at present are most frequently made at present
+are schools, libraries, hospitals, and asylums for the infirm or
+unfortunate. The avowed purpose of the donor in these cases is
+the amelioration of human life in the particular respect which is
+named in the bequest; but it will be found an invariable rule
+that in the execution of the work not a little of other motives,
+frequenCy incompatible with the initial motive, is present and
+determines the particular disposition eventually made of a good
+share of the means which have been set apart by the bequest.
+Certain funds, for instance, may have been set apart as a
+foundation for a foundling asylum or a retreat for invalids. The
+diversion of expenditure to honorific waste in such cases is not
+uncommon enough to cause surprise or even to raise a smile. An
+appreciable share of the funds is spent in the construction of an
+edifice faced with some aesthetically objectionable but expensive
+stone, covered with grotesque and incongruous details, and
+designed, in its battlemented walls and turrets and its massive
+portals and strategic approaches, to suggest certain barbaric
+methods of warfare. The interior of the structure shows the same
+pervasive guidance of the canons of conspicuous waste and
+predatory exploit. The windows, for instance, to go no farther
+into detail, are placed with a view to impress their pecuniary
+excellence upon the chance beholder from the outside, rather than
+with a view to effectiveness for their ostensible end in the
+convenience or comfort of the beneficiaries within; and the
+detail of interior arrangement is required to conform itself as
+best it may to this alien but imperious requirement of pecuniary
+beauty.
+
+In all this, of course, it is not to he presumed that the donor
+would have found fault, or that he would have done
+otherwise if he had taken control in person; it appears that in
+those cases where such a personal direction is exercised -- where
+the enterprise is conducted by direct expenditure and
+superintendence instead of by bequest -- the aims and methods of
+management are not different in this respect. Nor would the
+beneficiaries, or the outside observers whose ease or vanity are
+not immediately touched, be pleased with a different disposition
+of the funds. It would suit no one to have the enterprise
+conducted with a view directly to the most economical and
+effective use of the means at hand for the initial, material end
+of the foundation. All concerned, whether their interest is
+immediate and self-regarding, or contemplative only, agree that
+some considerable share of the expenditure should go to the
+higher or spiritual needs derived from the habit of an invidious
+comparison in predatory exploit and pecuniary waste. But this
+only goes to say that the canons of emulative and pecuniary
+reputability so far pervade the common sense of the community as
+to permit no escape or evasion, even in the case of an enterprise
+which ostensibly proceeds entirely on the basis of a
+non-invidious interest.
+
+It may even be that the enterprise owes its honorific virtue, as
+a means of enhancing the donor's good repute, to the imputed
+presence of this non-invidious motive; but that does not hinder
+the invidious interest from guiding the expenditure. The
+effectual presence of motives of an emulative or invidious origin
+in non-emulative works of this kind might be shown at length and
+with detail, in any one of the classes of enterprise spoken of
+above. Where these honorific details occur, in such cases, they
+commonly masquerade under designations that belong in the field
+of the aesthetic, ethical or economic interest. These special
+motives, derived from the standards and canons of the pecuniary
+culture, act surreptitiously to divert effort of a non-invidious
+kind from effective service, without disturbing the agent's sense
+of good intention or obtruding upon his consciousness the
+substantial futility of his work. Their effect might be traced
+through the entire range of that schedule of non-invidious,
+meliorative enterprise that is so considerable a feature, and
+especially so conspicuous a feature, in the overt scheme of life
+of the well-to-do. But the theoretical bearing is perhaps clear
+enough and may require no further illustration; especially as
+some detailed attention will be given to one of these lines of
+enterprise -- the establishments for the higher learning -- in
+another connection.
+
+Under the circumstances of the sheltered situation in which the
+leisure class is placed there seems, therefore, to be
+something of a reversion to the range of non-invidious impulses
+that characterizes the ante-predatory savage culture. The
+reversion comprises both the sense of workmanship and the
+proclivity to indolence and good-fellowship. But in the modern
+scheme of life canons of conduct based on pecuniary or invidious
+merit stand in the way of a free exercise of these impulses; and
+the dominant presence of these canons of conduct goes far to
+divert such efforts as are made on the basis of the non-invidious
+interest to the service of that invidious interest on which the
+pecuniary culture rests. The canons of pecuniary decency are
+reducible for the present purpose to the principles of waste,
+futility, and ferocity. The requirements of decency are
+imperiously present in meliorative enterprise as in other lines
+of conduct, and exercise a selective surveillance over the
+details of conduct and management in any enterprise. By guiding
+and adapting the method in detail, these canons of decency go far
+to make all non-invidious aspiration or effort nugatory. The
+pervasive, impersonal, un-eager principle of futility is at hand
+from day to day and works obstructively to hinder the effectual
+expression of so much of the surviving ante-predatory aptitudes
+as is to be classed under the instinct of workmanship; but its
+presence does not preclude the transmission of those aptitudes or
+the continued recurrence of an impulse to find expression for
+them.
+
+In the later and farther development of the pecuniary culture,
+the requirement of withdrawal from the industrial process in
+order to avoid social odium is carried so far as to comprise
+abstention from the emulative employments. At this advanced stage
+the pecuniary culture negatively favors the assertion of the
+non-invidious propensities by relaxing the stress laid on the
+merit of emulative, predatory , or pecuniary occupations, as
+compared with those of an industrial or productive kind. As was
+noticed above, the requirement of such withdrawal from all
+employment that is of human use applies more rigorously to the
+upper-class women than to any other class, unless the priesthood
+of certain cults might be cited as an exception, perhaps more
+apparent than real, to this rule. The reason for the more extreme
+insistence on a futile life for this class of women than for the
+men of the same pecuniary and social grade lies in their being
+not only an upper-grade leisure class but also at the same time a
+vicarious leisure class. There is in their case a double ground
+for a consistent withdrawal from useful effort.
+
+It has been well and repeatedly said by popular writers and
+speakers who reflect the common sense of intelligent people on
+questions of social structure and function that the position of
+woman in any community is the most striking index of the level of
+culture attained by the community, and it might be added, by any
+given class in the community. This remark is perhaps truer as
+regards the stage of economic development than as regards
+development in any other respect. At the same time the position
+assigned to the woman in the accepted scheme of life, in any
+community or under any culture, is in a very great degree an
+expression of traditions which have been shaped by the
+circumstances of an earlier phase of development, and which have
+been but partially adapted to the existing economic
+circumstances, or to the existing exigencies of temperament and
+habits of mind by which the women living under this modern
+economic situation are actuated.
+
+The fact has already been remarked upon incidentally in the
+course of the discussion of the growth of economic institutions
+generally, and in particular in speaking of vicarious leisure and
+of dress, that the position of women in the modern economic
+scheme is more widely and more consistently at variance with the
+promptings of the instinct of workmanship than is the position of
+the men of the same classes. It is also apparently true that the
+woman's temperament includes a larger share of this instinct that
+approves peace and disapproves futility. It is therefore not a
+fortuitous circumstance that the women of modern industrial
+communities show a livelier sense of the discrepancy between the
+accepted scheme of life and the exigencies of the economic
+situation.
+
+The several phases of the "woman question" have brought out in
+intelligible form the extent to which the life of women in modern
+society, and in the polite circles especially, is regulated by a
+body of common sense formulated under the economic circumstances
+of an earlier phase of development. It is still felt that woman's
+life, in its civil, economic, and social bearing, is essentially
+and normally a vicarious life, the merit or demerit of which is,
+in the nature of things, to be imputed to some other individual
+who stands in some relation of ownership or tutelage to the
+woman. So, for instance, any action on the part of a woman which
+traverses an injunction of the accepted schedule of proprieties
+is felt to reflect immediately upon the honor of the man whose
+woman she is. There may of course be some sense of incongruity in
+the mind of any one passing an opinion of this kind on the
+woman's frailty or perversity; but the common-sense judgment of
+the community in such matters is, after all, delivered without
+much hesitation, and few men would question the legitimacy of
+their sense of an outraged tutelage in any case that might arise.
+On the other hand, relatively little discredit attaches to a
+woman through the evil deeds of the man with whom her life is
+associated.
+
+The good and beautiful scheme of life, then -- that is to say the
+scheme to which we are habituated -- assigns to the woman a
+"sphere" ancillary to the activity of the man; and it is felt
+that any departure from the traditions of her assigned round of
+duties is unwomanly. If the question is as to civil rights or the
+suffrage, our common sense in the matter -- that is to say the
+logical deliverance of our general scheme of life upon the point
+in question -- says that the woman should be represented in the
+body politic and before the law, not immediately in her own
+person, but through the mediation of the head of the household to
+which she belongs. It is unfeminine in her to aspire to a
+self-directing, self-centered life; and our common sense tells us
+that her direct participation in the affairs of the community,
+civil or industrial, is a menace to that social order which
+expresses our habits of thought as they have been formed under
+the guidance of the traditions of the pecuniary culture. "All
+this fume and froth of 'emancipating woman from the slavery of
+man' and so on, is, to use the chaste and expressive language of
+Elizabeth Cady Stanton inversely, 'utter rot.' The social
+relations of the sexes are fixed by nature. Our entire
+civilization -- that is whatever is good in it -- is based on the
+home." The "home" is the household with a male head. This view,
+but commonly expressed even more chastely, is the prevailing view
+of the woman's status, not only among the common run of the men
+of civilized communities, but among the women as well. Women have
+a very alert sense of what the scheme of proprieties requires,
+and while it is true that many of them are ill at ease under the
+details which the code imposes, there are few who do not
+recognize that the existing moral order, of necessity and by the
+divine right of prescription, places the woman in a position
+ancillary to the man. In the last analysis, according to her own
+sense of what is good and beautiful, the woman's life is, and in
+theory must be, an expression of the man's life at the second
+remove.
+
+But in spite of this pervading sense of what is the good and
+natural place for the woman, there is also perceptible an
+incipient development of sentiment to the effect that this whole
+arrangement of tutelage and vicarious life and imputation of
+merit and demerit is somehow a mistake. Or, at least, that even
+if it may be a natural growth and a good arrangement in its time
+and place, and in spite of its patent aesthetic value, still it
+does not adequately serve the more everyday ends of life in a
+modern industrial community. Even that large and substantial body
+of well-bred, upper and middle-class women to whose
+dispassionate, matronly sense of the traditional proprieties this
+relation of status commends itself as fundamentally and eternally
+right-even these, whose attitude is conservative, commonly find
+some slight discrepancy in detail between things as they are and
+things as they should be in this respect. But that less
+manageable body of modern women who, by force of youth,
+education, or temperament, are in some degree out of touch with
+the traditions of status received from the barbarian culture, and
+in whom there is, perhaps, an undue reversion to the impulse of
+self-expression and workmanship -- these are touched with a sense
+of grievance too vivid to leave them at rest.
+
+In this "New-Woman" movement -- as these blind and
+incoherent efforts to rehabilitate the woman's pre-glacial
+standing have been named -- there are at least two elements
+discernible, both of which are of an economic character. These
+two elements or motives are expressed by the double watchword,
+"Emancipation" and "Work." Each of these words is recognized to
+stand for something in the way of a wide-spread sense of
+grievance. The prevalence of the sentiment is recognized even by
+people who do not see that there is any real ground for a
+grievance in the situation as it stands today. It is among the
+women of the well-to-do classes, in the communities which are
+farthest advanced in industrial development, that this sense of a
+grievance to be redressed is most alive and finds most frequent
+expression. That is to say, in other words, there is a demand,
+more or less serious, for emancipation from all relation of
+status, tutelage, or vicarious life; and the revulsion asserts
+itself especially among the class of women upon whom the scheme
+of life handed down from the regime of status imposes with least
+litigation a vicarious life, and in those communities whose
+economic development has departed farthest from the circumstances
+to which this traditional scheme is adapted. The demand comes
+from that portion of womankind which is excluded by the canons of
+good repute from all effectual work, and which is closely
+reserved for a life of leisure and conspicuous consumption.
+
+More than one critic of this new-woman movement has
+misapprehended its motive. The case of the American "new woman"
+has lately been summed up with some warmth by a popular observer
+of social phenomena: "She is petted by her husband, the most
+devoted and hard-working of husbands in the world. ... She is the
+superior of her husband in education, and in almost every
+respect. She is surrounded by the most numerous and delicate
+attentions. Yet she is not satisfied. ... The Anglo-Saxon 'new
+woman' is the most ridiculous production of modern times, and
+destined to be the most ghastly failure of the century." Apart
+from the deprecation -- perhaps well placed -- which is contained
+in this presentment, it adds nothing but obscurity to the woman
+question. The grievance of the new woman is made up of those
+things which this typical characterization of the movement urges
+as reasons why she should be content. She is petted, and is
+permitted, or even required, to consume largely and conspicuously
+-- vicariously for her husband or other natural guardian. She is
+exempted, or debarred, from vulgarly useful employment -- in
+order to perform leisure vicariously for the good repute of her
+natural (pecuniary) guardian. These offices are the conventional
+marks of the un-free, at the same time that they are incompatible
+with the human impulse to purposeful activity. But the woman is
+endowed with her share-which there is reason to believe is more
+than an even share -- of the instinct of workmanship, to which
+futility of life or of expenditure is obnoxious. She must unfold
+her life activity in response to the direct, unmediated stimuli
+of the economic environment with which she is in contact. The
+impulse is perhaps stronger upon the woman than upon the man to
+live her own life in her own way and to enter the industrial
+process of the community at something nearer than the second
+remove.
+
+So long as the woman's place is consistently that of a drudge,
+she is, in the average of cases, fairly contented with her lot.
+She not only has something tangible and purposeful to do, but she
+has also no time or thought to spare for a rebellious assertion
+of such human propensity to self-direction as she has inherited.
+And after the stage of universal female drudgery is passed, and a
+vicarious leisure without strenuous application becomes the
+accredited employment of the women of the well-to-do classes, the
+prescriptive force of the canon of pecuniary decency, which
+requires the observance of ceremonial futility on their part,
+will long preserve high-minded women from any sentimental leaning
+to self-direction and a "sphere of usefulness." This is
+especially true during the earlier phases of the pecuniary
+culture, while the leisure of the leisure class is still in great
+measure a predatory activity, an active assertion of mastery in
+which there is enough of tangible purpose of an invidious kind to
+admit of its being taken seriously as an employment to which one
+may without shame put one's hand. This condition of things has
+obviously lasted well down into the present in some communities.
+It continues to hold to a different extent for different
+individuals, varying with the vividness of the sense of status
+and with the feebleness of the impulse to workmanship with which
+the individual is endowed. But where the economic structure of
+the community has so far outgrown the scheme of life based on
+status that the relation of personal subservience is no longer
+felt to be the sole "natural" human relation; there the ancient
+habit of purposeful activity will begin to assert itself in the
+less conformable individuals against the more recent, relatively
+superficial, relatively ephemeral habits and views which the
+predatory and the pecuniary culture have contributed to our
+scheme of life. These habits and views begin to lose their
+coercive force for the community or the class in question so soon
+as the habit of mind and the views of life due to the predatory
+and the quasi-peaceable discipline cease to be in fairly close
+accord with the later-developed economic situation. This is
+evident in the case of the industrious classes of modern
+communities; for them the leisure-class scheme of life has lost
+much of its binding force, especially as regards the element of
+status. But it is also visibly being verified in the case of the
+upper classes, though not in the same manner.
+
+The habits derived from the predatory and quasi-peaceable culture
+are relatively ephemeral variants of certain underlying
+propensities and mental characteristics of the race; which it
+owes to the protracted discipline of the earlier,
+proto-anthropoid cultural stage of peaceable, relatively
+undifferentiated economic life carried on in contact with a
+relatively simple and invariable material environment. When the
+habits superinduced by the emulative method of life have ceased
+to enjoy the section of existing economic exigencies, a process
+of disintegration sets in whereby the habits of thought of more
+recent growth and of a less generic character to some extent
+yield the ground before the more ancient and more pervading
+spiritual characteristics of the race.
+
+In a sense, then, the new-woman movement marks a reversion to a
+more generic type of human character, or to a less
+differentiated expression of human nature. It is a type of human
+nature which is to be characterized as proto-anthropoid, and, as
+regards the substance if not the form of its dominant traits, it
+belongs to a cultural stage that may be classed as possibly
+sub-human. The particular movement or evolutional feature in
+question of course shares this characterization with the rest of
+the later social development, in so far as this social
+development shows evidence of a reversion to the spiritual
+attitude that characterizes the earlier, undifferentiated stage
+of economic revolution. Such evidence of a general tendency to
+reversion from the dominance of the invidious interest is not
+entirely wanting, although it is neither plentiful nor
+unquestionably convincing. The general decay of the sense of
+status in modern industrial communities goes some way as evidence
+in this direction; and the perceptible return to a disapproval of
+futility in human life, and a disapproval of such activities as
+serve only the individual gain at the cost of the collectivity or
+at the cost of other social groups, is evidence to a like effect.
+There is a perceptible tendency to deprecate the infliction of
+pain, as well as to discredit all marauding enterprises, even
+where these expressions of the invidious interest do not tangibly
+work to the material detriment of the community or of the
+individual who passes an opinion on them. It may even be said
+that in the modern industrial communities the average,
+dispassionate sense of men says that the ideal character is a
+character which makes for peace, good-will, and economic
+efficiency, rather than for a life of self-seeking, force, fraud,
+and mastery.
+
+The influence of the leisure class is not consistently for or
+against the rehabilitation of this proto-anthropoid human nature.
+So far as concerns the chance of survival of individuals endowed
+with an exceptionally large share of the primitive traits, the
+sheltered position of the class favors its members directly by
+withdrawing them from the pecuniary struggle; but indirectly,
+through the leisure-class canons of conspicuous waste of goods
+and effort, the institution of a leisure class lessens the chance
+of survival of such individuals in the entire body of the
+population. The decent requirements of waste absorb the surplus
+energy of the population in an invidious struggle and leave no
+margin for the non-invidious expression of life. The remoter,
+less tangible, spiritual effects of the discipline of decency go
+in the same direction and work perhaps more effectually to the
+same end. The canons of decent life are an elaboration of the
+principle of invidious comparison, and they accordingly act
+consistently to inhibit all non-invidious effort and to inculcate
+the self-regarding attitude.
+
+Chapter Fourteen
+
+The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture
+
+To the end that suitable habits of thought on certain heads may
+be conserved in the incoming generation, a scholastic discipline
+is sanctioned by the common sense of the community and
+incorporated into the accredited scheme of life. The habits of
+thought which are so formed under the guidance of teachers and
+scholastic traditions have an economic value -- a value as
+affecting the serviceability of the individual -- no less real
+than the similar economic value of the habits of thought formed
+without such guidance under the discipline of everyday life.
+Whatever characteristics of the accredited scholastic scheme and
+discipline are traceable to the predilections of the leisure
+class or to the guidance of the canons of pecuniary merit are to
+be set down to the account of that institution, and whatever
+economic value these features of the educational scheme possess
+are the expression in detail of the value of that institution. It
+will be in place, therefore, to point out any peculiar features
+of the educational system which are traceable to the
+leisure-class scheme of life, whether as regards the aim and
+method of the discipline, or as regards the compass and character
+of the body of knowledge inculcated. It is in learning proper,
+and more particularly in the higher learning, that the influence
+of leisure-class ideals is most patent; and since the purpose
+here is not to make an exhaustive collation of data showing the
+effect of the pecuniary culture upon education, but rather to
+illustrate the method and trend of the leisure-class influence in
+education, a survey of certain salient features of the higher
+learning, such as may serve this purpose, is all that will be
+attempted.
+
+In point of derivation and early development, learning is
+somewhat closely related to the devotional function of the
+community, particularly to the body of observances in which the
+service rendered the supernatural leisure class expresses itself.
+The service by which it is sought to conciliate supernatural
+agencies in the primitive cults is not an industrially profitable
+employment of the community's time and effort. It is, therefore,
+in great part, to be classed as a vicarious leisure performed for
+the supernatural powers with whom negotiations are carried on and
+whose good-will the service and the professions of subservience
+are conceived to procure. In great part, the early learning
+consisted in an acquisition of knowledge and facility in the
+service of a supernatural agent. It was therefore closely
+analogous in character to the training required for the domestic
+service of a temporal master. To a great extent, the knowledge
+acquired under the priestly teachers of the primitive community
+was knowledge of ritual and ceremonial; that is to say, a
+knowledge of the most proper, most effective, or most acceptable
+manner of approaching and of serving the preternatural agents.
+What was learned was how to make oneself indispensable to these
+powers, and so to put oneself in a position to ask, or even to
+require, their intercession in the course of events or their
+abstention from interference in any given enterprise.
+Propitiation was the end, and this end was sought, in great part,
+by acquiring facility in subservience. It appears to have been
+only gradually that other elements than those of efficient
+service of the master found their way into the stock of priestly
+or shamanistic instruction.
+
+The priestly servitor of the inscrutable powers that move in the
+external world came to stand in the position of a mediator
+between these powers and the common run of unrestricted humanity;
+for he was possessed of a knowledge of the supernatural etiquette
+which would admit him into the presence. And as commonly happens
+with mediators between the vulgar and their masters, whether the
+masters be natural or preternatural, he found it expedient to
+have the means at hand tangibly to impress upon the vulgar the
+fact that these inscrutable powers would do what he might ask of
+them. Hence, presently, a knowledge of certain natural processes
+which could be turned to account for spectacular effect, together
+with some sleight of hand, came to be an integral part of
+priestly lore. Knowledge of this kind passes for knowledge of the
+"unknowable", and it owes its serviceability for the sacerdotal
+purpose to its recondite character. It appears to have been from
+this source that learning, as an institution, arose, and its
+differentiation from this its parent stock of magic ritual and
+shamanistic fraud has been slow and tedious, and is scarcely yet
+complete even in the most advanced of the higher seminaries of
+learning.
+
+The recondite element in learning is still, as it has been in all
+ages, a very attractive and effective element for the purpose of
+impressing, or even imposing upon, the unlearned; and the
+standing of the savant in the mind of the altogether
+unlettered is in great measure rated in terms of intimacy with
+the occult forces. So, for instance, as a typical case, even so
+late as the middle of this century, the Norwegian peasants have
+instinctively formulated their sense of the superior erudition of
+such doctors of divinity as Luther, Malanchthon, Peder Dass, and
+even so late a scholar in divinity as Grundtvig, in terms of the
+Black Art. These, together with a very comprehensive list of
+minor celebrities, both living and dead, have been reputed
+masters in all magical arts; and a high position in the
+ecclesiastical personnel has carried with it, in the apprehension
+of these good people, an implication of profound familiarity with
+magical practice and the occult sciences. There is a parallel
+fact nearer home, similarly going to show the close relationship,
+in popular apprehension, between erudition and the unknowable;
+and it will at the same time serve to illustrate, in somewhat
+coarse outline, the bent which leisure-class life gives to the
+cognitive interest. While the belief is by no means confined to
+the leisure class, that class today comprises a
+disproportionately large number of believers in occult sciences
+of all kinds and shades. By those whose habits of thought are not
+shaped by contact with modern industry, the knowledge of the
+unknowable is still felt to the ultimate if not the only true
+knowledge.
+
+Learning, then, set out by being in some sense a by-product of
+the priestly vicarious leisure class; and, at least until a
+recent date, the higher learning has since remained in some sense
+a by-product or by-occupation of the priestly classes. As the
+body of systematized knowledge increased, there presently arose a
+distinction, traceable very far back in the history of education,
+between esoteric and exoteric knowledge, the former -- so far as
+there is a substantial difference between the two -- comprising
+such knowledge as is primarily of no economic or industrial
+effect, and the latter comprising chiefly knowledge of industrial
+processes and of natural phenomena which were habitually turned
+to account for the material purposes of life. This line of
+demarcation has in time become, at least in popular apprehension,
+the normal line between the higher learning and the lower.
+
+It is significant, not only as an evidence of their close
+affiliation with the priestly craft, but also as indicating that
+their activity to a good extent falls under that category of
+conspicuous leisure known as manners and breeding, that the
+learned class in all primitive communities are great sticklers
+for form, precedent, gradations of rank, ritual, ceremonial
+vestments, and learned paraphernalia generally. This is of course
+to be expected, and it goes to say that the higher learning, in
+its incipient phase, is a leisure-class occupation -- more
+specifically an occupation of the vicarious leisure class
+employed in the service of the supernatural leisure class. But
+this predilection for the paraphernalia of learning goes also to
+indicate a further point of contact or of continuity between the
+priestly office and the office of the savant. In point of
+derivation, learning, as well as the priestly office, is largely
+an outgrowth of sympathetic magic; and this magical apparatus of
+form and ritual therefore finds its place with the learned class
+of the primitive community as a matter of course. The ritual and
+paraphernalia have an occult efficacy for the magical purpose; so
+that their presence as an integral factor in the earlier phases
+of the development of magic and science is a matter of
+expediency, quite as much as of affectionate regard for symbolism
+simply.
+
+This sense of the efficacy of symbolic ritual, and of sympathetic
+effect to be wrought through dexterous rehearsal of the
+traditional accessories of the act or end to be compassed, is of
+course present more obviously and in larger measure in magical
+practice than in the discipline of the sciences, even of the
+occult sciences. But there are, I apprehend, few persons with a
+cultivated sense of scholastic merit to whom the ritualistic
+accessories of science are altogether an idle matter. The very
+great tenacity with which these ritualistic paraphernalia persist
+through the later course of the development is evident to any one
+who will reflect on what has been the history of learning in our
+civilization. Even today there are such things in the usage of
+the learned community as the cap and gown, matriculation,
+initiation, and graduation ceremonies, and the conferring of
+scholastic degrees, dignities, and prerogatives in a way which
+suggests some sort of a scholarly apostolic succession. The usage
+of the priestly orders is no doubt the proximate source of all
+these features of learned ritual, vestments, sacramental
+initiation, the transmission of peculiar dignities and virtues by
+the imposition of hands, and the like; but their derivation is
+traceable back of this point, to the source from which the
+specialized priestly class proper came to be distinguished from
+the sorcerer on the one hand and from the menial servant of a
+temporal master on the other hand. So far as regards both their
+derivation and their psychological content, these usages and the
+conceptions on which they rest belong to a stage in cultural
+development no later than that of the angekok and the rain-maker.
+Their place in the later phases of devout observance, as well as
+in the higher educational system, is that of a survival from a
+very early animistic phase of the development of human nature.
+
+These ritualistic features of the educational system of the
+present and of the recent past, it is quite safe to say, have
+their place primarily in the higher, liberal, and classic
+institutions and grades of learning, rather than in the lower,
+technological, or practical grades, and branches of the system.
+So far as they possess them, the lower and less reputable
+branches of the educational scheme have evidently borrowed these
+things from the higher grades; and their continued persistence
+among the practical schools, without the sanction of the
+continued example of the higher and classic grades, would be
+highly improbable, to say the least. With the lower and practical
+schools and scholars, the adoption and cultivation of these
+usages is a case of mimicry -- due to a desire to conform as far
+as may be to the standards of scholastic reputability maintained
+by the upper grades and classes, who have come by these accessory
+features legitimately, by the right of lineal devolution.
+
+The analysis may even be safely carried a step farther.
+Ritualistic survivals and reversions come out in fullest vigor
+and with the freest air of spontaneity among those seminaries of
+learning which have to do primarily with the education of the
+priestly and leisure classes. Accordingly it should appear, and
+it does pretty plainly appear, on a survey of recent developments
+in college and university life, that wherever schools founded for
+the instruction of the lower classes in the immediately useful
+branches of knowledge grow into institutions of the higher
+learning, the growth of ritualistic ceremonial and paraphernalia
+and of elaborate scholastic "functions" goes hand in hand with
+the transition of the schools in question from the field of
+homely practicality into the higher, classical sphere. The
+initial purpose of these schools, and the work with which they
+have chiefly had to do at the earlier of these two stages of
+their evolution, has been that of fitting the young of the
+industrious classes for work. On the higher, classical plane of
+learning to which they commonly tend, their dominant aim becomes
+the preparation of the youth of the priestly and the leisure
+classes -- or of an incipient leisure class -- for the
+consumption of goods, material and immaterial, according to a
+conventionally accepted, reputable scope and method. This happy
+issue has commonly been the fate of schools founded by "friends
+of the people" for the aid of struggling young men, and where
+this transition is made in good form there is commonly, if not
+invariably, a coincident change to a more ritualistic life in the
+schools.
+
+In the school life of today, learned ritual is in a general way
+best at home in schools whose chief end is the cultivation of the
+"humanities". This correlation is shown, perhaps more neatly than
+anywhere else, in the life-history of the American colleges and
+universities of recent growth. There may be many exceptions from
+the rule, especially among those schools which have been founded
+by the typically reputable and ritualistic churches, and which,
+therefore, started on the conservative and classical plane or
+reached the classical position by a short-cut; but the general
+rule as regards the colleges founded in the newer American
+communities during the present century has been that so long as
+the constituency from which the colleges have drawn their pupils
+has been dominated by habits of industry and thrift, so long the
+reminiscences of the medicine-man have found but a scant and
+precarious acceptance in the scheme of college life. But so soon
+as wealth begins appreciably to accumulate in the community, and
+so soon as a given school begins to lean on a leisure-class
+constituency, there comes also a perceptibly increased insistence
+on scholastic ritual and on conformity to the ancient forms as
+regards vestments and social and scholastic solemnities. So, for
+instance, there has been an approximate coincidence between the
+growth of wealth among the constituency which supports any given
+college of the Middle West and the date of acceptance -- first
+into tolerance and then into imperative vogue -- of evening dress
+for men and of the décolleté for women, as the scholarly
+vestments proper to occasions of learned solemnity or to the
+seasons of social amenity within the college circle. Apart from
+the mechanical difficulty of so large a task, it would scarcely
+be a difficult matter to trace this correlation. The like is true
+of the vogue of the cap and gown.
+
+Cap and gown have been adopted as learned insignia by many
+colleges of this section within the last few years; and it is
+safe to say that this could scarcely have occurred at a much
+earlier date, or until there had grown up a leisure-class
+sentiment of sufficient volume in the community to support a
+strong movement of reversion towards an archaic view as to the
+legitimate end of education. This particular item of learned
+ritual, it may be noted, would not only commend itself to the
+leisure-class sense of the fitness of things, as appealing to the
+archaic propensity for spectacular effect and the predilection
+for antique symbolism; but it at the same time fits into the
+leisure-class scheme of life as involving a notable element of
+conspicuous waste. The precise date at which the reversion to cap
+and gown took place, as well as the fact that it affected so
+large a number of schools at about the same time, seems to have
+been due in some measure to a wave of atavistic sense of
+conformity and reputability that passed over the community at
+that period.
+
+It may not be entirely beside the point to note that in point of
+time this curious reversion seems to coincide with the
+culmination of a certain vogue of atavistic sentiment and
+tradition in other directions also. The wave of reversion seems
+to have received its initial impulse in the psychologically
+disintegrating effects of the Civil War. Habituation to war
+entails a body of predatory habits of thought, whereby
+clannishness in some measure replaces the sense of solidarity,
+and a sense of invidious distinction supplants the impulse to
+equitable, everyday serviceability. As an outcome of the
+cumulative action of these factors, the generation which follows
+a season of war is apt to witness a rehabilitation of the element
+of status, both in its social life and in its scheme of devout
+observances and other symbolic or ceremonial forms. Throughout
+the eighties, and less plainly traceable through the seventies
+also, there was perceptible a gradually advancing wave of
+sentiment favoring quasi-predatory business habits, insistence on
+status, anthropomorphism, and conservatism generally. The more
+direct and unmediated of these expressions of the barbarian
+temperament, such as the recrudescence of outlawry and the
+spectacular quasi-predatory careers of fraud run by certain
+"captains of industry", came to a head earlier and were
+appreciably on the decline by the close of the seventies. The
+recrudescence of anthropomorphic sentiment also seems to have
+passed its most acute stage before the close of the eighties. But
+the learned ritual and paraphernalia here spoken of are a still
+remoter and more recondite expression of the barbarian animistic
+sense; and these, therefore, gained vogue and elaboration more
+slowly and reached their most effective development at a still
+later date. There is reason to believe that the culmination is
+now already past. Except for the new impetus given by a new war
+experience, and except for the support which the growth of a
+wealthy class affords to all ritual, and especially to whatever
+ceremonial is wasteful and pointedly suggests gradations of
+status, it is probable that the late improvements and
+augmentation of scholastic insignia and ceremonial would
+gradually decline. But while it may be true that the cap and
+gown, and the more strenuous observance of scholastic proprieties
+which came with them, were floated in on this post-bellum tidal
+wave of reversion to barbarism, it is also no doubt true that
+such a ritualistic reversion could not have been effected in the
+college scheme of life until the accumulation of wealth in the
+hands of a propertied class had gone far enough to afford the
+requisite pecuniary ground for a movement which should bring the
+colleges of the country up to the leisure-class requirements in
+the higher learning. The adoption of the cap and gown is one of
+the striking atavistic features of modern college life, and at
+the same time it marks the fact that these colleges have
+definitely become leisure-class establishments, either in actual
+achievement or in aspiration.
+
+As further evidence of the close relation between the educational
+system and the cultural standards of the community, it may be
+remarked that there is some tendency latterly to substitute the
+captain of industry in place of the priest, as the head of
+seminaries of the higher learning. The substitution is by no
+means complete or unequivocal. Those heads of institutions are
+best accepted who combine the sacerdotal office with a high
+degree of pecuniary efficiency. There is a similar but less
+pronounced tendency to intrust the work of instruction in the
+higher learning to men of some pecuniary qualification.
+Administrative ability and skill in advertising the enterprise
+count for rather more than they once did, as qualifications for
+the work of teaching. This applies especially in those sciences
+that have most to do with the everyday facts of life, and it is
+particularly true of schools in the economically single-minded
+communities. This partial substitution of pecuniary for
+sacerdotal efficiency is a concomitant of the modern transition
+from conspicuous leisure to conspicuous consumption, as the chief
+means of reputability. The correlation of the two facts is
+probably clear without further elaboration.
+
+The attitude of the schools and of the learned class towards the
+education of women serves to show in what manner and to what
+extent learning has departed from its ancient station of priestly
+and leisure-class prerogatives, and it indicates also what
+approach has been made by the truly learned to the modern,
+economic or industrial, matter-of-fact standpoint. The higher
+schools and the learned professions were until recently tabu to
+the women. These establishments were from the outset, and have in
+great measure continued to be, devoted to the education of the
+priestly and leisure classes.
+
+The women, as has been shown elsewhere, were the original
+subservient class, and to some extent, especially so far as
+regards their nominal or ceremonial position, they have remained
+in that relation down to the present. There has prevailed a
+strong sense that the admission of women to the privileges of the
+higher learning (as to the Eleusianin mysteries) would be
+derogatory to the dignity of the learned craft. It is therefore
+only very recently, and almost solely in the industrially most
+advanced communities, that the higher grades of schools have been
+freely opened to women. And even under the urgent circumstances
+prevailing in the modern industrial communities, the highest and
+most reputable universities show an extreme reluctance in making
+the move. The sense of class worthiness, that is to say of
+status, of a honorific differentiation of the sexes according to
+a distinction between superior and inferior intellectual dignity,
+survives in a vigorous form in these corporations of the
+aristocracy of learning. It is felt that the woman should, in all
+propriety, acquire only such knowledge as may be classed under
+one or the other of two heads: (1) such knowledge as conduces
+immediately to a better performance of domestic service -- the
+domestic sphere; (2) such accomplishments and dexterity,
+quasi-scholarly and quasi-artistic, as plainly come in under the
+head of a performance of vicarious leisure. Knowledge is felt to
+be unfeminine if it is knowledge which expresses the unfolding of
+the learner's own life, the acquisition of which proceeds on the
+learner's own cognitive interest, without prompting from the
+canons of propriety, and without reference back to a master whose
+comfort or good repute is to be enhanced by the employment or the
+exhibition of it. So, also, all knowledge which is useful as
+evidence of leisure, other than vicarious leisure, is scarcely
+feminine.
+
+For an appreciation of the relation which these higher seminaries
+of learning bear to the economic life of the community, the
+phenomena which have been reviewed are of importance rather as
+indications of a general attitude than as being in themselves
+facts of first-rate economic consequence. They go to show what is
+the instinctive attitude and animus of the learned class towards
+the life process of an industrial community. They serve as an
+exponent of the stage of development, for the industrial purpose,
+attained by the higher learning and by the learned class, and so
+they afford an indication as to what may fairly be looked for
+from this class at points where the learning and the life of the
+class bear more immediately upon the economic life and efficiency
+of the community, and upon the adjustment of its scheme of life
+to the requirements of the time. What these ritualistic survivals
+go to indicate is a prevalence of conservatism, if not of
+reactionary sentiment, especially among the higher schools where
+the conventional learning is cultivated.
+
+To these indications of a conservative attitude is to be added
+another characteristic which goes in the same direction, but
+which is a symptom of graver consequence that this playful
+inclination to trivialities of form and ritual. By far the
+greater number of American colleges and universities, for
+instance, are affiliated to some religious denomination and are
+somewhat given to devout observances. Their putative familiarity
+with scientific methods and the scientific point of view should
+presumably exempt the faculties of these schools from animistic
+habits of thought; but there is still a considerable proportion
+of them who profess an attachment to the anthropomorphic beliefs
+and observances of an earlier culture. These professions of
+devotional zeal are, no doubt, to a good extent expedient and
+perfunctory, both on the part of the schools in their corporate
+capacity, and on the part of the individual members of the corps
+of instructors; but it can not be doubted that there is after all
+a very appreciable element of anthropomorphic sentiment present
+in the higher schools. So far as this is the case it must be set
+down as the expression of an archaic, animistic habit of mind.
+This habit of mind must necessarily assert itself to some extent
+in the instruction offered, and to this extent its influence in
+shaping the habits of thought of the student makes for
+conservatism and reversion; it acts to hinder his development in
+the direction of matter-of-fact knowledge, such as best serves
+the ends of industry.
+
+The college sports, which have so great a vogue in the reputable
+seminaries of learning today, tend in a similar direction; and,
+indeed, sports have much in common with the devout attitude of
+the colleges, both as regards their psychological basis and as
+regards their disciplinary effect. But this expression of the
+barbarian temperament is to be credited primarily to the body of
+students, rather than to the temper of the schools as such;
+except in so far as the colleges or the college officials -- as
+sometimes happens -- actively countenance and foster the growth
+of sports. The like is true of college fraternities as of college
+sports, but with a difference. The latter are chiefly an
+expression of the predatory impulse simply; the former are more
+specifically an expression of that heritage of clannishness which
+is so large a feature in the temperament of the predatory
+barbarian. It is also noticeable that a close relation subsists
+between the fraternities and the sporting activity of the
+schools. After what has already been said in an earlier chapter
+on the sporting and gambling habit, it is scarcely necessary
+further to discuss the economic value of this training in sports
+and in factional organization and activity.
+
+But all these features of the scheme of life of the learned
+class, and of the establishments dedicated to the conservation of
+the higher learning, are in a great measure incidental only. They
+are scarcely to be accounted organic elements of the professed
+work of research and instruction for the ostensible pursuit of
+which the schools exists. But these symptomatic indications go to
+establish a presumption as to the character of the work performed
+-- as seen from the economic point of view -- and as to the bent
+which the serious work carried on under their auspices gives to
+the youth who resort to the schools. The presumption raised by
+the considerations already offered is that in their work also, as
+well as in their ceremonial, the higher schools may be expected
+to take a conservative position; but this presumption must be
+checked by a comparison of the economic character of the work
+actually performed, and by something of a survey of the learning
+whose conservation is intrusted to the higher schools. On this
+head, it is well known that the accredited seminaries of learning
+have, until a recent date, held a conservative position. They
+have taken an attitude of depreciation towards all innovations.
+As a general rule a new point of view or a new formulation of
+knowledge have been countenanced and taken up within the schools
+only after these new things have made their way outside of the
+schools. As exceptions from this rule are chiefly to be mentioned
+innovations of an inconspicuous kind and departures which do not
+bear in any tangible way upon the conventional point of view or
+upon the conventional scheme of life; as, for instance, details
+of fact in the mathematico-physical sciences, and new readings
+and interpretations of the classics, especially such as have a
+philological or literary bearing only. Except within the domain
+of the "humanities", in the narrow sense, and except so far as
+the traditional point of view of the humanities has been left
+intact by the innovators, it has generally held true that the
+accredited learned class and the seminaries of the higher
+learning have looked askance at all innovation. New views, new
+departures in scientific theory, especially in new departures
+which touch the theory of human relations at any point, have
+found a place in the scheme of the university tardily and by a
+reluctant tolerance, rather than by a cordial welcome; and the
+men who have occupied themselves with such efforts to widen the
+scope of human knowledge have not commonly been well received by
+their learned contemporaries. The higher schools have not
+commonly given their countenance to a serious advance in the
+methods or the content of knowledge until the innovations have
+outlived their youth and much of their usefulness -- after they
+have become commonplaces of the intellectual furniture of a new
+generation which has grown up under, and has had its habits of
+thought shaped by, the new, extra-scholastic body of knowledge
+and the new standpoint. This is true of the recent past. How far
+it may be true of the immediate present it would be hazardous to
+say, for it is impossible to see present-day facts in such
+perspective as to get a fair conception of their relative
+proportions.
+
+So far, nothing has been said of the Maecenas function of the
+well-to-do, which is habitually dwelt on at some length by
+writers and speakers who treat of the development of culture and
+of social structure. This leisure-class function is not without
+an important bearing on the higher and on the spread of knowledge
+and culture. The manner and the degree in which the class
+furthers learning through patronage of this kind is sufficiently
+familiar. It has been frequently presented in affectionate and
+effective terms by spokesmen whose familiarity with the topic
+fits them to bring home to their hearers the profound
+significance of this cultural factor. These spokesmen, however,
+have presented the matter from the point of view of the cultural
+interest, or of the interest of reputability, rather than from
+that of the economic interest. As apprehended from the economic
+point of view, and valued for the purpose of industrial
+serviceability, this function of the well-to-do, as well as the
+intellectual attitude of members of the well-to-do class, merits
+some attention and will bear illustration.
+
+By way of characterization of the Maecenas relation, it is to be
+noted that, considered externally, as an economic or industrial
+relation simply, it is a relation of status. The scholar under
+the patronage performs the duties of a learned life vicariously
+for his patron, to whom a certain repute inures after the manner
+of the good repute imputed to a master for whom any form of
+vicarious leisure is performed. It is also to be noted that, in
+point of historical fact, the furtherance of learning or the
+maintenance of scholarly activity through the Maecenas relation
+has most commonly been a furtherance of proficiency in classical
+lore or in the humanities. The knowledge tends to lower rather
+than to heighten the industrial efficiency of the community.
+
+Further, as regards the direct participation of the members of
+the leisure class in the furtherance of knowledge, the canons of
+reputable living act to throw such intellectual interest as seeks
+expression among the class on the side of classical and formal
+erudition, rather than on the side of the sciences that bear some
+relation to the community's industrial life. The most frequent
+excursions into other than classical fields of knowledge on the
+part of members of the leisure class are made into the discipline
+of law and the political, and more especially the administrative,
+sciences. These so-called sciences are substantially bodies of
+maxims of expediency for guidance in the leisure-class office of
+government, as conducted on a proprietary basis. The interest
+with which this discipline is approached is therefore not
+commonly the intellectual or cognitive interest simply. It is
+largely the practical interest of the exigencies of that relation
+of mastery in which the members of the class are placed. In point
+of derivation, the office of government is a predatory function,
+pertaining integrally to the archaic leisure-class scheme of
+life. It is an exercise of control and coercion over the
+population from which the class draws its sustenance. This
+discipline, as well as the incidents of practice which give it
+its content, therefore has some attraction for the class apart
+from all questions of cognition. All this holds true wherever and
+so long as the governmental office continues, in form or in
+substance, to be a proprietary office; and it holds true beyond
+that limit, in so far as the tradition of the more archaic phase
+of governmental evolution has lasted on into the later life of
+those modern communities for whom proprietary government by a
+leisure class is now beginning to pass away.
+
+For that field of learning within which the cognitive or
+intellectual interest is dominant -- the sciences properly so
+called -- the case is somewhat different, not only as regards the
+attitude of the leisure class, but as regards the whole drift of
+the pecuniary culture. Knowledge for its own sake, the exercise
+of the faculty of comprehensive without ulterior purpose, should,
+it might be expected, be sought by men whom no urgent material
+interest diverts from such a quest. The sheltered industrial
+position of the leisure class should give free play to the
+cognitive interest in members of this class, and we should
+consequently have, as many writers confidently find that we do
+have, a very large proportion of scholars, scientists, savants
+derived from this class and deriving their incentive to
+scientific investigation and speculation from the discipline of a
+life of leisure. Some such result is to be looked for, but there
+are features of the leisure-class scheme of life, already
+sufficiently dwelt upon, which go to divert the intellectual
+interest of this class to other subjects than that causal
+sequence in phenomena which makes the content of the sciences.
+The habits of thought which characterize the life of the class
+run on the personal relation of dominance, and on the derivative,
+invidious concepts of honor, worth, merit, character, and the
+like. The casual sequence which makes up the subject matter of
+science is not visible from this point of view. Neither does good
+repute attach to knowledge of facts that are vulgarly useful.
+Hence it should appear probable that the interest of the
+invidious comparison with respect to pecuniary or other honorific
+merit should occupy the attention of the leisure class, to the
+neglect of the cognitive interest. Where this latter interest
+asserts itself it should commonly be diverted to fields of
+speculation or investigation which are reputable and futile,
+rather than to the quest of scientific knowledge. Such indeed has
+been the history of priestly and leisure-class learning so long
+as no considerable body of systematized knowledge had been
+intruded into the scholastic discipline from an extra-scholastic
+source. But since the relation of mastery and subservience is
+ceasing to be the dominant and formative factor in the
+community's life process, other features of the life process and
+other points of view are forcing themselves upon the scholars.
+The true-bred gentleman of leisure should, and does, see the
+world from the point of view of the personal relation; and the
+cognitive interest, so far as it asserts itself in him, should
+seek to systematize phenomena on this basis. Such indeed is the
+case with the gentleman of the old school, in whom the
+leisure-class ideals have suffered no disintegration; and such is
+the attitude of his latter-day descendant, in so far as he has
+fallen heir to the full complement of upper-class virtues. But
+the ways of heredity are devious, and not every gentleman's son
+is to the manor born. Especially is the transmission of the
+habits of thought which characterize the predatory master
+somewhat precarious in the case of a line of descent in which but
+one or two of the latest steps have lain within the leisure-class
+discipline. The chances of occurrence of a strong congenital or
+acquired bent towards the exercise of the cognitive aptitudes are
+apparently best in those members of the leisure class who are of
+lower class or middle class antecedents -- that is to say, those
+who have inherited the complement of aptitudes proper to the
+industrious classes, and who owe their place in the leisure class
+to the possession of qualities which count for more today than
+they did in the times when the leisure-class scheme of life took
+shape. But even outside the range of these later accessions to
+the leisure class there are an appreciable number of individuals
+in whom the invidious interest is not sufficiently dominant to
+shape their theoretical views, and in whom the proclivity to
+theory is sufficiently strong to lead them into the scientific
+quest.
+
+The higher learning owes the intrusion of the sciences in part to
+these aberrant scions of the leisure class, who have come under
+the dominant influence of the latter-day tradition of impersonal
+relation and who have inherited a complement of human aptitudes
+differing in certain salient features from the temperament which
+is characteristic of the regime of status. But it owes the
+presence of this alien body of scientific knowledge also in part,
+and in a higher degree, to members of the industrious classes who
+have been in sufficiently easy circumstances to turn their
+attention to other interests than that of finding daily
+sustenance, and whose inherited aptitudes and anthropomorphic
+point of view does not dominate their intellectual processes. As
+between these two groups, which approximately comprise the
+effective force of scientific progress, it is the latter that has
+contributed the most. And with respect to both it seems to be
+true that they are not so much the source as the vehicle, or at
+the most they are the instrument of commutation, by which the
+habits of thought enforced upon the community, through contact
+with its environment under the exigencies of modern associated
+life and the mechanical industries, are turned to account for
+theoretical knowledge.
+
+Science, in the sense of an articulate recognition of causal
+sequence in phenomena, whether physical or social, has been a
+feature of the Western culture only since the industrial process
+in the Western communities has come to be substantially a process
+of mechanical contrivances in which man's office is that of
+discrimination and valuation of material forces. Science has
+flourished somewhat in the same degree as the industrial life of
+the community has conformed to this pattern, and somewhat in the
+same degree as the industrial interest has dominated the
+community's life. And science, and scientific theory especially,
+has made headway in the several departments of human life and
+knowledge in proportion as each of these several departments has
+successively come into closer contact with the industrial process
+and the economic interest; or perhaps it is truer to say, in
+proportion as each of them has successively escaped from the
+dominance of the conceptions of personal relation or status, and
+of the derivative canons of anthropomorphic fitness and honorific
+worth.
+
+It is only as the exigencies of modern industrial life have
+enforced the recognition of causal sequence in the practical
+contact of mankind with their environment, that men have come to
+systematize the phenomena of this environment and the facts of
+their own contact with it,in terms of causal sequence. So that
+while the higher learning in its best development, as the perfect
+flower of scholasticism and classicism, was a by-product of the
+priestly office and the life of leisure, so modern science may be
+said to be a by-product of the industrial process. Through these
+groups of men, then -- investigators, savants, scientists,
+inventors, speculators -- most of whom have done their most
+telling work outside the shelter of the schools, the habits of
+thought enforced by the modern industrial life have found
+coherent expression and elaboration as a body of theoretical
+science having to do with the causal sequence of phenomena. And
+from this extra-scholastic field of scientific speculation,
+changes of method and purpose have from time to time been
+intruded into the scholastic discipline.
+
+In this connection it is to be remarked that there s a very
+perceptible difference of substance and purpose between the
+instruction offered in the primary and secondary schools, on the
+one hand, and in the higher seminaries of learning, on the other
+hand. The difference in point of immediate practicality of the
+information imparted and of the proficiency acquired may be of
+some consequence and may merit the attention which it has from
+time to time received; but there is more substantial difference
+in the mental and spiritual bent which is favored by the one and
+the other discipline. This divergent trend in discipline between
+the higher and the lower learning is especially noticeable as
+regards the primary education in its latest development in the
+advanced industrial communities. Here the instruction is directed
+chiefly to proficiency or dexterity, intellectual and manual, in
+the apprehension and employment of impersonal facts, in their
+casual rather than in their honorific incidence. It is true,
+under the traditions of the earlier days, when the primary
+education was also predominantly a leisure-class commodity, a
+free use is still mad of emulation as a spur to diligence in the
+common run of primary schools; but even this use of emulation as
+an expedient is visibly declining in the primary grades of
+instruction in communities where the lower education is not under
+the guidance of the ecclesiastical or military tradition. All
+this holds true in a peculiar degree, and more especially on the
+spiritual side, of such portions of the educational system as
+have been immediately affected by kindergarten methods and
+ideals.
+
+The peculiarly non-invidious trend of the kindergarten
+discipline, and the similar character of the kindergarten
+influence in primary education beyond the limits of the
+kindergarten proper, should be taken in connection with what has
+already been said of the peculiar spiritual attitude of
+leisure-class womankind under the circumstances of the modern
+economic situation. The kindergarten discipline is at its best --
+or at its farthest remove from ancient patriarchal and
+pedagogical ideals -- in the advanced industrial communities,
+where there is a considerable body of intelligent and idle women,
+and where the system of status has somewhat abated in rigor under
+the disintegrating influence of industrial life and in the
+absence of a consistent body of military and ecclesiastical
+traditions. It is from these women in easy circumstances that it
+gets its moral support. The aims and methods of the kindergarten
+commend themselves with especial effect to this class of women
+who are ill at ease under the pecuniary code of reputable life.
+The kindergarten, and whatever the kindergarten spirit counts for
+in modern education, therefore, is to be set down, along with the
+"new-woman movement," to the account of that revulsion against
+futility and invidious comparison which the leisure-class life
+under modern circumstances induces in the women most immediately
+exposed to its discipline. In this way it appears that, by
+indirection, the institution of a leisure class here again favors
+the growth of a non-invidious attitude, which may, in the long
+run, prove a menace to the stability of the institution itself,
+and even to the institution of individual ownership on which it
+rests. 
+
+During the recent past some tangible changes have taken place in
+the scope of college and university teaching. These changes have
+in the main consisted in a partial displacement of the humanities
+-- those branches of learning which are conceived to make for the
+traditional "culture", character, tastes, and ideals -- by those
+more matter-of-fact branches which make for civic and industrial
+efficiency. To put the same thing in other words, those branches
+of knowledge which make for efficiency (ultimately productive
+efficiency) have gradually been gaining ground against those
+branches which make for a heightened consumption or a lowered
+industrial efficiency and for a type of character suited to the
+regime of status. In this adaptation of the scheme of instruction
+the higher schools have commonly been found on the conservative
+side; each step which they have taken in advance has been to some
+extent of the nature of a concession. The sciences have been
+intruded into the scholar's discipline from without, not to say
+from below. It is noticeable that the humanities which have so
+reluctantly yielded ground to the sciences are pretty uniformly
+adapted to shape the character of the student in accordance with
+a traditional self-centred scheme of consumption; a scheme of
+contemplation and enjoyment of the true, the beautiful, and the
+good, according to a conventional standard of propriety and
+excellence, the salient feature of which is leisure -- otium cum
+dignitate. In language veiled by their own habituation to the
+archaic, decorous point of view, the spokesmen of the humanities
+have insisted upon the ideal embodied in the maxim, fruges
+consumere nati. This attitude should occasion no surprise in the
+case of schools which are shaped by and rest upon a leisure-class
+culture.
+
+The professed grounds on which it has been sought, as far as
+might be, to maintain the received standards and methods of
+culture intact are likewise characteristic of the archaic
+temperament and of the leisure-class theory of life. The
+enjoyment and the bent derived from habitual contemplation of the
+life, ideals, speculations, and methods of consuming time and
+goods, in vogue among the leisure class of classical time and
+goods, in vogue among the leisure class of classical antiquity,
+for instance, is felt to be "higher", "nobler", "worthier", than
+what results in these respects from a like familiarity with the
+everyday life and the knowledge and aspirations of commonplace
+humanity in a modern community. that learning the content of
+which is an unmitigated knowledge of latter-day men and things is
+by comparison "lower", "base", "ignoble" -- one even hears the
+epithet "sub-human" applied to this matter-of-fact knowledge of
+mankind and of everyday life.
+
+This contention of the leisure-class spokesmen of the
+humanities seems to be substantially sound. In point of
+substantial fact, the gratification and the culture, or the
+spiritual attitude or habit of mind, resulting from an habitual
+contemplation of the anthropomorphism, clannishness, and
+leisurely self-complacency of the gentleman of an early day, or
+from a familiarity with the animistic superstitions and the
+exuberant truculence of the Homeric heroes, for instance, is,
+aesthetically considered, more legitimate than the corresponding
+results derived from a matter-of-fact knowledge of things and a
+contemplation of latter-day civic or workmanlike efficiency.
+There can be but little question that the first-named habits have
+the advantage in respect of aesthetic or honorific value, and
+therefore in respect of the "worth" which is made the basis of
+award in the comparison. The content of the canons of taste, and
+more particularly of the canons of honor, is in the nature of
+things a resultant of the past life and circumstances of the
+race, transmitted to the later generation by inheritance or by
+tradition; and the fact that the protracted dominance of a
+predatory, leisure-class scheme of life has profoundly shaped the
+habit of mind and the point of view of the race in the past, is a
+sufficient basis for an aesthetically legitimate dominance of
+such a scheme of life in very much of what concerns matters of
+taste in the present. For the purpose in hand, canons of taste
+are race habits, acquired through a more or less protracted
+habituation to the approval or disapproval of the kind of things
+upon which a favorable or unfavorable judgment of taste is
+passed. Other things being equal, the longer and more unbroken
+the habituation, the more legitimate is the canon of taste in
+question. All this seems to be even truer of judgments regarding
+worth or honor than of judgments of taste generally.
+
+But whatever may be the aesthetic legitimacy of the derogatory
+judgment passed on the newer learning by the spokesmen of the
+humanities, and however substantial may be the merits of the
+contention that the classic lore is worthier and results in a
+more truly human culture and character, it does not concern the
+question in hand. The question in hand is as to how far these
+branches of learning, and the point of view for which they stand
+in the educational system, help or hinder an efficient collective
+life under modern industrial circumstances -- how far they
+further a more facile adaptation to the economic situation of
+today. The question is an economic, not an aesthetic one; and the
+leisure-class standards of learning which find expression in the
+deprecatory attitude of the higher schools towards matter-of-fact
+knowledge are, for the present purpose, to be valued from this
+point of view only. For this purpose the use of such epithets as
+"noble", "base", "higher", "lower", etc., is significant only as
+showing the animus and the point of view of the disputants;
+whether they contend for the worthiness of the new or of the old.
+All these epithets are honorific or humilific terms; that is to
+say, they are terms of invidious comparison, which in the last
+analysis fall under the category of the reputable or the
+disreputable; that is, they belong within the range of ideas that
+characterizes the scheme of life of the regime of status; that
+is, they are in substance an expression of sportsmanship -- of
+the predatory and animistic habit of mind; that is, they indicate
+an archaic point of view and theory of life, which may fit the
+predatory stage of culture and of economic organization from
+which they have sprung, but which are, from the point of view of
+economic efficiency in the broader sense, disserviceable
+anachronisms.
+
+The classics, and their position of prerogative in the scheme of
+education to which the higher seminaries of learning cling with
+such a fond predilection, serve to shape the intellectual
+attitude and lower the economic efficiency of the new learned
+generation. They do this not only by holding up an archaic ideal
+of manhood, but also by the discrimination which they inculcate
+with respect to the reputable and the disreputable in knowledge.
+This result is accomplished in two ways: (1) by inspiring an
+habitual aversion to what is merely useful, as contrasted with
+what is merely honorific in learning, and so shaping the tastes
+of the novice that he comes in good faith to find gratification
+of his tastes solely, or almost solely, in such exercise of the
+intellect as normally results in no industrial or social gain;
+and (2) by consuming the learner's time and effort in acquiring
+knowledge which is of no use,except in so far as this learning
+has  by convention become incorporated into the sum of learning
+required of the scholar, and has thereby affected the terminology
+and diction employed in the useful branches of knowledge. Except
+for this terminological difficulty -- which is itself a
+consequence of the vogue of the classics of the past -- a
+knowledge of the ancient languages, for instance, would have no
+practical bearing for any scientist or any scholar not engaged on
+work primarily of a linguistic character. Of course, all this has
+nothing to say as to the cultural value of the classics, nor is
+there any intention to disparage the discipline of the classics
+or the bent which their study gives to the student. That bent
+seems to be of an economically disserviceable kind, but this fact
+-- somewhat notorious indeed -- need disturb no one who has the
+good fortune to find comfort and strength in the classical lore.
+The fact that classical learning acts to derange the learner's
+workmanlike attitudes should fall lightly upon the apprehension
+of those who hold workmanship of small account in comparison with
+the cultivation of decorous ideals:  Iam fides et pax et honos
+pudorque Priscus et neglecta redire virtus Audet. 
+
+Owing to the circumstance that this knowledge has become part of
+the elementary requirements in our system of education, the
+ability to use and to understand certain of the dead languages of
+southern Europe is not only gratifying to the person who finds
+occasion to parade his accomplishments in this respect, but the
+evidence of such knowledge serves at the same time to recommend
+any savant to his audience, both lay and learned. It is currently
+expected that a certain number of years shall have been spent in
+acquiring this substantially useless information, and its absense
+creates a presumption of hasty and precarious learning, as well
+as of a vulgar practicality that is equally obnoxious to the
+conventional standards of sound scholarship and intellectual
+force.
+
+The case is analogous to what happens in the purchase of any
+article of consumption by a purchaser who is not an expert judge
+of materials or of workmanship. He makes his estimate of value of
+the article chiefly on the ground of the apparent expensiveness
+of the finish of those decorative parts and features which have
+no immediate relation to the intrinsic usefulness of the article;
+the presumption being that some sort of ill-defined proportion
+subsists between the substantial value of an article and the
+expense of adornment added in order to sell it. The presumption
+that there can ordinarily be no sound scholarship where a
+knowledge of the classics and humanities is wanting leads to a
+conspicuous waste of time and labor on the part of the general
+body of students in acquiring such knowledge. The conventional
+insistence on a modicum of conspicuous waste as an incident of
+all reputable scholarship has affected our canons of taste and of
+serviceability in matters of scholarship in much the same way as
+the same principle has influenced our judgment of the
+serviceability of manufactured goods.
+
+It is true, since conspicuous consumption has gained more and
+more on conspicuous leisure as a means of repute, the
+acquisition of the dead languages is no longer so imperative a
+requirement as it once was, and its talismanic virtue as a
+voucher of scholarship has suffered a concomitant impairment. But
+while this is true, it is also true that the classics have
+scarcely lost in absolute value as a voucher of scholastic
+respectability, since for this purpose it is only necessary that
+the scholar should be able to put in evidence some learning which
+is conventionally recognized as evidence of wasted time; and the
+classics lend themselves with great facility to this use. Indeed,
+there can be little doubt that it is their utility as evidence of
+wasted time and effort, and hence of the pecuniary strength
+necessary in order to afford this waste, that has secured to the
+classics their position of prerogative in the scheme of higher
+learning, and has led to their being esteemed the most honorific
+of all learning. They serve the decorative ends of leisure-class
+learning better than any other body of knowledge, and hence they
+are an effective means of reputability.
+
+In this respect the classics have until lately had scarcely a
+rival. They still have no dangerous rival on the continent of
+Europe, but lately, since college athletics have won their way
+into a recognized standing as an accredited field of scholarly
+accomplishment, this latter branch of learning -- if athletics
+may be freely classed as learning -- has become a rival of the
+classics for the primacy in leisure-class education in American
+and English schools. Athletics have an obvious advantage over the
+classics for the purpose of leisure-class learning, since success
+as an athlete presumes, not only waste of time, but also waste of
+money, as well as the possession of certain highly unindustrial
+archaic traits of character and temperament. In the German
+universities the place of athletics and Greek-letter
+fraternities, as a leisure-class scholarly occupation, has in
+some measure been supplied by a skilled and graded inebriety and
+a perfunctory duelling.
+
+The leisure class and its standard of virtue -- archaism and
+waste-- can scarcely have been concerned in the introduction of
+the classics into the scheme of the higher learning; but the
+tenacious retention of the classics by the higher schools, and
+the high degree of reputability which still attaches to them, are
+no doubt due to their conforming so closely to the requirements
+of archaism and waste.
+
+"Classic" always carries this connotation of wasteful and
+archaic, whether it is used to denote the dead languages or the
+obsolete or obsolescent forms of thought and diction in the
+living language, or to denote other items of scholarly activity
+or apparatus to which it is applied with less aptness. So the
+archaic idiom of the English language is spoken of as "classic"
+English. Its use is imperative in all speaking and writing upon
+serious topics, and a facile use of it lends dignity to even the
+most commonplace and trivial string of talk. The newest form of
+English diction is of course never written; the sense of that
+leisure-class propriety which requires archaism in speech is
+present even in the most illiterate or sensational writers in
+sufficient force to prevent such a lapse. On the other hand, the
+highest and most conventionalized style of archaic diction is --
+quite characteristically -- properly employed only in
+communications between an anthropomorphic divinity and his
+subjects. Midway between these extremes lies the everyday speech
+of leisure-class conversation and literature.
+
+Elegant diction, whether in writing or speaking, is an effective
+means of reputability. It is of moment to know with some
+precision what is the degree of archaism conventionally required
+in speaking on any given topic. Usage differs appreciably from
+the pulpit to the market-place; the latter, as might be expected,
+admits the use of relatively new and effective words and turns of
+expression, even by fastidious persons. A discriminative
+avoidance of neologisms is honorific, not only because it argues
+that time has been wasted in acquiring the obsolescent habit of
+speech, but also as showing that the speaker has from infancy
+habitually associated with persons who have been familiar with
+the obsolescent idiom. It thereby goes to show his leisure-class
+antecedents. Great purity of speech is presumptive evidence of
+several lives spent in other than vulgarly useful occupations;
+although its evidence is by no means entirely conclusive to this
+point.
+
+As felicitous an instance of futile classicism as can well be
+found, outside of the Far East, is the conventional spelling of
+the English language. A breach of the proprieties in spelling is
+extremely annoying and will discredit any writer in the eyes of
+all persons who are possessed of a developed sense of the true
+and beautiful. English orthography satisfies all the requirements
+of the canons of reputability under the law of conspicuous waste.
+It is archaic, cumbrous, and ineffective; its acquisition
+consumes much time and effort; failure to acquire it is easy of
+detection. Therefore it is the first and readiest test of
+reputability in learning, and conformity to its ritual is
+indispensable to a blameless scholastic life.
+
+On this head of purity of speech, as at other points where a
+conventional usage rests on the canons of archaism and waste, the
+spokesmen for the usage instinctively take an apologetic
+attitude. It is contended, in substance, that a punctilious use
+of ancient and accredited locutions will serve to convey thought 
+more adequately and more precisely than would be the
+straightforward use of the latest form of spoken English; whereas
+it is notorious that the ideas of today are effectively expressed
+in the slang of today. Classic speech has the honorific virtue of
+dignity; it commands attention and respect as being the
+accredited method of communication under the leisure-class scheme
+of life, because it carries a pointed suggestion of the
+industrial exemption of the speaker. The advantage of the
+accredited locutions lies in their reputability; they are
+reputable because they are cumbrous and out of date, and
+therefore argue waste of time and exemption from the use and the
+need of direct and forcible speech.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of The Theory of the Leisure Class
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Theory of the Leisure Class
+by Thorstein Veblen
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+Title: The Theory of the Leisure Class*
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+
+The Theory of the Leisure Class
+
+by Thorstein Veblen
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter One
+
+Introductory
+
+
+The institution of a leisure class is found in its best
+development at the higher stages of the barbarian culture; as,
+for instance, in feudal Europe or feudal Japan. In such
+communities the distinction between classes is very rigorously
+observed; and the feature of most striking economic significance
+in these class differences is the distinction maintained between
+the employments proper to the several classes. The upper classes
+are by custom exempt or excluded from industrial occupations, and
+are reserved for certain employments to which a degree of honour
+attaches. Chief among the honourable employments in any feudal
+community is warfare; and priestly service is commonly second to
+warfare. If the barbarian community is not notably warlike, the
+priestly office may take the precedence, with that of the warrior
+second. But the rule holds with but slight exceptions that,
+whether warriors or priests, the upper classes are exempt from
+industrial employments, and this exemption is the economic
+expression of their superior rank. Brahmin India affords a fair
+illustration of the industrial exemption of both these classes.
+In the communities belonging to the higher barbarian culture
+there is a considerable differentiation of sub-classes within
+what may be comprehensively called the leisure class; and there
+is a corresponding differentiation of employments between these
+sub-classes. The leisure class as a whole comprises the noble and
+the priestly classes, together with much of their retinue. The
+occupations of the class are correspondingly diversified; but
+they have the common economic characteristic of being
+non-industrial. These non-industrial upper-class occupations may
+be roughly comprised under government, warfare, religious
+observances, and sports.
+
+At an earlier, but not the earliest, stage of barbarism, the
+leisure class is found in a less differentiated form. Neither the
+class distinctions nor the distinctions between leisure-class
+occupations are so minute and intricate. The Polynesian islanders
+generally show this stage of the development in good form, with
+the exception that, owing to the absence of large game, hunting
+does not hold the usual place of honour in their scheme of life.
+The Icelandic community in the time of the Sagas also affords a
+fair instance. In such a community there is a rigorous
+distinction between classes and between the occupations peculiar
+to each class. Manual labour, industry, whatever has to do
+directly with the everyday work of getting a livelihood, is the
+exclusive occupation of the inferior class. This inferior class
+includes slaves and other dependents, and ordinarily also all the
+women. If there are several grades of aristocracy, the women of
+high rank are commonly exempt from industrial employment, or at
+least from the more vulgar kinds of manual labour. The men of the
+upper classes are not only exempt, but by prescriptive custom
+they are debarred, from all industrial occupations. The range of
+employments open to them is rigidly defined. As on the higher
+plane already spoken of, these employments are government,
+warfare, religious observances, and sports. These four lines of
+activity govern the scheme of life of the upper classes, and for
+the highest rank -- the kings or chieftains -- these are the only
+kinds of activity that custom or the common sense of the
+community will allow. Indeed, where the scheme is well developed
+even sports are accounted doubtfully legitimate for the members
+of the highest rank. To the lower grades of the leisure class
+certain other employments are open, but they are employments that
+are subsidiary to one or another of these typical leisure-class
+occupations. Such are, for instance, the manufacture and care of
+arms and accoutrements and of war canoes, the dressing and
+handling of horses, dogs, and hawks, the preparation of sacred
+apparatus, etc. The lower classes are excluded from these
+secondary honourable employments, except from such as are plainly
+of an industrial character and are only remotely related to the
+typical leisure-class occupations.
+
+If we go a step back of this exemplary barbarian culture, into
+the lower stages of barbarism, we no longer find the leisure
+class in fully developed form. But this lower barbarism shows the
+usages, motives, and circumstances out of which the institution
+of a leisure class has arisen, and indicates the steps of its
+early growth. Nomadic hunting tribes in various parts of the
+world illustrate these more primitive phases of the
+differentiation. Any one of the North American hunting tribes may
+be taken as a convenient illustration. These tribes can scarcely
+be said to have a defined leisure class. There is a
+differentiation of function, and there is a distinction between
+classes on the basis of this difference of function, but the
+exemption of the superior class from work has not gone far enough
+to make the designation "leisure class" altogether applicable.
+The tribes belonging on this economic level have carried the
+economic differentiation to the point at which a marked
+distinction is made between the occupations of men and women, and
+this distinction is of an invidious character. In nearly all
+these tribes the women are, by prescriptive custom, held to those
+employments out of which the industrial occupations proper
+develop at the next advance. The men are exempt from these vulgar
+employments and are reserved for war, hunting, sports, and devout
+observances. A very nice discrimination is ordinarily shown in
+this matter.
+
+This division of labour coincides with the distinction between
+the working and the leisure class as it appears in the higher
+barbarian culture. As the diversification and specialisation of
+employments proceed, the line of demarcation so drawn comes to
+divide the industrial from the non-industrial employments. The
+man's occupation as it stands at the earlier barbarian stage is
+not the original out of which any appreciable portion of later
+industry has developed. In the later development it survives only
+in employments that are not classed as industrial, -- war,
+politics, sports, learning, and the priestly office. The only
+notable exceptions are a portion of the fishery industry and
+certain slight employments that are doubtfully to be classed as
+industry; such as the manufacture of arms, toys, and sporting
+goods. Virtually the whole range of industrial employments is an
+outgrowth of what is classed as woman's work in the primitive
+barbarian community.
+
+The work of the men in the lower barbarian culture is no less
+indispensable to the life of the group than the work done by the
+women. It may even be that the men's work contributes as much to
+the food supply and the other necessary consumption of the group.
+Indeed, so obvious is this "productive" character of the men's
+work that in the conventional economic writings the hunter's work
+is taken as the type of primitive industry. But such is not the
+barbarian's sense of the matter. In his own eyes he is not a
+labourer, and he is not to be classed with the women in this
+respect; nor is his effort to be classed with the women's
+drudgery, as labour or industry, in such a sense as to admit of
+its being confounded with the latter. There is in all barbarian
+communities a profound sense of the disparity between man's and
+woman's work. His work may conduce to the maintenance of the
+group, but it is felt that it does so through an excellence and
+an efficacy of a kind that cannot without derogation be compared
+with the uneventful diligence of the women.
+
+At a farther step backward in the cultural scale -- among savage
+groups -- the differentiation of employments is still less
+elaborate and the invidious distinction between classes and
+employments is less consistent and less rigorous. Unequivocal
+instances of a primitive savage culture are hard to find. Few of
+these groups or communities that are classed as "savage" show no
+traces of regression from a more advanced cultural stage. But
+there are groups -- some of them apparently not the result of
+retrogression -- which show the traits of primitive savagery with
+some fidelity. Their culture differs from that of the barbarian
+communities in the absence of a leisure class and the absence, in
+great measure, of the animus or spiritual attitude on which the
+institution of a leisure class rests. These communities of
+primitive savages in which there is no hierarchy of economic
+classes make up but a small and inconspicuous fraction of the
+human race. As good an instance of this phase of culture as may
+be had is afforded by the tribes of the Andamans, or by the Todas
+of the Nilgiri Hills. The scheme of life of these groups at the
+time of their earliest contact with Europeans seems to have been
+nearly typical, so far as regards the absence of a leisure class.
+As a further instance might be cited the Ainu of Yezo, and, more
+doubtfully, also some Bushman and Eskimo groups. Some Pueblo
+communities are less confidently to be included in the same
+class. Most, if not all, of the communities here cited may well
+be cases of degeneration from a higher barbarism, rather than
+bearers of a culture that has never risen above its present
+level. If so, they are for the present purpose to be taken with
+the allowance, but they may serve none the less as evidence to
+the same effect as if they were really "primitive" populations.
+
+These communities that are without a defined leisure class
+resemble one another also in certain other features of their
+social structure and manner of life. They are small groups and of
+a simple (archaic) structure; they are commonly peaceable and
+sedentary; they are poor; and individual ownership is not a
+dominant feature of their economic system. At the same time it
+does not follow that these are the smallest of existing
+communities, or that their social structure is in all respects
+the least differentiated; nor does the class necessarily include
+all primitive communities which have no defined system of
+individual ownership. But it is to be noted that the class seems
+to include the most peaceable -- perhaps all the
+characteristically peaceable -- primitive groups of men. Indeed,
+the most notable trait common to members of such communities is a
+certain amiable inefficiency when confronted with force or fraud.
+
+The evidence afforded by the usages and cultural traits of
+communities at a low stage of development indicates that the
+institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the
+transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more
+precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a
+consistently warlike habit of life. The conditions apparently
+necessary to its emergence in a consistent form are: (1) the
+community must be of a predatory habit of life (war or the
+hunting of large game or both); that is to say, the men, who
+constitute the inchoate leisure class in these cases, must be
+habituated to the infliction of injury by force and stratagem;
+(2) subsistence must be obtainable on sufficiently easy terms to
+admit of the exemption of a considerable portion of the community
+from steady application to a routine of labour. The institution
+of leisure class is the outgrowth of an early discrimination
+between employments, according to which some employments are
+worthy and others unworthy. Under this ancient distinction the
+worthy employments are those which may be classed as exploit;
+unworthy are those necessary everyday employments into which no
+appreciable element of exploit enters.
+
+This distinction has but little obvious significance in a modern
+industrial community, and it has, therefore, received but slight
+attention at the hands of economic writers. When viewed in the
+light of that modern common sense which has guided economic
+discussion, it seems formal and insubstantial. But it persists
+with great tenacity as a commonplace preconception even in modern
+life, as is shown, for instance, by our habitual aversion to
+menial employments. It is a distinction of a personal kind -- of
+superiority and inferiority. In the earlier stages of culture,
+when the personal force of the individual counted more
+immediately and obviously in shaping the course of events, the
+element of exploit counted for more in the everyday scheme of
+life. Interest centred about this fact to a greater degree.
+Consequently a distinction proceeding on this ground seemed more
+imperative and more definitive then than is the case to-day. As a
+fact in the sequence of development, therefore, the distinction
+is a substantial one and rests on sufficiently valid and cogent
+grounds.
+
+The ground on which a discrimination between facts is habitually
+made changes as the interest from which the facts are habitually
+viewed changes. Those features of the facts at hand are salient
+and substantial upon which the dominant interest of the time
+throws its light. Any given ground of distinction will seem
+insubstantial to any one who habitually apprehends the facts in
+question from a different point of view and values them for a
+different purpose. The habit of distinguishing and classifying
+the various purposes and directions of activity prevails of
+necessity always and everywhere; for it is indispensable in
+reaching a working theory or scheme of life. The particular point
+of view, or the particular characteristic that is pitched upon as
+definitive in the classification of the facts of life depends
+upon the interest from which a discrimination of the facts is
+sought. The grounds of discrimination, and the norm of procedure
+in classifying the facts, therefore, progressively change as the
+growth of culture proceeds; for the end for which the facts of
+life are apprehended changes, and the point of view consequently
+changes also. So that what are recognised as the salient and
+decisive features of a class of activities or of a social class
+at one stage of culture will not retain the same relative
+importance for the purposes of classification at any subsequent
+stage.
+
+But the change of standards and points of view is gradual only,
+and it seldom results in the subversion or entire suppression of
+a standpoint once accepted. A distinction is still habitually
+made between industrial and non-industrial occupations; and this
+modern distinction is a transmuted form of the barbarian
+distinction between exploit and drudgery. Such employments as
+warfare, politics, public worship, and public merrymaking, are
+felt, in the popular apprehension, to differ intrinsically from
+the labour that has to do with elaborating the material means of
+life. The precise line of demarcation is not the same as it was
+in the early barbarian scheme, but the broad distinction has not
+fallen into disuse.
+
+The tacit, common-sense distinction to-day is, in effect, that
+any effort is to be accounted industrial only so far as its
+ultimate purpose is the utilisation of non-human things. The
+coercive utilisation of man by man is not felt to be an
+industrial function; but all effort directed to enhance human
+life by taking advantage of the non-human environment is classed
+together as industrial activity. By the economists who have best
+retained and adapted the classical tradition, man's "power over
+nature" is currently postulated as the characteristic fact of
+industrial productivity. This industrial power over nature is
+taken to include man's power over the life of the beasts and over
+all the elemental forces. A line is in this way drawn between
+mankind and brute creation.
+
+In other times and among men imbued with a different body of
+preconceptions this line is not drawn precisely as we draw it
+to-day. In the savage or the barbarian scheme of life it is drawn
+in a different place and in another way. In all communities under
+the barbarian culture there is an alert and pervading sense of
+antithesis between two comprehensive groups of phenomena, in one
+of which barbarian man includes himself, and in the other, his
+victual. There is a felt antithesis between economic and
+non-economic phenomena, but it is not conceived in the modern
+fashion; it lies not between man and brute creation, but between
+animate and inert things.
+
+It may be an excess of caution at this day to explain that the
+barbarian notion which it is here intended to convey by the term
+"animate" is not the same as would be conveyed by the word
+"living". The term does not cover all living things, and it does
+cover a great many others. Such a striking natural phenomenon as
+a storm, a disease, a waterfall, are recognised as "animate";
+while fruits and herbs, and even inconspicuous animals, such as
+house-flies, maggots, lemmings, sheep, are not ordinarily
+apprehended as "animate" except when taken collectively. As here
+used the term does not necessarily imply an indwelling soul or
+spirit. The concept includes such things as in the apprehension
+of the animistic savage or barbarian are formidable by virtue of
+a real or imputed habit of initiating action. This category
+comprises a large number and range of natural objects and
+phenomena. Such a distinction between the inert and the active is
+still present in the habits of thought of unreflecting persons,
+and it still profoundly affects the prevalent theory of human
+life and of natural processes; but it does not pervade our daily
+life to the extent or with the far-reaching practical
+consequences that are apparent at earlier stages of culture and
+belief.
+
+To the mind of the barbarian, the elaboration and utilisation of
+what is afforded by inert nature is activity on quite a different
+plane from his dealings with "animate" things and forces. The
+line of demarcation may be vague and shifting, but the broad
+distinction is sufficiently real and cogent to influence the
+barbarian scheme of life. To the class of things apprehended as
+animate, the barbarian fancy imputes an unfolding of activity
+directed to some end. It is this teleological unfolding of
+activity that constitutes any object or phenomenon an "animate"
+fact. Wherever the unsophisticated savage or barbarian meets with
+activity that is at all obtrusive, he construes it in the only
+terms that are ready to hand -- the terms immediately given in
+his consciousness of his own actions. Activity is, therefore,
+assimilated to human action, and active objects are in so far
+assimilated to the human agent. Phenomena of this character --
+especially those whose behaviour is notably formidable or
+baffling -- have to be met in a different spirit and with
+proficiency of a different kind from what is required in dealing
+with inert things. To deal successfully with such phenomena is a
+work of exploit rather than of industry. It is an assertion of
+prowess, not of diligence.
+
+Under the guidance of this naive discrimination between the inert
+and the animate, the activities of the primitive social group
+tend to fall into two classes, which would in modern phrase be
+called exploit and industry. Industry is effort that goes to
+create a new thing, with a new purpose given it by the fashioning
+hand of its maker out of passive ("brute") material; while
+exploit, so far as it results in an outcome useful to the agent,
+is the conversion to his own ends of energies previously directed
+to some other end by an other agent. We still speak of "brute
+matter" with something of the barbarian's realisation of a
+profound significance in the term.
+
+The distinction between exploit and drudgery coincides with a
+difference between the sexes. The sexes differ, not only in
+stature and muscular force, but perhaps even more decisively in
+temperament, and this must early have given rise to a
+corresponding division of labour. The general range of activities
+that come under the head of exploit falls to the males as being
+the stouter, more massive, better capable of a sudden and violent
+strain, and more readily inclined to self assertion, active
+emulation, and aggression. The difference in mass, in
+physiological character, and in temperament may be slight among
+the members of the primitive group; it appears, in fact, to be
+relatively slight and inconsequential in some of the more archaic
+communities with which we are acquainted -- as for instance the
+tribes of the Andamans. But so soon as a differentiation of
+function has well begun on the lines marked out by this
+difference in physique and animus, the original difference
+between the sexes will itself widen. A cumulative process of
+selective adaptation to the new distribution of employments will
+set in, especially if the habitat or the fauna with which the
+group is in contact is such as to call for a considerable
+exercise of the sturdier virtues. The habitual pursuit of large
+game requires more of the manly qualities of massiveness,
+agility, and ferocity, and it can therefore scarcely fail to
+hasten and widen the differentiation of functions between the
+sexes. And so soon as the group comes into hostile contact with
+other groups, the divergence of function will take on the
+developed form of a distinction between exploit and industry.
+
+In such a predatory group of hunters it comes to be the
+able-bodied men's office to fight and hunt. The women do what
+other work there is to do -- other members who are unfit for
+man's work being for this purpose classed with women. But the
+men's hunting and fighting are both of the same general
+character. Both are of a predatory nature; the warrior and the
+hunter alike reap where they have not strewn. Their aggressive
+assertion of force and sagacity differs obviously from the
+women's assiduous and uneventful shaping of materials; it is not
+to be accounted productive labour but rather an acquisition of
+substance by seizure. Such being the barbarian man's work, in its
+best development and widest divergence from women's work, any
+effort that does not involve an assertion of prowess comes to be
+unworthy of the man. As the tradition gains consistency, the
+common sense of the community erects it into a canon of conduct;
+so that no employment and no acquisition is morally possible to
+the self respecting man at this cultural stage, except such as
+proceeds on the basis of prowess -- force or fraud. When the
+predatory habit of life has been settled upon the group by long
+habituation, it becomes the able-bodied man's accredited office
+in the social economy to kill, to destroy such competitors in the
+struggle for existence as attempt to resist or elude him, to
+overcome and reduce to subservience those alien forces that
+assert themselves refractorily in the environment. So tenaciously
+and with such nicety is this theoretical distinction between
+exploit and drudgery adhered to that in many hunting tribes the
+man must not bring home the game which he has killed, but must
+send his woman to perform that baser office.
+
+As has already been indicated, the distinction between exploit
+and drudgery is an invidious distinction between employments.
+Those employments which are to be classed as exploit are worthy,
+honourable, noble; other employments, which do not contain this
+element of exploit, and especially those which imply subservience
+or submission, are unworthy, debasing, ignoble. The concept of
+dignity, worth, or honour, as applied either to persons or
+conduct, is of first-rate consequence in the development of
+classes and of class distinctions, and it is therefore necessary
+to say something of its derivation and meaning. Its psychological
+ground may be indicated in outline as follows.
+
+As a matter of selective necessity, man is an agent. He is, in
+his own apprehension, a centre of unfolding impulsive activity --
+"teleological" activity. He is an agent seeking in every act the
+accomplishment of some concrete, objective, impersonal end. By
+force of his being such an agent he is possessed of a taste for
+effective work, and a distaste for futile effort. He has a sense
+of the merit of serviceability or efficiency and of the demerit
+of futility, waste, or incapacity. This aptitude or propensity
+may be called the instinct of workmanship. Wherever the
+circumstances or traditions of life lead to an habitual
+comparison of one person with another in point of efficiency, the
+instinct of workmanship works out in an emulative or invidious
+comparison of persons. The extent to which this result follows
+depends in some considerable degree on the temperament of the
+population. In any community where such an invidious comparison
+of persons is habitually made, visible success becomes an end
+sought for its own utility as a basis of esteem. Esteem is gained
+and dispraise is avoided by putting one's efficiency in evidence.
+The result is that the instinct of workmanship works out in an
+emulative demonstration of force.
+
+During that primitive phase of social development, when the
+community is still habitually peaceable, perhaps sedentary, and
+without a developed system of individual ownership, the
+efficiency of the individual can be shown chiefly and most
+consistently in some employment that goes to further the life of
+the group. What emulation of an economic kind there is between
+the members of such a group will be chiefly emulation in
+industrial serviceability. At the same time the incentive to
+emulation is not strong, nor is the scope for emulation large.
+
+When the community passes from peaceable savagery to a predatory
+phase of life, the conditions of emulation change. The
+opportunity and the incentive to emulate increase greatly in
+scope and urgency. The activity of the men more and more takes on
+the character of exploit; and an invidious comparison of one
+hunter or warrior with another grows continually easier and more
+habitual. Tangible evidences of prowess -- trophies -- find a
+place in men's habits of thought as an essential feature of the
+paraphernalia of life. Booty, trophies of the chase or of the
+raid, come to be prized as evidence of pre-eminent force.
+Aggression becomes the accredited form of action, and booty
+serves as prima facie evidence of successful aggression. As
+accepted at this cultural stage, the accredited, worthy form of
+self-assertion is contest; and useful articles or services
+obtained by seizure or compulsion, serve as a conventional
+evidence of successful contest. Therefore, by contrast, the
+obtaining of goods by other methods than seizure comes to be
+accounted unworthy of man in his best estate. The performance of
+productive work, or employment in personal service, falls under
+the same odium for the same reason. An invidious distinction in
+this way arises between exploit and acquisition on the other
+hand. Labour acquires a character of irksomeness by virtue of the
+indignity imputed to it.
+
+With the primitive barbarian, before the simple content of the
+notion has been obscured by its own ramifications and by a
+secondary growth of cognate ideas, "honourable" seems to connote
+nothing else than assertion of superior force. "Honourable" is
+"formidable"; "worthy" is "prepotent". A honorific act is in the
+last analysis little if anything else than a recognised
+successful act of aggression; and where aggression means conflict
+with men and beasts, the activity which comes to be especially
+and primarily honourable is the assertion of the strong hand. The
+naive, archaic habit of construing all manifestations of force in
+terms of personality or "will power" greatly fortifies this
+conventional exaltation of the strong hand. Honorific epithets,
+in vogue among barbarian tribes as well as among peoples of a
+more advance culture, commonly bear the stamp of this
+unsophisticated sense of honour. Epithets and titles used in
+addressing chieftains, and in the propitiation of kings and gods,
+very commonly impute a propensity for overbearing violence and an
+irresistible devastating force to the person who is to be
+propitiated. This holds true to an extent also in the more
+civilised communities of the present day. The predilection shown
+in heraldic devices for the more rapacious beasts and birds of
+prey goes to enforce the same view.
+
+Under this common-sense barbarian appreciation of worth or
+honour, the taking of life -- the killing of formidable
+competitors, whether brute or human -- is honourable in the
+highest degree. And this high office of slaughter, as an
+expression of the slayer's prepotence, casts a glamour of worth
+over every act of slaughter and over all the tools and
+accessories of the act. Arms are honourable, and the use of them,
+even in seeking the life of the meanest creatures of the fields,
+becomes a honorific employment. At the same time, employment in
+industry becomes correspondingly odious, and, in the common-sense
+apprehension, the handling of the tools and implements of
+industry falls beneath the dignity of able-bodied men. Labour
+becomes irksome.
+
+It is here assumed that in the sequence of cultural
+evolution primitive groups of men have passed from an initial
+peaceable stage to a subsequent stage at which fighting is the
+avowed and characteristic employment of the group. But it is not
+implied that there has been an abrupt transition from unbroken
+peace and good-will to a later or higher phase of life in which
+the fact of combat occurs for the first time. Neither is it
+implied that all peaceful industry disappears on the transition
+to the predatory phase of culture. Some fighting, it is safe to
+say, would be met with at any early stage of social development.
+Fights would occur with more or less frequency through sexual
+competition. The known habits of primitive groups, as well as the
+habits of the anthropoid apes, argue to that effect, and the
+evidence from the well-known promptings of human nature enforces
+the same view.
+
+It may therefore be objected that there can have been no such initial
+stage of peaceable life as is here assumed. There is no point in
+cultural evolution prior to which fighting does not occur.  But the
+point in question is not as to the occurrence of combat, occasional or
+sporadic, or even more or less frequent and habitual; it is a question
+as to the occurrence of an habitual; it is a question as to the
+occurrence of an habitual bellicose frame of mind -- a prevalent habit
+of judging facts and events from the point of view of the fight. The
+predatory phase of culture is attained only when the predatory
+attitude has become the habitual and accredited spiritual attitude for
+the members of the group; when the fight has become the dominant note
+in the current theory of life; when the common-sense appreciation of
+men and things has come to be an appreciation with a view to combat.
+
+The substantial difference between the peaceable and the
+predatory phase of culture, therefore, is a spiritual difference,
+not a mechanical one. The change in spiritual attitude is the
+outgrowth of a change in the material facts of the life of the
+group, and it comes on gradually as the material circumstances
+favourable to a predatory attitude supervene. The inferior limit
+of the predatory culture is an industrial limit. Predation can
+not become the habitual, conventional resource of any group or
+any class until industrial methods have been developed to such a
+degree of efficiency as to leave a margin worth fighting for,
+above the subsistence of those engaged in getting a living. The
+transition from peace to predation therefore depends on the
+growth of technical knowledge and the use of tools. A predatory
+culture is similarly impracticable in early times, until weapons
+have been developed to such a point as to make man a formidable
+animal. The early development of tools and of weapons is of
+course the same fact seen from two different points of view.
+
+The life of a given group would be characterised as
+peaceable so long as habitual recourse to combat has not brought
+the fight into the foreground in men's every day thoughts, as a
+dominant feature of the life of man. A group may evidently attain
+such a predatory attitude with a greater or less degree of
+completeness, so that its scheme of life and canons of conduct
+may be controlled to a greater or less extent by the predatory
+animus. The predatory phase of culture is therefore conceived to
+come on gradually, through a cumulative growth of predatory
+aptitudes habits, and traditions this growth being due to a
+change in the circumstances of the group's life, of such a kind
+as to develop and conserve those traits of human nature and those
+traditions and norms of conduct that make for a predatory rather
+than a peaceable life.
+
+The evidence for the hypothesis that there has been such a
+peaceable stage of primitive culture is in great part drawn from
+psychology rather than from ethnology, and cannot be detailed
+here. It will be recited in part in a later chapter, in
+discussing the survival of archaic traits of human nature under
+the modern culture.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Two
+
+Pecuniary Emulation
+
+In the sequence of cultural evolution the emergence of a leisure
+class coincides with the beginning of ownership. This is
+necessarily the case, for these two institutions result from the
+same set of economic forces. In the inchoate phase of their
+development they are but different aspects of the same general
+facts of social structure.
+
+It is as elements of social structure -- conventional facts --
+that leisure and ownership are matters of interest for the
+purpose in hand. An habitual neglect of work does not constitute
+a leisure class; neither does the mechanical fact of use and
+consumption constitute ownership. The present inquiry, therefore,
+is not concerned with the beginning of indolence, nor with the
+beginning of the appropriation of useful articles to individual
+consumption. The point in question is the origin and nature of a
+conventional leisure class on the one hand and the beginnings of
+individual ownership as a conventional right or equitable claim
+on the other hand.
+
+The early differentiation out of which the distinction between a
+leisure and a working class arises is a division maintained
+between men's and women's work in the lower stages of barbarism.
+Likewise the earliest form of ownership is an
+ownership of the women by the able bodied men of the community.
+The facts may be expressed in more general terms, and truer to
+the import of the barbarian theory of life, by saying that it is
+an ownership of the woman by the man.
+
+There was undoubtedly some appropriation of useful articles
+before the custom of appropriating women arose. The usages of
+existing archaic communities in which there is no ownership of
+women is warrant for such a view. In all communities the members,
+both male and female, habitually appropriate to their individual
+use a variety of useful things; but these useful things are not
+thought of as owned by the person who appropriates and consumes
+them. The habitual appropriation and consumption of certain
+slight personal effects goes on without raising the question of
+ownership; that is to say, the question of a conventional,
+equitable claim to extraneous things.
+
+The ownership of women begins in the lower barbarian stages of
+culture, apparently with the seizure of female captives. The
+original reason for the seizure and appropriation of women seems
+to have been their usefulness as trophies. The practice of
+seizing women from the enemy as trophies, gave rise to a form of
+ownership-marriage, resulting in a household with a male head.
+This was followed by an extension of slavery to other captives
+and inferiors, besides women, and by an extension of
+ownership-marriage to other women than those seized from the
+enemy. The outcome of emulation under the circumstances of a
+predatory life, therefore, has been on the one hand a form of
+marriage resting on coercion, and on the other hand the custom of
+ownership. The two institutions are not distinguishable in the
+initial phase of their development; both arise from the desire of
+the successful men to put their prowess in evidence by exhibiting
+some durable result of their exploits. Both also minister to that
+propensity for mastery which pervades all predatory communities.
+From the ownership of women the concept of ownership extends
+itself to include the products of their industry, and so there
+arises the ownership of things as well as of persons.
+
+In this way a consistent system of property in goods is gradually
+installed. And although in the latest stages of the development,
+the serviceability of goods for consumption has come to be the
+most obtrusive element of their value, still, wealth has by no
+means yet lost its utility as a honorific evidence of the owner's
+prepotence.
+
+Wherever the institution of private property is found, even in a
+slightly developed form, the economic process bears the character
+of a struggle between men for the possession of goods. It has
+been customary in economic theory, and especially among those
+economists who adhere with least faltering to the body of
+modernised classical doctrines, to construe this struggle for
+wealth as being substantially a struggle for subsistence. Such
+is, no doubt, its character in large part during the earlier and
+less efficient phases of industry. Such is also its character in
+all cases where the "niggardliness of nature" is so strict as to
+afford but a scanty livelihood to the community in return for
+strenuous and unremitting application to the business of getting
+the means of subsistence. But in all progressing communities an
+advance is presently made beyond this early stage of
+technological development. Industrial efficiency is presently
+carried to such a pitch as to afford something appreciably more
+than a bare livelihood to those engaged in the industrial
+process. It has not been unusual for economic theory to speak of
+the further struggle for wealth on this new industrial basis as a
+competition for an increase of the comforts of life, -- primarily
+for an increase of the physical comforts which the consumption of
+goods affords.
+
+The end of acquisition and accumulation is conventionally held to
+be the consumption of the goods accumulated -- whether it is
+consumption directly by the owner of the goods or by the
+household attached to him and for this purpose identified with
+him in theory. This is at least felt to be the economically
+legitimate end of acquisition, which alone it is incumbent on the
+theory to take account of. Such consumption may of course be
+conceived to serve the consumer's physical wants -- his physical
+comfort -- or his so-called higher wants -- spiritual, aesthetic,
+intellectual, or what not; the latter class of wants being served
+indirectly by an expenditure of goods, after the fashion familiar
+to all economic readers.
+
+But it is only when taken in a sense far removed from its naive
+meaning that consumption of goods can be said to afford the
+incentive from which accumulation invariably proceeds. The motive
+that lies at the root of ownership is emulation; and the same
+motive of emulation continues active in the further development
+of the institution to which it has given rise and in the
+development of all those features of the social structure which
+this institution of ownership touches. The possession of wealth
+confers honour; it is an invidious distinction. Nothing equally
+cogent can be said for the consumption of goods, nor for any
+other conceivable incentive to acquisition, and especially not
+for any incentive to accumulation of wealth.
+
+It is of course not to be overlooked that in a community where
+nearly all goods are private property the necessity of earning a
+livelihood is a powerful and ever present incentive for the
+poorer members of the community. The need of subsistence and of
+an increase of physical comfort may for a time be the dominant
+motive of acquisition for those classes who are habitually
+employed at manual labour, whose subsistence is on a precarious
+footing, who possess little and ordinarily accumulate little; but
+it will appear in the course of the discussion that even in the
+case of these impecunious classes the predominance of the motive
+of physical want is not so decided as has sometimes been assumed.
+On the other hand, so far as regards those members and classes of
+the community who are chiefly concerned in the accumulation of
+wealth, the incentive of subsistence or of physical comfort never
+plays a considerable part. Ownership began and grew into a human
+institution on grounds unrelated to the subsistence minimum. The
+dominant incentive was from the outset the invidious distinction
+attaching to wealth, and, save temporarily and by exception, no
+other motive has usurped the primacy at any later stage of the
+development.
+
+Property set out with being booty held as trophies of the
+successful raid. So long as the group had departed and so long as
+it still stood in close contact with other hostile groups, the
+utility of things or persons owned lay chiefly in an invidious
+comparison between their possessor and the enemy from whom they
+were taken. The habit of distinguishing between the interests of
+the individual and those of the group to which he belongs is
+apparently a later growth. Invidious comparison between the
+possessor of the honorific booty and his less successful
+neighbours within the group was no doubt present early as an
+element of the utility of the things possessed, though this was
+not at the outset the chief element of their value. The man's
+prowess was still primarily the group's prowess, and the
+possessor of the booty felt himself to be primarily the keeper of
+the honour of his group. This appreciation of exploit from the
+communal point of view is met with also at later stages of social
+growth, especially as regards the laurels of war.
+
+But as soon as the custom of individual ownership begins to gain
+consistency, the point of view taken in making the invidious
+comparison on which private property rests will begin to change.
+Indeed, the one change is but the reflex of the other. The
+initial phase of ownership, the phase of acquisition by naive
+seizure and conversion, begins to pass into the subsequent stage
+of an incipient organization of industry on the basis of private
+property (in slaves); the horde develops into a more or less
+self-sufficing industrial community; possessions then come to be
+valued not so much as evidence of successful foray, but rather as
+evidence of the prepotence of the possessor of these goods over
+other individuals within the community. The invidious comparison
+now becomes primarily a comparison of the owner with the other
+members of the group. Property is still of the nature of trophy,
+but, with the cultural advance, it becomes more and more a trophy
+of successes scored in the game of ownership carried on between
+the members of the group under the quasi-peaceable methods of
+nomadic life.
+
+Gradually, as industrial activity further displaced
+predatory activity in the community's everyday life and in men's
+habits of thought, accumulated property more and more replaces
+trophies of predatory exploit as the conventional exponent of
+prepotence and success. With the growth of settled industry,
+therefore, the possession of wealth gains in relative importance
+and effectiveness as a customary basis of repute and esteem. Not
+that esteem ceases to be awarded on the basis of other, more
+direct evidence of prowess; not that successful predatory
+aggression or warlike exploit ceases to call out the approval and
+admiration of the crowd, or to stir the envy of the less
+successful competitors; but the opportunities for gaining
+distinction by means of this direct manifestation of superior
+force grow less available both in scope and frequency. At the
+same time opportunities for industrial aggression, and for the
+accumulation of property, increase in scope and availability. And
+it is even more to the point that property now becomes the most
+easily recognised evidence of a reputable degree of success as
+distinguished from heroic or signal achievement. It therefore
+becomes the conventional basis of esteem. Its possession in some
+amount becomes necessary in order to any reputable standing in
+the community. It becomes indispensable to accumulate, to acquire
+property, in order to retain one's good name. When accumulated
+goods have in this way once become the accepted badge of
+efficiency, the possession of wealth presently assumes the
+character of an independent and definitive basis of esteem. The
+possession of goods, whether acquired aggressively by one's own
+exertion or passively by transmission through inheritance from
+others, becomes a conventional basis of reputability. The
+possession of wealth, which was at the outset valued simply as an
+evidence of efficiency, becomes, in popular apprehension, itself
+a meritorious act. Wealth is now itself intrinsically honourable
+and confers honour on its possessor. By a further refinement,
+wealth acquired passively by transmission from ancestors or other
+antecedents presently becomes even more honorific than wealth
+acquired by the possessor's own effort; but this distinction
+belongs at a later stage in the evolution of the pecuniary
+culture and will be spoken of in its place.
+
+Prowess and exploit may still remain the basis of award of the
+highest popular esteem, although the possession of wealth has
+become the basis of common place reputability and of a blameless
+social standing. The predatory instinct and the consequent
+approbation of predatory efficiency are deeply ingrained in the
+habits of thought of those peoples who have passed under the
+discipline of a protracted predatory culture. According to
+popular award, the highest honours within human reach may, even
+yet, be those gained by an unfolding of extraordinary predatory
+efficiency in war, or by a quasi-predatory efficiency in
+statecraft; but for the purposes of a commonplace decent standing
+in the community these means of repute have been replaced by the
+acquisition and accumulation of goods. In order to stand well in
+the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a
+certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth;
+just as in the earlier predatory stage it is necessary for the
+barbarian man to come up to the tribe's standard of physical
+endurance, cunning, and skill at arms. A certain standard of
+wealth in the one case, and of prowess in the other, is a
+necessary condition of reputability, and anything in excess of
+this normal amount is meritorious.
+
+Those members of the community who fall short of this, somewhat
+indefinite, normal degree of prowess or of property suffer in the
+esteem of their fellow-men; and consequently they suffer also in
+their own esteem, since the usual basis of self-respect is the
+respect accorded by one's neighbours. Only individuals with an
+aberrant temperament can in the long run retain their self-esteem
+in the face of the disesteem of their fellows. Apparent
+exceptions to the rule are met with, especially among people with
+strong religious convictions. But these apparent exceptions are
+scarcely real exceptions, since such persons commonly fall back
+on the putative approbation of some supernatural witness of their
+deeds.
+
+So soon as the possession of property becomes the basis of
+popular esteem, therefore, it becomes also a requisite to the
+complacency which we call self-respect. In any community where
+goods are held in severalty it is necessary, in order to his own
+peace of mind, that an individual should possess as large a
+portion of goods as others with whom he is accustomed to class
+himself; and it is extremely gratifying to possess something more
+than others. But as fast as a person makes new acquisitions, and
+becomes accustomed to the resulting new standard of wealth, the
+new standard forthwith ceases to afford appreciably greater
+satisfaction than the earlier standard did. The tendency in any
+case is constantly to make the present pecuniary standard the
+point of departure for a fresh increase of wealth; and this in
+turn gives rise to a new standard of sufficiency and a new
+pecuniary classification of one's self as compared with one's
+neighbours. So far as concerns the present question, the end
+sought by accumulation is to rank high in comparison with the
+rest of the community in point of pecuniary strength. So long as
+the comparison is distinctly unfavourable to himself, the normal,
+average individual will live in chronic dissatisfaction with his
+present lot; and when he has reached what may be called the
+normal pecuniary standard of the community, or of his class in
+the community, this chronic dissatisfaction will give place to a
+restless straining to place a wider and ever-widening pecuniary
+interval between himself and this average standard. The invidious
+comparison can never become so favourable to the individual
+making it that he would not gladly rate himself still higher
+relatively to his competitors in the struggle for pecuniary
+reputability.
+
+In the nature of the case, the desire for wealth can scarcely be
+satiated in any individual instance, and evidently a satiation of
+the average or general desire for wealth is out of the question.
+However widely, or equally, or "fairly", it may be distributed,
+no general increase of the community's wealth can make any
+approach to satiating this need, the ground of which approach to
+satiating this need, the ground of which is the desire of every
+one to excel every one else in the accumulation of goods.  If, as
+is sometimes assumed, the incentive to accumulation were the want
+of subsistence or of physical comfort, then the aggregate
+economic wants of a community might conceivably be satisfied at
+some point in the advance of industrial efficiency; but since the
+struggle is substantially a race for reputability on the basis of
+an invidious comparison, no approach to a definitive attainment
+is possible.
+
+What has just been said must not be taken to mean that there are
+no other incentives to acquisition and accumulation than this
+desire to excel in pecuniary standing and so gain the esteem and
+envy of one's fellow-men. The desire for added comfort and
+security from want is present as a motive at every stage of the
+process of accumulation in a modern industrial community;
+although the standard of sufficiency in these respects is in turn
+greatly affected by the habit of pecuniary emulation. To a great
+extent this emulation shapes the methods and selects the objects
+of expenditure for personal comfort and decent livelihood.
+
+Besides this, the power conferred by wealth also affords a motive
+to accumulation. That propensity for purposeful activity and that
+repugnance to all futility of effort which belong to man by
+virtue of his character as an agent do not desert him when he
+emerges from the naive communal culture where the dominant note
+of life is the unanalysed and undifferentiated solidarity of the
+individual with the group with which his life is bound up. When
+he enters upon the predatory stage, where self-seeking in the
+narrower sense becomes the dominant note, this propensity goes
+with him still, as the pervasive trait that shapes his scheme of
+life. The propensity for achievement and the repugnance to
+futility remain the underlying economic motive. The propensity
+changes only in the form of its expression and in the proximate
+objects to which it directs the man's activity. Under the regime
+of individual ownership the most available means of visibly
+achieving a purpose is that afforded by the acquisition and
+accumulation of goods; and as the self-regarding antithesis
+between man and man reaches fuller consciousness, the propensity
+for achievement -- the instinct of workmanship -- tends more and
+more to shape itself into a straining to excel others in
+pecuniary achievement. Relative success, tested by an invidious
+pecuniary comparison with other men, becomes the conventional end
+of action. The currently accepted legitimate end of effort
+becomes the achievement of a favourable comparison with other
+men; and therefore the repugnance to futility to a good extent
+coalesces with the incentive of emulation. It acts to accentuate
+the struggle for pecuniary reputability by visiting with a
+sharper disapproval all shortcoming and all evidence of
+shortcoming in point of pecuniary success. Purposeful effort
+comes to mean, primarily, effort directed to or resulting in a
+more creditable showing of accumulated wealth. Among the motives
+which lead men to accumulate wealth, the primacy, both in scope
+and intensity, therefore, continues to belong to this motive of
+pecuniary emulation.
+
+In making use of the term "invidious", it may perhaps be
+unnecessary to remark, there is no intention to extol or
+depreciate, or to commend or deplore any of the phenomena which
+the word is used to characterise. The term is used in a technical
+sense as describing a comparison of persons with a view to rating
+and grading them in respect of relative worth or value -- in an
+aesthetic or moral sense -- and so awarding and defining the
+relative degrees of complacency with which they may legitimately
+be contemplated by themselves and by others. An invidious
+comparison is a process of valuation of persons in respect of
+worth.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Three
+
+Conspicuous Leisure
+
+If its working were not disturbed by other economic forces or
+other features of the emulative process, the immediate effect of
+such a pecuniary struggle as has just been described in outline
+would be to make men industrious and frugal. This result actually
+follows, in some measure, so far as regards the lower classes,
+whose ordinary means of acquiring goods is productive labour.
+This is more especially true of the labouring classes in a
+sedentary community which is at an agricultural stage of
+industry, in which there is a considerable subdivision of
+industry, and whose laws and customs secure to these classes a
+more or less definite share of the product of their industry.
+These lower classes can in any case not avoid labour, and the
+imputation of labour is therefore not greatly derogatory to them,
+at least not within their class. Rather, since labour is their
+recognised and accepted mode of life, they take some emulative
+pride in a reputation for efficiency in their work, this being
+often the only line of emulation that is open to them. For those
+for whom acquisition and emulation is possible only within the
+field of productive efficiency and thrift, the struggle for
+pecuniary reputability will in some measure work out in an
+increase of diligence and parsimony. But certain secondary
+features of the emulative process, yet to be spoken of, come in
+to very materially circumscribe and modify emulation in these
+directions among the pecuniary inferior classes as well as among
+the superior class.
+
+But it is otherwise with the superior pecuniary class, with which
+we are here immediately concerned. For this class also the
+incentive to diligence and thrift is not absent; but its action
+is so greatly qualified by the secondary demands of pecuniary
+emulation, that any inclination in this direction is practically
+overborne and any incentive to diligence tends to be of no
+effect. The most imperative of these secondary demands of
+emulation, as well as the one of widest scope, is the requirement
+of abstention from productive work. This is true in an especial
+degree for the barbarian stage of culture. During the predatory
+culture labour comes to be associated in men's habits of thought
+with weakness and subjection to a master. It is therefore a mark
+of inferiority, and therefore comes to be accounted unworthy of
+man in his best estate. By virtue of this tradition labour is
+felt to be debasing, and this tradition has never died out. On
+the contrary, with the advance of social differentiation it has
+acquired the axiomatic force due to ancient and unquestioned
+prescription.
+
+In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not
+sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power
+must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence.
+And not only does the evidence of wealth serve to impress one's
+importance on others and to keep their sense of his importance
+alive and alert, but it is of scarcely less use in building up
+and preserving one's self-complacency. In all but the lowest
+stages of culture the normally constituted man is comforted and
+upheld in his self-respect by "decent surroundings" and by
+exemption from "menial offices". Enforced departure from his
+habitual standard of decency, either in the paraphernalia of life
+or in the kind and amount of his everyday activity, is felt to be
+a slight upon his human dignity, even apart from all conscious
+consideration of the approval or disapproval of his fellows.
+
+The archaic theoretical distinction between the base and the
+honourable in the manner of a man's life retains very much of its
+ancient force even today. So much so that there are few of the
+better class who are no possessed of an instinctive repugnance
+for the vulgar forms of labour. We have a realising sense of
+ceremonial uncleanness attaching in an especial degree to the
+occupations which are associated in our habits of thought with
+menial service. It is felt by all persons of refined taste that a
+spiritual contamination is inseparable from certain offices that
+are conventionally required of servants. Vulgar surroundings,
+mean (that is to say, inexpensive) habitations, and vulgarly
+productive occupations are unhesitatingly condemned and avoided.
+They are incompatible with life on a satisfactory spiritual plane
+__ with "high thinking". From the days of the Greek philosophers
+to the present, a degree of leisure and of exemption from contact
+with such industrial processes as serve the immediate everyday
+purposes of human life has ever been recognised by thoughtful men
+as a prerequisite to a worthy or beautiful, or even a blameless,
+human life. In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure
+is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
+
+This direct, subjective value of leisure and of other evidences
+of wealth is no doubt in great part secondary and derivative. It
+is in part a reflex of the utility of leisure as a means of
+gaining the respect of others, and in part it is the result of a
+mental substitution. The performance of labour has been accepted
+as a conventional evidence of inferior force; therefore it comes
+itself, by a mental short-cut, to be regarded as intrinsically
+base.
+
+During the predatory stage proper, and especially during the
+earlier stages of the quasi-peaceable development of industry
+that follows the predatory stage, a life of leisure is the
+readiest and most conclusive evidence of pecuniary strength, and
+therefore of superior force; provided always that the gentleman
+of leisure can live in manifest ease and comfort. At this stage
+wealth consists chiefly of slaves, and the benefits accruing from
+the possession of riches and power take the form chiefly of
+personal service and the immediate products of personal service.
+Conspicuous abstention from labour therefore becomes the
+conventional mark of superior pecuniary achievement and the
+conventional index of reputability; and conversely, since
+application to productive labour is a mark of poverty and
+subjection, it becomes inconsistent with a reputable standing in
+the community. Habits of industry and thrift, therefore, are not
+uniformly furthered by a prevailing pecuniary emulation. On the
+contrary, this kind of emulation indirectly discountenances
+participation in productive labour. Labour would unavoidably
+become dishonourable, as being an evidence indecorous under the
+ancient tradition handed down from an earlier cultural stage. The
+ancient tradition of the predatory culture is that productive
+effort is to be shunned as being unworthy of able-bodied men, and
+this tradition is reinforced rather than set aside in the passage
+from the predatory to the quasi-peaceable manner of life.
+
+Even if the institution of a leisure class had not come in with
+the first emergence of individual ownership, by force of the
+dishonour attaching to productive employment, it would in any
+case have come in as one of the early consequences of ownership.
+And it is to be remarked that while the leisure class existed in
+theory from the beginning of predatory culture, the institution
+takes on a new and fuller meaning with the transition from the
+predatory to the next succeeding pecuniary stage of culture. It
+is from this time forth a "leisure class" in fact as well as in
+theory. From this point dates the institution of the leisure
+class in its consummate form.
+
+During the predatory stage proper the distinction between the
+leisure and the labouring class is in some degree a ceremonial
+distinction only. The able bodied men jealously stand aloof from
+whatever is in their apprehension, menial drudgery; but their
+activity in fact contributes appreciably to the sustenance of the
+group. The subsequent stage of quasi-peaceable industry is
+usually characterised by an established chattel slavery, herds of
+cattle, and a servile class of herdsmen and shepherds; industry
+has advanced so far that the community is no longer dependent for
+its livelihood on the chase or on any other form of activity that
+can fairly be classed as exploit. From this point on, the
+characteristic feature of leisure class life is a conspicuous
+exemption from all useful employment.
+
+The normal and characteristic occupations of the class in this
+mature phase of its life history are in form very much the same
+as in its earlier days. These occupations are government, war,
+sports, and devout observances. Persons unduly given to difficult
+theoretical niceties may hold that these occupations are still
+incidentally and indirectly "productive"; but it is to be noted
+as decisive of the question in hand that the ordinary and
+ostensible motive of the leisure class in engaging in these
+occupations is assuredly not an increase of wealth by productive
+effort. At this as at any other cultural stage, government and
+war are, at least in part, carried on for the pecuniary gain of
+those who engage in them; but it is gain obtained by the
+honourable method of seizure and conversion. These occupations
+are of the nature of predatory, not of productive, employment.
+Something similar may be said of the chase, but with a
+difference. As the community passes out of the hunting stage
+proper, hunting gradually becomes differentiated into two
+distinct employments. On the one hand it is a trade, carried on
+chiefly for gain; and from this the element of exploit is
+virtually absent, or it is at any rate not present in a
+sufficient degree to clear the pursuit of the imputation of
+gainful industry. On the other hand, the chase is also a sport
+-- an exercise of the predatory impulse simply. As such it does
+not afford any appreciable pecuniary incentive, but it contains a
+more or less obvious element of exploit. It is this latter
+development of the chase -- purged of all imputation of
+handicraft -- that alone is meritorious and fairly belongs in the
+scheme of life of the developed leisure class.
+
+Abstention from labour is not only a honorific or meritorious
+act, but it presently comes to be a requisite of decency. The
+insistence on property as the basis of reputability is very naive
+and very imperious during the early stages of the accumulation of
+wealth. Abstention from labour is the convenient evidence of
+wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing;
+and this insistence on the meritoriousness of wealth leads to a
+more strenuous insistence on leisure. Nota notae est nota rei
+ipsius. According to well established laws of human nature,
+prescription presently seizes upon this conventional evidence of
+wealth and fixes it in men's habits of thought as something that
+is in itself substantially meritorious and ennobling; while
+productive labour at the same time and by a like process becomes
+in a double sense intrinsically unworthy. Prescription ends by
+making labour not only disreputable in the eyes of the community,
+but morally impossible to the noble, freeborn man, and
+incompatible with a worthy life.
+
+This tabu on labour has a further consequence in the industrial
+differentiation of classes. As the population increases in
+density and the predatory group grows into a settled industrial
+community, the constituted authorities and the customs governing
+ownership gain in scope and consistency. It then presently
+becomes impracticable to accumulate wealth by simple seizure,
+and, in logical consistency, acquisition by industry is equally
+impossible for high minded and impecunious men. The alternative
+open to them is beggary or privation. Wherever the canon of
+conspicuous leisure has a chance undisturbed to work out its
+tendency, there will therefore emerge a secondary, and in a sense
+spurious, leisure class -- abjectly poor and living in a
+precarious life of want and discomfort, but morally unable to
+stoop to gainful pursuits. The decayed gentleman and the lady who
+has seen better days are by no means unfamiliar phenomena even
+now. This pervading sense of the indignity of the slightest
+manual labour is familiar to all civilized peoples, as well as to
+peoples of a less advanced pecuniary culture. In persons of a
+delicate sensibility who have long been habituated to gentle
+manners, the sense of the shamefulness of manual labour may
+become so strong that, at a critical juncture, it will even set
+aside the instinct of self-preservation. So, for instance, we are
+told of certain Polynesian chiefs, who, under the stress of good
+form, preferred to starve rather than carry their food to their
+mouths with their own hands. It is true, this conduct may have
+been due, at least in part, to an excessive sanctity or tabu
+attaching to the chief's person. The tabu would have been
+communicated by the contact of his hands, and so would have made
+anything touched by him unfit for human food. But the tabu is
+itself a derivative of the unworthiness or moral incompatibility
+of labour; so that even when construed in this sense the conduct
+of the Polynesian chiefs is truer to the canon of honorific
+leisure than would at first appear. A better illustration, or at
+least a more unmistakable one, is afforded by a certain king of
+France, who is said to have lost his life through an excess of
+moral stamina in the observance of good form. In the absence of
+the functionary whose office it was to shift his master's seat,
+the king sat uncomplaining before the fire and suffered his royal
+person to be toasted beyond recovery. But in so doing he saved
+his Most Christian Majesty from menial contamination.  Summum
+crede nefas animam praeferre pudori, Et propter vitam vivendi
+perdere causas.
+
+It has already been remarked that the term "leisure", as here
+used, does not connote indolence or quiescence. What it connotes
+is non-productive consumption of time. Time is consumed
+non-productively (1) from a sense of the unworthiness of
+productive work, and (2) as an evidence of pecuniary ability to
+afford a life of idleness. But the whole of the life of the
+gentleman of leisure is not spent before the eyes of the
+spectators who are to be impressed with that spectacle of
+honorific leisure which in the ideal scheme makes up his life.
+For some part of the time his life is perforce withdrawn from the
+public eye, and of this portion which is spent in private the
+gentleman of leisure should, for the sake of his good name, be
+able to give a convincing account. He should find some means of
+putting in evidence the leisure that is not spent in the sight of
+the spectators. This can be done only indirectly, through the
+exhibition of some tangible, lasting results of the leisure so
+spent -- in a manner analogous to the familiar exhibition of
+tangible, lasting products of the labour performed for the
+gentleman of leisure by handicraftsmen and servants in his
+employ.
+
+The lasting evidence of productive labour is its material product
+-- commonly some article of consumption. In the case of exploit
+it is similarly possible and usual to procure some tangible
+result that may serve for exhibition in the way of trophy or
+booty. At a later phase of the development it is customary to
+assume some badge of insignia of honour that will serve as a
+conventionally accepted mark of exploit, and which at the same
+time indicates the quantity or degree of exploit of which it is
+the symbol. As the population increases in density, and as human
+relations grow more complex and numerous, all the details of life
+undergo a process of elaboration and selection; and in this
+process of elaboration the use of trophies develops into a system
+of rank, titles, degrees and insignia, typical examples of which
+are heraldic devices, medals, and honorary decorations.
+
+As seen from the economic point of view, leisure,
+considered as an employment, is closely allied in kind with the
+life of exploit; and the achievements which characterise a life
+of leisure, and which remain as its decorous criteria, have much
+in common with the trophies of exploit. But leisure in the
+narrower sense, as distinct from exploit and from any ostensibly
+productive employment of effort on objects which are of no
+intrinsic use, does not commonly leave a material product. The
+criteria of a past performance of leisure therefore commonly take
+the form of "immaterial" goods. Such immaterial evidences of past
+leisure are quasi-scholarly or quasi-artistic accomplishments and
+a knowledge of processes and incidents which do not conduce
+directly to the furtherance of human life. So, for instance, in
+our time there is the knowledge of the dead languages and the
+occult sciences; of correct spelling; of syntax and prosody; of
+the various forms of domestic music and other household art; of
+the latest properties of dress, furniture, and equipage; of
+games, sports, and fancy-bred animals, such as dogs and
+race-horses. In all these branches of knowledge the initial
+motive from which their acquisition proceeded at the outset, and
+through which they first came into vogue, may have been something
+quite different from the wish to show that one's time had not
+been spent in industrial employment; but unless these
+accomplishments had approved themselves as serviceable evidence
+of an unproductive expenditure of time, they would not have
+survived and held their place as conventional accomplishments of
+the leisure class.
+
+These accomplishments may, in some sense, be classed as branches
+of learning. Beside and beyond these there is a further range of
+social facts which shade off from the region of learning into
+that of physical habit and dexterity. Such are what is known as
+manners and breeding, polite usage, decorum, and formal and
+ceremonial observances generally. This class of facts are even
+more immediately and obtrusively presented to the observation,
+and they therefore more widely and more imperatively insisted on
+as required evidences of a reputable degree of leisure. It is
+worth while to remark that all that class of ceremonial
+observances which are classed under the general head of manners
+hold a more important place in the esteem of men during the stage
+of culture at which conspicuous leisure has the greatest vogue as
+a mark of reputability, than at later stages of the cultural
+development. The barbarian of the quasi-peaceable stage of
+industry is notoriously a more high-bred gentleman, in all that
+concerns decorum, than any but the very exquisite among the men
+of a later age. Indeed, it is well known, or at least it is
+currently believed, that manners have progressively deteriorated
+as society has receded from the patriarchal stage. Many a
+gentleman of the old school has been provoked to remark
+regretfully upon the under-bred manners and bearing of even the
+better classes in the modern industrial communities; and the
+decay of the ceremonial code -- or as it is otherwise called, the
+vulgarisation of life -- among the industrial classes proper has
+become one of the chief enormities of latter-day civilisation in
+the eyes of all persons of delicate sensibilities. The decay
+which the code has suffered at the hands of a busy people
+testifies -- all depreciation apart -- to the fact that decorum
+is a product and an exponent of leisure class life and thrives in
+full measure only under a regime of status.
+
+The origin, or better the derivation, of manners is no doubt, to
+be sought elsewhere than in a conscious effort on the part of the
+well-mannered to show that much time has been spent in acquiring
+them. The proximate end of innovation and elaboration has been
+the higher effectiveness of the new departure in point of beauty
+or of expressiveness. In great part the ceremonial code of
+decorous usages owes its beginning and its growth to the desire
+to conciliate or to show good-will, as anthropologists and
+sociologists are in the habit of assuming, and this initial
+motive is rarely if ever absent from the conduct of well-mannered
+persons at any stage of the later development. Manners, we are
+told, are in part an elaboration of gesture, and in part they are
+symbolical and conventionalised survivals representing former
+acts of dominance or of personal service or of personal contact.
+In large part they are an expression of the relation of status,
+-- a symbolic pantomime of mastery on the one hand and of
+subservience on the other. Wherever at the present time the
+predatory habit of mind, and the consequent attitude of mastery
+and of subservience, gives its character to the accredited scheme
+of life, there the importance of all punctilios of conduct is
+extreme, and the assiduity with which the ceremonial observance
+of rank and titles is attended to approaches closely to the ideal
+set by the barbarian of the quasi-peaceable nomadic culture. Some
+of the Continental countries afford good illustrations of this
+spiritual survival. In these communities the archaic ideal is
+similarly approached as regards the esteem accorded to manners as
+a fact of intrinsic worth.
+
+Decorum set out with being symbol and pantomime and with having
+utility only as an exponent of the facts and qualities
+symbolised; but it presently suffered the transmutation which
+commonly passes over symbolical facts in human intercourse.
+Manners presently came, in popular apprehension, to be possessed
+of a substantial utility in themselves; they acquired a
+sacramental character, in great measure independent of the facts
+which they originally prefigured. Deviations from the code of
+decorum have become intrinsically odious to all men, and good
+breeding is, in everyday apprehension, not simply an adventitious
+mark of human excellence, but an integral feature of the worthy
+human soul. There are few things that so touch us with
+instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum; and so far have we
+progressed in the direction of imputing intrinsic utility to the
+ceremonial observances of etiquette that few of us, if any, can
+dissociate an offence against etiquette from a sense of the
+substantial unworthiness of the offender. A breach of faith may
+be condoned, but a breach of decorum can not. "Manners maketh
+man."
+
+None the less, while manners have this intrinsic utility, in the
+apprehension of the performer and the beholder alike, this sense
+of the intrinsic rightness of decorum is only the proximate
+ground of the vogue of manners and breeding. Their ulterior,
+economic ground is to be sought in the honorific character of
+that leisure or non-productive employment of time and effort
+without which good manners are not acquired. The knowledge and
+habit of good form come only by long-continued use. Refined
+tastes, manners, habits of life are a useful evidence of
+gentility, because good breeding requires time, application and
+expense, and can therefore not be compassed by those whose time
+and energy are taken up with work. A knowledge of good form is
+prima facie evidence that that portion of the well-bred person's
+life which is not spent under the observation of the spectator
+has been worthily spent in acquiring accomplishments that are of
+no lucrative effect. In the last analysis the value of manners
+lies in the fact that they are the voucher of a life of leisure.
+Therefore, conversely, since leisure is the conventional means of
+pecuniary repute, the acquisition of some proficiency in decorum
+is incumbent on all who aspire to a modicum of pecuniary decency.
+
+So much of the honourable life of leisure as is not spent in the
+sight of spectators can serve the purposes of reputability only
+in so far as it leaves a tangible, visible result that can be put
+in evidence and can be measured and compared with products of the
+same class exhibited by competing aspirants for repute. Some such
+effect, in the way of leisurely manners and carriage, etc.,
+follows from simple persistent abstention from work, even where
+the subject does not take thought of the matter and
+studiously acquire an air of leisurely opulence and mastery.
+Especially does it seem to be true that a life of leisure in this
+way persisted in through several generations will leave a
+persistent, ascertainable effect in the conformation of the
+person, and still more in his habitual bearing and demeanour. But
+all the suggestions of a cumulative life of leisure, and all the
+proficiency in decorum that comes by the way of passive
+habituation, may be further improved upon by taking thought and
+assiduously acquiring the marks of honourable leisure, and then
+carrying the exhibition of these adventitious marks of exemption
+from employment out in a strenuous and systematic discipline.
+Plainly, this is a point at which a diligent application of
+effort and expenditure may materially further the attainment of a
+decent proficiency in the leisure-class properties. Conversely,
+the greater the degree of proficiency and the more patent the
+evidence of a high degree of habituation to observances which
+serve no lucrative or other directly useful purpose, the greater
+the consumption of time and substance impliedly involved in their
+acquisition, and the greater the resultant good repute. Hence
+under the competitive struggle for proficiency in good manners,
+it comes about that much pains in taken with the cultivation of
+habits of decorum; and hence the details of decorum develop into
+a comprehensive discipline, conformity to which is required of
+all who would be held blameless in point of repute. And hence, on
+the other hand, this conspicuous leisure of which decorum is a
+ramification grows gradually into a laborious drill in deportment
+and an education in taste and discrimination as to what articles
+of consumption are decorous and what are the decorous methods of
+consuming them.
+
+In this connection it is worthy of notice that the
+possibility of producing pathological and other idiosyncrasies of
+person and manner by shrewd mimicry and a systematic drill have
+been turned to account in the deliberate production of a cultured
+class -- often with a very happy effect. In this way, by the
+process vulgarly known as snobbery, a syncopated evolution of
+gentle birth and breeding is achieved in the case of a goodly
+number of families and lines of descent. This syncopated gentle
+birth gives results which, in point of serviceability as a
+leisure-class factor in the population, are in no wise
+substantially inferior to others who may have had a longer but
+less arduous training in the pecuniary properties.
+
+There are, moreover, measureable degrees of conformity to the
+latest accredited code of the punctilios as regards decorous
+means and methods of consumption. Differences between one person
+and another in the degree of conformity to the ideal in these
+respects can be compared, and persons may be graded and scheduled
+with some accuracy and effect according to a progressive scale of
+manners and breeding. The award of reputability in this regard is
+commonly made in good faith, on the ground of conformity to
+accepted canons of taste in the matters concerned, and without
+conscious regard to the pecuniary standing or the degree of
+leisure practised by any given candidate for reputability; but
+the canons of taste according to which the award is made are
+constantly under the surveillance of the law of conspicuous
+leisure, and are indeed constantly undergoing change and revision
+to bring them into closer conformity with its requirements. So
+that while the proximate ground of discrimination may be of
+another kind, still the pervading principle and abiding test of
+good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent
+waste of time. There may be some considerable range of variation
+in detail within the scope of this principle, but they are
+variations of form and expression, not of substance.
+
+Much of the courtesy of everyday intercourse is of course a
+direct expression of consideration and kindly good-will, and this
+element of conduct has for the most part no need of being traced
+back to any underlying ground of reputability to explain either
+its presence or the approval with which it is regarded; but the
+same is not true of the code of properties. These latter are
+expressions of status. It is of course sufficiently plain, to any
+one who cares to see, that our bearing towards menials and other
+pecuniary dependent inferiors is the bearing of the superior
+member in a relation of status, though its manifestation is often
+greatly modified and softened from the original expression of
+crude dominance. Similarly, our bearing towards superiors, and in
+great measure towards equals, expresses a more or less
+conventionalised attitude of subservience. Witness the masterful
+presence of the high-minded gentleman or lady, which testifies to
+so much of dominance and independence of economic circumstances,
+and which at the same time appeals with such convincing force to
+our sense of what is right and gracious. It is among this highest
+leisure class, who have no superiors and few peers, that decorum
+finds its fullest and maturest expression; and it is this highest
+class also that gives decorum that definite formulation which
+serves as a canon of conduct for the classes beneath. And there
+also the code is most obviously a code of status and shows most
+plainly its incompatibility with all vulgarly productive work. A
+divine assurance and an imperious complaisance, as of one
+habituated to require subservience and to take no thought for the
+morrow, is the birthright and the criterion of the gentleman at
+his best; and it is in popular apprehension even more than that,
+for this demeanour is accepted as an intrinsic attribute of
+superior worth, before which the base-born commoner delights to
+stoop and yield.
+
+As has been indicated in an earlier chapter, there is reason to
+believe that the institution of ownership has begun with the
+ownership of persons, primarily women. The incentives to
+acquiring such property have apparently been: (1) a propensity
+for dominance and coercion; (2) the utility of these persons as
+evidence of the prowess of the owner; (3) the utility of their
+services.
+
+Personal service holds a peculiar place in the economic
+development. During the stage of quasi-peaceable industry, and
+especially during the earlier development of industry within the
+limits of this general stage, the utility of their services seems
+commonly to be the dominant motive to the acquisition of property
+in persons. Servants are valued for their services. But the
+dominance of this motive is not due to a decline in the absolute
+importance of the other two utilities possessed by servants. It
+is rather that the altered circumstance of life accentuate the
+utility of servants for this last-named purpose. Women and other
+slaves are highly valued, both as an evidence of wealth and as a
+means of accumulating wealth. Together with cattle, if the tribe
+is a pastoral one, they are the usual form of investment for a
+profit. To such an extent may female slavery give its character
+to the economic life under the quasi-peaceable culture that the
+women even comes to serve as a unit of value among peoples
+occupying this cultural stage -- as for instance in Homeric
+times. Where this is the case there need be little question but
+that the basis of the industrial system is chattel slavery and
+that the women are commonly slaves. The great, pervading human
+relation in such a system is that of master and servant. The
+accepted evidence of wealth is the possession of many women, and
+presently also of other slaves engaged in attendance on their
+master's person and in producing goods for him.
+
+A division of labour presently sets in, whereby personal service
+and attendance on the master becomes the special office of a
+portion of the servants, while those who are wholly employed in
+industrial occupations proper are removed more and more from all
+immediate relation to the person of their owner. At the same time
+those servants whose office is personal service, including
+domestic duties, come gradually to be exempted from productive
+industry carried on for gain.
+
+This process of progressive exemption from the common run of
+industrial employment will commonly begin with the exemption of
+the wife, or the chief wife. After the community has advanced to
+settled habits of life, wife-capture from hostile tribes becomes
+impracticable as a customary source of supply. Where this
+cultural advance has been achieved, the chief wife is ordinarily
+of gentle blood, and the fact of her being so will hasten her
+exemption from vulgar employment. The manner in which the concept
+of gentle blood originates, as well as the place which it
+occupies in the development of marriage, cannot be discussed in
+this place. For the purpose in hand it will be sufficient to say
+that gentle blood is blood which has been ennobled by protracted
+contact with accumulated wealth or unbroken prerogative. The
+women with these antecedents is preferred in marriage, both for
+the sake of a resulting alliance with her powerful relatives and
+because a superior worth is felt to inhere in blood which has
+been associated with many goods and great power. She will still
+be her husband's chattel, as she was her father's chattel before
+her purchase, but she is at the same time of her father's gentle
+blood; and hence there is a moral incongruity in her occupying
+herself with the debasing employments of her fellow-servants.
+However completely she may be subject to her master, and however
+inferior to the male members of the social stratum in which her
+birth has placed her, the principle that gentility is
+transmissible will act to place her above the common slave; and
+so soon as this principle has acquired a prescriptive authority
+it will act to invest her in some measure with that prerogative
+of leisure which is the chief mark of gentility. Furthered by
+this principle of transmissible gentility the wife's exemption
+gains in scope, if the wealth of her owner permits it, until it
+includes exemption from debasing menial service as well as from
+handicraft. As the industrial development goes on and property
+becomes massed in relatively fewer hands, the conventional
+standard of wealth of the upper class rises. The same tendency to
+exemption from handicraft, and in the course of time from menial
+domestic employments, will then assert itself as regards the
+other wives, if such there are, and also as regards other
+servants in immediate attendance upon the person of their master.
+The exemption comes more tardily the remoter the relation in
+which the servant stands to the person of the master.
+
+If the pecuniary situation of the master permits it, the
+development of a special class of personal or body servants is
+also furthered by the very grave importance which comes to attach
+to this personal service. The master's person, being the
+embodiment of worth and honour, is of the most serious
+consequence. Both for his reputable standing in the community and
+for his self-respect, it is a matter of moment that he should
+have at his call efficient specialised servants, whose attendance
+upon his person is not diverted from this their chief office by
+any by-occupation. These specialised servants are useful more for
+show than for service actually performed. In so far as they are
+not kept for exhibition simply, they afford gratification to
+their master chiefly in allowing scope to his propensity for
+dominance. It is true, the care of the continually increasing
+household apparatus may require added labour; but since the
+apparatus is commonly increased in order to serve as a means of
+good repute rather than as a means of comfort, this qualification
+is not of great weight. All these lines of utility are better
+served by a larger number of more highly specialised servants.
+There results, therefore, a constantly increasing differentiation
+and multiplication of domestic and body servants, along with a
+concomitant progressive exemption of such servants from
+productive labour. By virtue of their serving as evidence of
+ability to pay, the office of such domestics regularly tends to
+include continually fewer duties, and their service tends in the
+end to become nominal only. This is especially true of those
+servants who are in most immediate and obvious attendance upon
+their master. So that the utility of these comes to consist, in
+great part, in their conspicuous exemption from productive labour
+and in the evidence which this exemption affords of their
+master's wealth and power.
+
+After some considerable advance has been made in the practice of
+employing a special corps of servants for the performance of a
+conspicuous leisure in this manner, men begin to be preferred
+above women for services that bring them obtrusively into view.
+Men, especially lusty, personable fellows, such as footmen and
+other menials should be, are obviously more powerful and more
+expensive than women. They are better fitted for this work, as
+showing a larger waste of time and of human energy. Hence it
+comes about that in the economy of the leisure class the busy
+housewife of the early patriarchal days, with her retinue of
+hard-working handmaidens, presently gives place to the lady and
+the lackey.
+
+In all grades and walks of life, and at any stage of the economic
+development, the leisure of the lady and of the lackey differs
+from the leisure of the gentleman in his own right in that it is
+an occupation of an ostensibly laborious kind. It takes the form,
+in large measure, of a painstaking attention to the service of
+the master, or to the maintenance and elaboration of the
+household paraphernalia; so that it is leisure only in the sense
+that little or no productive work is performed by this class, not
+in the sense that all appearance of labour is avoided by them.
+The duties performed by the lady, or by the household or domestic
+servants, are frequently arduous enough, and they are also
+frequently directed to ends which are considered extremely
+necessary to the comfort of the entire household. So far as these
+services conduce to the physical efficiency or comfort of the
+master or the rest of the household, they are to be accounted
+productive work. Only the residue of employment left after
+deduction of this effective work is to be classed as a
+performance of leisure.
+
+But much of the services classed as household cares in modern
+everyday life, and many of the "utilities" required for a
+comfortable existence by civilised man, are of a ceremonial
+character. They are, therefore, properly to be classed as a
+performance of leisure in the sense in which the term is here
+used. They may be none the less imperatively necessary from the
+point of view of decent existence: they may be none the less
+requisite for personal comfort even, although they may be chiefly
+or wholly of a ceremonial character. But in so far as they
+partake of this character they are imperative and requisite
+because we have been taught to require them under pain of
+ceremonial uncleanness or unworthiness. We feel discomfort in
+their absence, but not because their absence results directly in
+physical discomfort; nor would a taste not trained to
+discriminate between the conventionally good and the
+conventionally bad take offence at their omission. In so far as
+this is true the labour spent in these services is to be classed
+as leisure; and when performed by others than the economically
+free and self-directed head of the establishment, they are to be
+classed as vicarious leisure.
+
+The vicarious leisure performed by housewives and menials, under
+the head of household cares, may frequently develop into
+drudgery, especially where the competition for reputability is
+close and strenuous. This is frequently the case in modern life.
+Where this happens, the domestic service which comprises the
+duties of this servant class might aptly be designated as wasted
+effort, rather than as vicarious leisure. But the latter term has
+the advantage of indicating the line of derivation of these
+domestic offices, as well as of neatly suggesting the substantial
+economic ground of their utility; for these occupations are
+chiefly useful as a method of imputing pecuniary reputability to
+the master or to the household on the ground that a given amount
+of time and effort is conspicuously wasted in that behalf.
+
+In this way, then, there arises a subsidiary or derivative
+leisure class, whose office is the performance of a vicarious
+leisure for the behoof of the reputability of the primary or
+legitimate leisure class. This vicarious leisure class is
+distinguished from the leisure class proper by a characteristic
+feature of its habitual mode of life. The leisure of the master
+class is, at least ostensibly, an indulgence of a proclivity for
+the avoidance of labour and is presumed to enhance the master's
+own well-being and fulness of life; but the leisure of the
+servant class exempt from productive labour is in some sort a
+performance exacted from them, and is not normally or primarily
+directed to their own comfort. The leisure of the servant is not
+his own leisure. So far as he is a servant in the full sense, and
+not at the same time a member of a lower order of the leisure
+class proper, his leisure normally passes under the guise of
+specialised service directed to the furtherance of his master's
+fulness of life. Evidence of this relation of subservience is
+obviously present in the servant's carriage and manner of life.
+The like is often true of the wife throughout the protracted
+economic stage during which she is still primarily a servant --
+that is to say, so long as the household with a male head remains
+in force. In order to satisfy the requirements of the leisure
+class scheme of life, the servant should show not only an
+attitude of subservience, but also the effects of special
+training and practice in subservience. The servant or wife should
+not only perform certain offices and show a servile disposition,
+but it is quite as imperative that they should show an acquired
+facility in the tactics of subservience -- a trained conformity
+to the canons of effectual and conspicuous subservience. Even
+today it is this aptitude and acquired skill in the formal
+manifestation of the servile relation that constitutes the chief
+element of utility in our highly paid servants, as well as one of
+the chief ornaments of the well-bred housewife.
+
+The first requisite of a good servant is that he should
+conspicuously know his place. It is not enough that he knows how
+to effect certain desired mechanical results; he must above all,
+know how to effect these results in due form. Domestic service
+might be said to be a spiritual rather than a mechanical
+function. Gradually there grows up an elaborate system of good
+form, specifically regulating the manner in which this vicarious
+leisure of the servant class is to be performed. Any departure
+from these canons of form is to be depreciated, not so much
+because it evinces a shortcoming in mechanical efficiency, or
+even that it shows an absence of the servile attitude and
+temperament, but because, in the last analysis, it shows the
+absence of special training. Special training in personal service
+costs time and effort, and where it is obviously present in a
+high degree, it argues that the servant who possesses it, neither
+is nor has been habitually engaged in any productive occupation.
+It is prima facie evidence of a vicarious leisure extending far
+back in the past. So that trained service has utility, not only
+as gratifying the master's instinctive liking for good and
+skilful workmanship and his propensity for conspicuous dominance
+over those whose lives are subservient to his own, but it has
+utility also as putting in evidence a much larger consumption of
+human service than would be shown by the mere present conspicuous
+leisure performed by an untrained person. It is a serious
+grievance if a gentleman's butler or footman performs his duties
+about his master's table or carriage in such unformed style as to
+suggest that his habitual occupation may be ploughing or
+sheepherding. Such bungling work would imply inability on the
+master's part to procure the service of specially trained
+servants; that is to say, it would imply inability to pay for the
+consumption of time, effort, and instruction required to fit a
+trained servant for special service under the exacting code of
+forms. If the performance of the servant argues lack of means on
+the part of his master, it defeats its chief substantial end; for
+the chief use of servants is the evidence they afford of the
+master's ability to pay.
+
+What has just been said might be taken to imply that the offence
+of an under-trained servant lies in a direct suggestion of
+inexpensiveness or of usefulness. Such, of course, is not the
+case. The connection is much less immediate. What happens here is
+what happens generally. Whatever approves itself to us on any
+ground at the outset, presently comes to appeal to us as a
+gratifying thing in itself; it comes to rest in our habits of
+though as substantially right. But in order that any specific
+canon of deportment shall maintain itself in favour, it must
+continue to have the support of, or at least not be incompatible
+with, the habit or aptitude which constitutes the norm of its
+development. The need of vicarious leisure, or conspicuous
+consumption of service, is a dominant incentive to the keeping of
+servants. So long as this remains true it may be set down without
+much discussion that any such departure from accepted usage as
+would suggest an abridged apprenticeship in service would
+presently be found insufferable. The requirement of an expensive
+vicarious leisure acts indirectly, selectively, by guiding the
+formation of our taste, -- of our sense of what is right in these
+matters, -- and so weeds out unconformable departures by
+withholding approval of them.
+
+As the standard of wealth recognized by common consent advances,
+the possession and exploitation of servants as a means of showing
+superfluity undergoes a refinement. The possession and
+maintenance of slaves employed in the production of goods argues
+wealth and prowess, but the maintenance of servants who produce
+nothing argues still higher wealth and position. Under this
+principle there arises a class of servants, the more numerous the
+better, whose sole office is fatuously to wait upon the person of
+their owner, and so to put in evidence his ability unproductively
+to consume a large amount of service. There supervenes a division
+of labour among the servants or dependents whose life is spent in
+maintaining the honour of the gentleman of leisure. So that,
+while one group produces goods for him, another group, usually
+headed by the wife, or chief, consumes for him in conspicuous
+leisure; thereby putting in evidence his ability to sustain large
+pecuniary damage without impairing his superior opulence.
+
+This somewhat idealized and diagrammatic outline of the
+development and nature of domestic service comes nearest being
+true for that cultural stage which was here been named the
+"quasi-peaceable" stage of industry. At this stage personal
+service first rises to the position of an economic institution,
+and it is at this stage that it occupies the largest place in the
+community's scheme of life. In the cultural sequence, the
+quasi-peaceable stage follows the predatory stage proper, the two
+being successive phases of barbarian life. Its characteristic
+feature is a formal observance of peace and order, at the same
+time that life at this stage still has too much of coercion and
+class antagonism to be called peaceable in the full sense of the
+word. For many purposes, and from another point of view than the
+economic one, it might as well be named the stage of status. The
+method of human relation during this stage, and the spiritual
+attitude of men at this level of culture, is well summed up under
+the term. But as a descriptive term to characterise the
+prevailing methods of industry, as well as to indicate the trend
+of industrial development at this point in economic evolution,
+the term "quasi-peaceable" seems preferable. So far as concerns
+the communities of the Western culture, this phase of economic
+development probably lies in the past; except for a numerically
+small though very conspicuous fraction of the community in whom
+the habits of thought peculiar to the barbarian culture have
+suffered but a relatively slight disintegration.
+
+Personal service is still an element of great economic
+importance, especially as regards the distribution and
+consumption of goods; but its relative importance even in this
+direction is no doubt less than it once was. The best development
+of this vicarious leisure lies in the past rather than in the
+present; and its best expression in the present is to be found in
+the scheme of life of the upper leisure class. To this class the
+modern culture owes much in the way of the conservation of
+traditions, usages, and habits of thought which belong on a more
+archaic cultural plane, so far as regards their widest acceptance
+and their most effective development.
+
+In the modern industrial communities the mechanical
+contrivances available for the comfort and convenience of
+everyday life are highly developed. So much so that body
+servants, or, indeed, domestic servants of any kind, would now
+scarcely be employed by anybody except on the ground of a canon
+of reputability carried over by tradition from earlier usage. The
+only exception would be servants employed to attend on the
+persons of the infirm and the feeble-minded. But such servants
+properly come under the head of trained nurses rather than under
+that of domestic servants, and they are, therefore, an apparent
+rather than a real exception to the rule.
+
+The proximate reason for keeping domestic servants, for instance,
+in the moderately well-to-do household of to-day, is (ostensibly)
+that the members of the household are unable without discomfort
+to compass the work required by such a modern
+establishment. And the reason for their being unable to
+accomplish it is (1) that they have too many "social duties", and
+(2) that the work to be done is too severe and that there is too
+much of it. These two reasons may be restated as follows: (1)
+Under the mandatory code of decency, the time and effort of the
+members of such a household are required to be ostensibly all
+spent in a performance of conspicuous leisure, in the way of
+calls, drives, clubs, sewing-circles, sports, charity
+organisations, and other like social functions. Those persons
+whose time and energy are employed in these matters privately
+avow that all these observances, as well as the incidental
+attention to dress and other conspicuous consumption, are very
+irksome but altogether unavoidable. (2) Under the requirement of
+conspicuous consumption of goods, the apparatus of living has
+grown so elaborate and cumbrous, in the way of dwellings,
+furniture, bric-a-brac, wardrobe and meals, that the consumers of
+these things cannot make way with them in the required manner
+without help. Personal contact with the hired persons whose aid
+is called in to fulfil the routine of decency is commonly
+distasteful to the occupants of the house, but their presence is
+endured and paid for, in order to delegate to them a share in
+this onerous consumption of household goods. The presence of
+domestic servants, and of the special class of body servants in
+an eminent degree, is a concession of physical comfort to the
+moral need of pecuniary decency.
+
+The largest manifestation of vicarious leisure in modern life is
+made up of what are called domestic duties. These duties are fast
+becoming a species of services performed, not so much for the
+individual behoof of the head of the household as for the
+reputability of the household taken as a corporate unit -- a
+group of which the housewife is a member on a footing of
+ostensible equality. As fast as the household for which they are
+performed departs from its archaic basis of ownership-marriage,
+these household duties of course tend to fall out of the category
+of vicarious leisure in the original sense; except so far as they
+are performed by hired servants. That is to say, since vicarious
+leisure is possible only on a basis of status or of hired
+service, the disappearance of the relation of status from human
+intercourse at any point carries with it the disappearance of
+vicarious leisure so far as regards that much of life. But it is
+to be added, in qualification of this qualification, that so long
+as the household subsists, even with a divided head, this class
+of non-productive labour performed for the sake of the household
+reputability must still be classed as vicarious leisure, although
+in a slightly altered sense. It is now leisure performed for the
+quasi-personal corporate household, instead of, as formerly, for
+the proprietary head of the household.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Four
+
+Conspicuous Consumption
+
+In what has been said of the evolution of the vicarious leisure
+class and its differentiation from the general body of the
+working classes, reference has been made to a further
+division of labour, -- that between the different servant
+classes. One portion of the servant class, chiefly those persons
+whose occupation is vicarious leisure, come to undertake a new,
+subsidiary range of duties -- the vicarious consumption of goods.
+The most obvious form in which this consumption occurs is seen in
+the wearing of liveries and the occupation of spacious servants'
+quarters. Another, scarcely less obtrusive or less effective form
+of vicarious consumption, and a much more widely prevalent one,
+is the consumption of food, clothing, dwelling, and furniture by
+the lady and the rest of the domestic establishment.
+
+But already at a point in economic evolution far antedating the
+emergence of the lady, specialised consumption of goods as an
+evidence of pecuniary strength had begun to work out in a more or
+less elaborate system. The beginning of a differentiation in
+consumption even antedates the appearance of anything that can
+fairly be called pecuniary strength. It is traceable back to the
+initial phase of predatory culture, and there is even a
+suggestion that an incipient differentiation in this respect lies
+back of the beginnings of the predatory life. This most primitive
+differentiation in the consumption of goods is like the later
+differentiation with which we are all so intimately familiar, in
+that it is largely of a ceremonial character, but unlike the
+latter it does not rest on a difference in accumulated wealth.
+The utility of consumption as an evidence of wealth is to be
+classed as a derivative growth. It is an adaption to a new end,
+by a selective process, of a distinction previously existing and
+well established in men's habits of thought.
+
+In the earlier phases of the predatory culture the only economic
+differentiation is a broad distinction between an honourable
+superior class made up of the able-bodied men on the one side,
+and a base inferior class of labouring women on the other.
+According to the ideal scheme of life in force at the time it is
+the office of the men to consume what the women produce. Such
+consumption as falls to the women is merely incidental to their
+work; it is a means to their continued labour, and not a
+consumption directed to their own comfort and fulness of life.
+Unproductive consumption of goods is honourable, primarily as a
+mark of prowess and a perquisite of human dignity; secondarily it
+becomes substantially honourable to itself, especially the
+consumption of the more desirable things. The consumption of
+choice articles of food, and frequently also of rare articles of
+adornment, becomes tabu to the women and children; and if there
+is a base (servile) class of men, the tabu holds also for them.
+With a further advance in culture this tabu may change into
+simple custom of a more or less rigorous character; but whatever
+be the theoretical basis of the distinction which is maintained,
+whether it be a tabu or a larger conventionality, the features of
+the conventional scheme of consumption do not change easily. When
+the quasi-peaceable stage of industry is reached, with its
+fundamental institution of chattel slavery, the general
+principle, more or less rigorously applied, is that the base,
+industrious class should consume only what may be necessary to
+their subsistence. In the nature of things, luxuries and the
+comforts of life belong to the leisure class. Under the tabu,
+certain victuals, and more particularly certain beverages, are
+strictly reserved for the use of the superior class.
+
+The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the
+use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of
+consumption are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific.
+Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an
+enforced continence with respect to these stimulants, except in
+countries where they are obtainable at a very low cost. From
+archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal
+regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and
+administer these luxuries, and it has been the perquisite of the
+men of gentle birth and breeding to consume them. Drunkenness and
+the other pathological consequences of the free use of stimulants
+therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a
+mark, at the second remove, of the superior status of those who
+are able to afford the indulgence. Infirmities induced by
+over-indulgence are among some peoples freely recognised as manly
+attributes. It has even happened that the name for certain
+diseased conditions of the body arising from such an origin has
+passed into everyday speech as a synonym for "noble" or "gentle".
+It is only at a relatively early stage of culture that the
+symptoms of expensive vice are conventionally accepted as marks
+of a superior status, and so tend to become virtues and command
+the deference of the community; but the reputability that
+attaches to certain expensive vices long retains so much of its
+force as to appreciably lesson the disapprobation visited upon
+the men of the wealthy or noble class for any excessive
+indulgence. The same invidious distinction adds force to the
+current disapproval of any indulgence of this kind on the part of
+women, minors, and inferiors. This invidious traditional
+distinction has not lost its force even among the more advanced
+peoples of today. Where the example set by the leisure class
+retains its imperative force in the regulation of the
+conventionalities, it is observable that the women still in great
+measure practise the same traditional continence with regard to
+stimulants.
+
+This characterisation of the greater continence in the use of
+stimulants practised by the women of the reputable classes may
+seem an excessive refinement of logic at the expense of common
+sense. But facts within easy reach of any one who cares to know
+them go to say that the greater abstinence of women is in some
+part due to an imperative conventionality; and this
+conventionality is, in a general way, strongest where the
+patriarchal tradition -- the tradition that the woman is a
+chattel -- has retained its hold in greatest vigour. In a sense
+which has been greatly qualified in scope and rigour, but which
+has by no means lost its meaning even yet, this tradition says
+that the woman, being a chattel, should consume only what is
+necessary to her sustenance, -- except so far as her further
+consumption contributes to the comfort or the good repute of her
+master. The consumption of luxuries, in the true sense, is a
+consumption directed to the comfort of the consumer himself, and
+is, therefore, a mark of the master. Any such consumption by
+others can take place only on a basis of sufferance. In
+communities where the popular habits of thought have been
+profoundly shaped by the patriarchal tradition we may
+accordingly look for survivals of the tabu on luxuries at least
+to the extent of a conventional deprecation of their use by the
+unfree and dependent class. This is more particularly true as
+regards certain luxuries, the use of which by the dependent class
+would detract sensibly from the comfort or pleasure of their
+masters, or which are held to be of doubtful legitimacy on other
+grounds. In the apprehension of the great conservative middle
+class of Western civilisation the use of these various stimulants
+is obnoxious to at least one, if not both, of these objections;
+and it is a fact too significant to be passed over that it is
+precisely among these middle classes of the Germanic culture,
+with their strong surviving sense of the patriarchal proprieties,
+that the women are to the greatest extent subject to a qualified
+tabu on narcotics and alcoholic beverages. With many
+qualifications -- with more qualifications as the patriarchal
+tradition has gradually weakened -- the general rule is felt to
+be right and binding that women should consume only for the
+benefit of their masters. The objection of course presents itself
+that expenditure on women's dress and household paraphernalia is
+an obvious exception to this rule; but it will appear in the
+sequel that this exception is much more obvious than substantial.
+During the earlier stages of economic development,
+consumption of goods without stint, especially consumption of the
+better grades of goods, -- ideally all consumption in excess of
+the subsistence minimum, -- pertains normally to the leisure
+class. This restriction tends to disappear, at least formally,
+after the later peaceable stage has been reached, with private
+ownership of goods and an industrial system based on wage labour
+or on the petty household economy. But during the earlier
+quasi-peaceable stage, when so many of the traditions through
+which the institution of a leisure class has affected the
+economic life of later times were taking form and consistency,
+this principle has had the force of a conventional law. It has
+served as the norm to which consumption has tended to conform,
+and any appreciable departure from it is to be regarded as an
+aberrant form, sure to be eliminated sooner or later in the
+further course of development.
+
+The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes
+of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence
+and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a
+specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He
+consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics,
+shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements,
+amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities. In the process of
+gradual amelioration which takes place in the articles of his
+consumption, the motive principle and proximate aim of innovation
+is no doubt the higher efficiency of the improved and more
+elaborate products for personal comfort and well-being. But that
+does not remain the sole purpose of their consumption. The canon
+of reputability is at hand and seizes upon such innovations as
+are, according to its standard, fit to survive. Since the
+consumption of these more excellent goods is an evidence of
+wealth, it becomes honorific; and conversely, the failure to
+consume in due quantity and quality becomes a mark of inferiority
+and demerit.
+
+This growth of punctilious discrimination as to qualitative
+excellence in eating, drinking, etc. presently affects not only
+the manner of life, but also the training and intellectual
+activity of the gentleman of leisure. He is no longer simply the
+successful, aggressive male, -- the man of strength, resource,
+and intrepidity. In order to avoid stultification he must also
+cultivate his tastes, for it now becomes incumbent on him to
+discriminate with some nicety between the noble and the ignoble
+in consumable goods. He becomes a connoisseur in creditable
+viands of various degrees of merit, in manly beverages and
+trinkets, in seemly apparel and architecture, in weapons, games,
+dancers, and the narcotics. This cultivation of aesthetic faculty
+requires time and application, and the demands made upon the
+gentleman in this direction therefore tend to change his life of
+leisure into a more or less arduous application to the business
+of learning how to live a life of ostensible leisure in a
+becoming way. Closely related to the requirement that the
+gentleman must consume freely and of the right kind of goods,
+there is the requirement that he must know how to consume them in
+a seemly manner. His life of leisure must be conducted in due
+form. Hence arise good manners in the way pointed out in an
+earlier chapter. High-bred manners and ways of living are items
+of conformity to the norm of conspicuous leisure and conspicuous
+consumption.
+
+Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of
+reputability to the gentleman of leisure. As wealth accumulates
+on his hands, his own unaided effort will not avail to
+sufficiently put his opulence in evidence by this method. The aid
+of friends and competitors is therefore brought in by resorting
+to the giving of valuable presents and expensive feasts and
+entertainments. Presents and feasts had probably another origin
+than that of naive ostentation, but they required their utility
+for this purpose very early, and they have retained that
+character to the present; so that their utility in this respect
+has now long been the substantial ground on which these usages
+rest. Costly entertainments, such as the potlatch or the ball,
+are peculiarly adapted to serve this end. The competitor with
+whom the entertainer wishes to institute a comparison is, by this
+method, made to serve as a means to the end. He consumes
+vicariously for his host at the same time that he is witness to
+the consumption of that excess of good things which his host is
+unable to dispose of single-handed, and he is also made to
+witness his host's facility in etiquette.
+
+In the giving of costly entertainments other motives, of more
+genial kind, are of course also present. The custom of festive
+gatherings probably originated in motives of conviviality and
+religion; these motives are also present in the later
+development, but they do not continue to be the sole motives. The
+latter-day leisure-class festivities and entertainments may
+continue in some slight degree to serve the religious need and in
+a higher degree the needs of recreation and conviviality, but
+they also serve an invidious purpose; and they serve it none the
+less effectually for having a colorable non-invidious ground in
+these more avowable motives. But the economic effect of these
+social amenities is not therefore lessened, either in the
+vicarious consumption of goods or in the exhibition of difficult
+and costly achievements in etiquette.
+
+As wealth accumulates, the leisure class develops further in
+function and structure, and there arises a differentiation within
+the class. There is a more or less elaborate system of rank and
+grades. This differentiation is furthered by the inheritance of
+wealth and the consequent inheritance of gentility. With the
+inheritance of gentility goes the inheritance of obligatory
+leisure; and gentility of a sufficient potency to entail a life
+of leisure may be inherited without the complement of wealth
+required to maintain a dignified leisure. Gentle blood may be
+transmitted without goods enough to afford a reputably free
+consumption at one's ease. Hence results a class of impecunious
+gentlemen of leisure, incidentally referred to already. These
+half-caste gentlemen of leisure fall into a system of
+hierarchical gradations. Those who stand near the higher and the
+highest grades of the wealthy leisure class, in point of birth,
+or in point of wealth, or both, outrank the remoter-born and the
+pecuniarily weaker. These lower grades, especially the
+impecunious, or marginal, gentlemen of leisure, affiliate
+themselves by a system of dependence or fealty to the great ones;
+by so doing they gain an increment of repute, or of the means
+with which to lead a life of leisure, from their patron. They
+become his courtiers or retainers, servants; and being fed and
+countenanced by their patron they are indices of his rank and
+vicarious consumer of his superfluous wealth. Many of these
+affiliated gentlemen of leisure are at the same time lesser men
+of substance in their own right; so that some of them are
+scarcely at all, others only partially, to be rated as vicarious
+consumers. So many of them, however, as make up the retainer and
+hangers-on of the patron may be classed as vicarious consumer
+without qualification. Many of these again, and also many of the
+other aristocracy of less degree, have in turn attached to their
+persons a more or less comprehensive group of vicarious consumer
+in the persons of their wives and children, their servants,
+retainers, etc.
+
+Throughout this graduated scheme of vicarious leisure and
+vicarious consumption the rule holds that these offices must be
+performed in some such manner, or under some such circumstance or
+insignia, as shall point plainly to the master to whom this
+leisure or consumption pertains, and to whom therefore the
+resulting increment of good repute of right inures. The
+consumption and leisure executed by these persons for their
+master or patron represents an investment on his part with a view
+to an increase of good fame. As regards feasts and largesses this
+is obvious enough, and the imputation of repute to the host or
+patron here takes place immediately, on the ground of common
+notoriety. Where leisure and consumption is performed
+vicariously by henchmen and retainers, imputation of the
+resulting repute to the patron is effected by their residing near
+his person so that it may be plain to all men from what source
+they draw. As the group whose good esteem is to be secured in
+this way grows larger, more patent means are required to indicate
+the imputation of merit for the leisure performed, and to this
+end uniforms, badges, and liveries come into vogue. The wearing
+of uniforms or liveries implies a considerable degree of
+dependence, and may even be said to be a mark of servitude, real
+or ostensible. The wearers of uniforms and liveries may be
+roughly divided into two classes-the free and the servile, or the
+noble and the ignoble. The services performed by them are
+likewise divisible into noble and ignoble. Of course the
+distinction is not observed with strict consistency in practice;
+the less debasing of the base services and the less honorific of
+the noble functions are not infrequently merged in the same
+person. But the general distinction is not on that account to be
+overlooked. What may add some perplexity is the fact that this
+fundamental distinction between noble and ignoble, which rests on
+the nature of the ostensible service performed, is traversed by a
+secondary distinction into honorific and humiliating, resting on
+the rank of the person for whom the service is performed or whose
+livery is worn. So, those offices which are by right the proper
+employment of the leisure class are noble; such as government,
+fighting, hunting, the care of arms and accoutrements, and the
+like -- in short, those which may be classed as ostensibly
+predatory employments. On the other hand, those employments which
+properly fall to the industrious class are ignoble; such as
+handicraft or other productive labor, menial services and the
+like. But a base service performed for a person of very high
+degree may become a very honorific office; as for instance the
+office of a Maid of Honor or of a Lady in Waiting to the Queen,
+or the King's Master of the Horse or his Keeper of the Hounds.
+The two offices last named suggest a principle of some general
+bearing. Whenever, as in these cases, the menial service in
+question has to do directly with the primary leisure employments
+of fighting and hunting, it easily acquires a reflected honorific
+character. In this way great honor may come to attach to an
+employment which in its own nature belongs to the baser sort.
+In the later development of peaceable industry, the usage of
+employing an idle corps of uniformed men-at-arms gradually
+lapses. Vicarious consumption by dependents bearing the insignia
+of their patron or master narrows down to a corps of liveried
+menials. In a heightened degree, therefore, the livery comes to
+be a badge of servitude, or rather servility. Something of a
+honorific character always attached to the livery of the armed
+retainer, but this honorific character disappears when the livery
+becomes the exclusive badge of the menial. The livery becomes
+obnoxious to nearly all who are required to wear it. We are yet
+so little removed from a state of effective slavery as still to
+be fully sensitive to the sting of any imputation of servility.
+This antipathy asserts itself even in the case of the liveries or
+uniforms which some corporations prescribe as the distinctive
+dress of their employees. In this country the aversion even goes
+the length of discrediting -- in a mild and uncertain way --
+those government employments, military and civil, which require
+the wearing of a livery or uniform.
+
+With the disappearance of servitude, the number of vicarious
+consumers attached to any one gentleman tends, on the whole, to
+decrease. The like is of course true, and perhaps in a still
+higher degree, of the number of dependents who perform vicarious
+leisure for him. In a general way, though not wholly nor
+consistently, these two groups coincide. The dependent who was
+first delegated for these duties was the wife, or the chief wife;
+and, as would be expected, in the later development of the
+institution, when the number of persons by whom these duties are
+customarily performed gradually narrows, the wife remains the
+last. In the higher grades of society a large volume of both
+these kinds of service is required; and here the wife is of
+course still assisted in the work by a more or less numerous
+corps of menials. But as we descend the social scale, the point
+is presently reached where the duties of vicarious leisure and
+consumption devolve upon the wife alone. In the communities of
+the Western culture, this point is at present found among the
+lower middle class.
+
+And here occurs a curious inversion. It is a fact of common
+observance that in this lower middle class there is no pretense
+of leisure on the part of the head of the household. Through
+force of circumstances it has fallen into disuse. But the
+middle-class wife still carries on the business of vicarious
+leisure, for the good name of the household and its master. In
+descending the social scale in any modern industrial community,
+the primary fact-the conspicuous leisure of the master of the
+household-disappears at a relatively high point. The head of the
+middle-class household has been reduced by economic circumstances
+to turn his hand to gaining a livelihood by occupations which
+often partake largely of the character of industry, as in the
+case of the ordinary business man of today. But the derivative
+fact-the vicarious leisure and consumption rendered by the wife,
+and the auxiliary vicarious performance of leisure by
+menials-remains in vogue as a conventionality which the demands
+of reputability will not suffer to be slighted. It is by no means
+an uncommon spectacle to find a man applying himself to work with
+the utmost assiduity, in order that his wife may in due form
+render for him that degree of vicarious leisure which the common
+sense of the time demands.
+
+The leisure rendered by the wife in such cases is, of course, not
+a simple manifestation of idleness or indolence. It almost
+invariably occurs disguised under some form of work or household
+duties or social amenities, which prove on analysis to serve
+little or no ulterior end beyond showing that she does not occupy
+herself with anything that is gainful or that is of substantial
+use. As has already been noticed under the head of manners, the
+greater part of the customary round of domestic cares to which
+the middle-class housewife gives her time and effort is of this
+character. Not that the results of her
+attention to household matters, of a decorative and mundificatory
+character, are not pleasing to the sense of men trained in
+middle-class proprieties; but the taste to which these effects of
+household adornment and tidiness appeal is a taste which has been
+formed under the selective guidance of a canon of propriety that
+demands just these evidences of wasted effort. The effects are
+pleasing to us chiefly because we have been taught to find them
+pleasing. There goes into these domestic duties much solicitude
+for a proper combination of form and color, and for other ends
+that are to be classed as aesthetic in the proper sense of the
+term; and it is not denied that effects having some substantial
+aesthetic value are sometimes attained. Pretty much all that is
+here insisted on is that, as regards these amenities of life, the
+housewife's efforts are under the guidance of traditions that
+have been shaped by the law of conspicuously wasteful expenditure
+of time and substance. If beauty or comfort is achieved-and it is
+a more or less fortuitous circumstance if they are-they must be
+achieved by means and methods that commend themselves to the
+great economic law of wasted effort. The more reputable,
+"presentable" portion of middle-class household paraphernalia
+are, on the one hand, items of conspicuous consumption, and on
+the other hand, apparatus for putting in evidence the vicarious
+leisure rendered by the housewife.
+
+The requirement of vicarious consumption at the hands of the wife
+continues in force even at a lower point in the pecuniary scale
+than the requirement of vicarious leisure. At a point below which
+little if any pretense of wasted effort, in ceremonial cleanness
+and the like, is observable, and where there is
+assuredly no conscious attempt at ostensible leisure, decency
+still requires the wife to consume some goods conspicuously for
+the reputability of the household and its head. So that, as the
+latter-day outcome of this evolution of an archaic institution,
+the wife, who was at the outset the drudge and chattel of the
+man, both in fact and in theory -- the producer of goods for him
+to consume -- has become the ceremonial consumer of goods which
+he produces. But she still quite unmistakably remains his chattel
+in theory; for the habitual rendering of vicarious leisure and
+consumption is the abiding mark of the unfree servant.
+
+This vicarious consumption practiced by the household of the
+middle and lower classes can not be counted as a direct
+expression of the leisure-class scheme of life, since the
+household of this pecuniary grade does not belong within the
+leisure class. It is rather that the leisure-class scheme of life
+here comes to an expression at the second remove. The leisure
+class stands at the head of the social structure in point of
+reputability; and its manner of life and its standards of worth
+therefore afford the norm of reputability for the community. The
+observance of these standards, in some degree of approximation,
+becomes incumbent upon all classes lower in the scale. In modern
+civilized communities the lines of demarcation between social
+classes have grown vague and transient, and wherever this happens
+the norm of reputability imposed by the upper class extends its
+coercive influence with but slight hindrance down through the
+social structure to the lowest strata. The result is that the
+members of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency the
+scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum, and bend
+their energies to live up to that ideal. On pain of forfeiting
+their good name and their self-respect in case of failure, they
+must conform to the accepted code, at least in appearance.
+The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial
+community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means
+of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a
+good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.
+Accordingly, both of these methods are in vogue as far down the
+scale as it remains possible; and in the lower strata in which
+the two methods are employed, both offices are in great part
+delegated to the wife and children of the household. Lower still,
+where any degree of leisure, even ostensible, has become
+impracticable for the wife, the conspicuous consumption of goods
+remains and is carried on by the wife and children. The man of
+the household also can do something in this direction, and
+indeed, he commonly does; but with a still lower descent into the
+levels of indigence -- along the margin of the slums -- the man,
+and presently also the children, virtually cease to consume
+valuable goods for appearances, and the woman remains virtually
+the sole exponent of the household's pecuniary decency. No class
+of society, not even the most abjectly poor, forgoes all
+customary conspicuous consumption. The last items of this
+category of consumption are not given up except under stress of
+the direst necessity. Very much of squalor and discomfort will be
+endured before the last trinket or the last pretense of pecuniary
+decency is put away. There is no class and no country that has
+yielded so abjectly before the pressure of physical want as to
+deny themselves all gratification of this higher or spiritual
+need.
+
+From the foregoing survey of the growth of conspicuous leisure
+and consumption, it appears that the utility of both alike for
+the purposes of reputability lies in the element of waste that is
+common to both. In the one case it is a waste of time and effort,
+in the other it is a waste of goods. Both are methods of
+demonstrating the possession of wealth, and the two are
+conventionally accepted as equivalents. The choice between them
+is a question of advertising expediency simply, except so far as
+it may be affected by other standards of propriety, springing
+from a different source. On grounds of expediency the preference
+may be given to the one or the other at different stages of the
+economic development. The question is, which of the two methods
+will most effectively reach the persons whose
+convictions it is desired to affect. Usage has answered this
+question in different ways under different circumstances.
+
+So long as the community or social group is small enough and
+compact enough to be effectually reached by common notoriety
+alone that is to say, so long as the human environment to which
+the individual is required to adapt himself in respect of
+reputability is comprised within his sphere of personal
+acquaintance and neighborhood gossip -- so long the one method is
+about as effective as the other. Each will therefore serve about
+equally well during the earlier stages of social growth. But when
+the differentiation has gone farther and it becomes necessary to
+reach a wider human environment, consumption begins to hold over
+leisure as an ordinary means of decency. This is especially true
+during the later, peaceable economic stage. The means of
+communication and the mobility of the population now expose the
+individual to the observation of many persons who have no other
+means of judging of his reputability than the display of goods
+(and perhaps of breeding) which he is able to make while he is
+under their direct observation.
+
+The modern organization of industry works in the same direction
+also by another line. The exigencies of the modern industrial
+system frequently place individuals and households in
+juxtaposition between whom there is little contact in any other
+sense than that of juxtaposition. One's neighbors, mechanically
+speaking, often are socially not one's neighbors, or even
+acquaintances; and still their transient good opinion has a high
+degree of utility. The only practicable means of impressing one's
+pecuniary ability on these unsympathetic observers of one's
+everyday life is an unremitting demonstration of ability to pay.
+In the modern community there is also a more frequent attendance
+at large gatherings of people to whom one's everyday life is
+unknown; in such places as churches, theaters, ballrooms, hotels,
+parks, shops, and the like. In order to impress these transient
+observers, and to retain one's self-complacency under their
+observation, the signature of one's pecuniary strength should be
+written in characters which he who runs may read. It is evident,
+therefore, that the present trend of the development is in the
+direction of heightening the utility of conspicuous consumption
+as compared with leisure.
+
+It is also noticeable that the serviceability of consumption as a
+means of repute, as well as the insistence on it as an element of
+decency, is at its best in those portions of the community where
+the human contact of the individual is widest and the mobility of
+the population is greatest. Conspicuous
+consumption claims a relatively larger portion of the income of
+the urban than of the rural population, and the claim is also
+more imperative. The result is that, in order to keep up a decent
+appearance, the former habitually live hand-to-mouth to a greater
+extent than the latter. So it comes, for instance, that the
+American farmer and his wife and daughters are notoriously less
+modish in their dress, as well as less urbane in their manners,
+than the city artisan's family with an equal income. It is not
+that the city population is by nature much more eager for the
+peculiar complacency that comes of a conspicuous consumption, nor
+has the rural population less regard for pecuniary decency. But
+the provocation to this line of evidence, as well as its
+transient effectiveness, is more decided in the city. This method
+is therefore more readily resorted to, and in the struggle to
+outdo one another the city population push their normal standard
+of conspicuous consumption to a higher point, with the result
+that a relatively greater expenditure in this direction is
+required to indicate a given degree of pecuniary decency in the
+city. The requirement of conformity to this higher conventional
+standard becomes mandatory. The standard of decency is higher,
+class for class, and this requirement of decent appearance must
+be lived up to on pain of losing caste.
+
+Consumption becomes a larger element in the standard of living in
+the city than in the country. Among the country
+population its place is to some extent taken by savings and home
+comforts known through the medium of neighborhood gossip
+sufficiently to serve the like general purpose of Pecuniary
+repute. These home comforts and the leisure indulged in -- where
+the indulgence is found -- are of course also in great part to be
+classed as items of conspicuous consumption; and much the same is
+to be said of the savings. The smaller amount of the savings laid
+by by the artisan class is no doubt due, in some measure, to the
+fact that in the case of the artisan the savings are a less
+effective means of advertisement, relative to the environment in
+which he is placed, than are the savings of the people living on
+farms and in the small villages. Among the latter, everybody's
+affairs, especially everybody's pecuniary status, are known to
+everybody else. Considered by itself simply -- taken in the first
+degree -- this added provocation to which the artisan and the
+urban laboring classes are exposed may not very seriously
+decrease the amount of savings; but in its cumulative action,
+through raising the standard of decent expenditure, its deterrent
+effect on the tendency to save cannot but be very great.
+
+A felicitous illustration of the manner in which this canon of
+reputability works out its results is seen in the practice of
+dram-drinking, "treating," and smoking in public places, which is
+customary among the laborers and handicraftsmen of the towns, and
+among the lower middle class of the urban population generally
+Journeymen printers may be named as a class among whom this form
+of conspicuous consumption has a great vogue, and among whom it
+carries with it certain well-marked consequences that are often
+deprecated. The peculiar habits of the class in this respect are
+commonly set down to some kind of an ill-defined moral deficiency
+with which this class is credited, or to a morally deleterious
+influence which their occupation is supposed to exert, in some
+unascertainable way, upon the men employed in it. The state of
+the case for the men who work in the composition and press rooms
+of the common run of printing-houses may be summed up as follows.
+Skill acquired in any printing-house or any city is easily turned
+to account in almost any other house or city; that is to say, the
+inertia due to special training is slight. Also, this occupation
+requires more than the average of intelligence and general
+information, and the men employed in it are therefore ordinarily
+more ready than many others to take advantage of any slight
+variation in the demand for their labor from one place to
+another. The inertia due to the home feeling is consequently also
+slight. At the same time the wages in the trade are high enough
+to make movement from place to place relatively easy. The result
+is a great mobility of the labor employed in printing; perhaps
+greater than in any other equally well-defined and considerable
+body of workmen. These men are constantly thrown in contact with
+new groups of acquaintances, with whom the relations established
+are transient or ephemeral, but whose good opinion is valued none
+the less for the time being. The human proclivity to ostentation,
+reenforced by sentiments of good-fellowship, leads them to spend
+freely in those directions which will best serve these needs.
+Here as elsewhere prescription seizes upon the custom as soon as
+it gains a vogue, and incorporates it in the accredited standard
+of decency. The next step is to make this standard of decency the
+point of departure for a new move in advance in the same
+direction -- for there is no merit in simple spiritless
+conformity to a standard of dissipation that is lived up to as a
+matter of course by everyone in the trade.
+
+The greater prevalence of dissipation among printers than among
+the average of workmen is accordingly attributable, at least in
+some measure, to the greater ease of movement and the more
+transient character of acquaintance and human contact in this
+trade. But the substantial ground of this high requirement in
+dissipation is in the last analysis no other than that same
+propensity for a manifestation of dominance and pecuniary decency
+which makes the French peasant-proprietor parsimonious and
+frugal, and induces the American millionaire to found colleges,
+hospitals and museums. If the canon of conspicuous consumption
+were not offset to a considerable extent by other features of
+human nature, alien to it, any saving should logically be
+impossible for a population situated as the artisan and laboring
+classes of the cities are at present, however high their wages or
+their income might be.
+
+But there are other standards of repute and other, more or less
+imperative, canons of conduct, besides wealth and its
+manifestation, and some of these come in to accentuate or to
+qualify the broad, fundamental canon of conspicuous waste. Under
+the simple test of effectiveness for advertising, we should
+expect to find leisure and the conspicuous consumption of goods
+dividing the field of pecuniary emulation pretty evenly between
+them at the outset. Leisure might then be expected gradually to
+yield ground and tend to obsolescence as the economic development
+goes forward, and the community increases in size; while the
+conspicuous consumption of goods should gradually gain in
+importance, both absolutely and relatively, until it had absorbed
+all the available product, leaving nothing over beyond a bare
+livelihood. But the actual course of development has been
+somewhat different from this ideal scheme. Leisure held the first
+place at the start, and came to hold a rank very much above
+wasteful consumption of goods, both as a direct exponent of
+wealth and as an element in the standard of decency, during the
+quasi-peaceable culture. From that point onward, consumption has
+gained ground, until, at present, it unquestionably holds the
+primacy, though it is still far from absorbing the entire margin
+of production above the subsistence minimum.
+
+The early ascendency of leisure as a means of reputability is
+traceable to the archaic distinction between noble and ignoble
+employments. Leisure is honorable and becomes imperative partly
+because it shows exemption from ignoble labor. The archaic
+differentiation into noble and ignoble classes is based on an
+invidious distinction between employments as honorific or
+debasing; and this traditional distinction grows into an
+imperative canon of decency during the early quasi-peaceable
+stage. Its ascendency is furthered by the fact that leisure is
+still fully as effective an evidence of wealth as consumption.
+Indeed, so effective is it in the relatively small and stable
+human environment to which the individual is exposed at that
+cultural stage, that, with the aid of the archaic tradition which
+deprecates all productive labor, it gives rise to a large
+impecunious leisure class, and it even tends to limit the
+production of the community's industry to the subsistence
+minimum. This extreme inhibition of industry is avoided because
+slave labor, working under a compulsion more vigorous than that
+of reputability, is forced to turn out a product in excess of the
+subsistence minimum of the working class. The subsequent relative
+decline in the use of conspicuous leisure as a basis of repute is
+due partly to an increasing relative effectiveness of consumption
+as an evidence of wealth; but in part it is traceable to another
+force, alien, and in some degree antagonistic, to the usage of
+conspicuous waste.
+
+This alien factor is the instinct of workmanship. Other
+circumstances permitting, that instinct disposes men to look with
+favor upon productive efficiency and on whatever is of human use.
+It disposes them to deprecate waste of substance or effort. The
+instinct of workmanship is present in all men, and asserts itself
+even under very adverse circumstances. So that however wasteful a
+given expenditure may be in reality, it must at least have some
+colorable excuse in the way of an ostensible purpose. The manner
+in which, under special circumstances, the instinct eventuates in
+a taste for exploit and an invidious discrimination between noble
+and ignoble classes has been indicated in an earlier chapter. In
+so far as it comes into conflict with the law of conspicuous
+waste, the instinct of workmanship expresses itself not so much
+in insistence on substantial usefulness as in an abiding sense of
+the odiousness and aesthetic impossibility of what is obviously
+futile. Being of the nature of an instinctive affection, its
+guidance touches chiefly and immediately the obvious and apparent
+violations of its requirements. It is only less promptly and with
+less constraining force that it reaches such substantial
+violations of its requirements as are appreciated only upon
+reflection.
+
+So long as all labor continues to be performed exclusively or
+usually by slaves, the baseness of all productive effort is too
+constantly and deterrently present in the mind of men to allow
+the instinct of workmanship seriously to take effect in the
+direction of industrial usefulness; but when the quasi-peaceable
+stage (with slavery and status) passes into the peaceable stage
+of industry (with wage labor and cash payment) the instinct comes
+more effectively into play. It then begins aggressively to shape
+men's views of what is meritorious, and asserts itself at least
+as an auxiliary canon of self-complacency. All extraneous
+considerations apart, those persons (adult) are but a vanishing
+minority today who harbor no inclination to the accomplishment of
+some end, or who are not impelled of their own motion to shape
+some object or fact or relation for human use. The propensity may
+in large measure be overborne by the more immediately
+constraining incentive to a reputable leisure and an avoidance of
+indecorous usefulness, and it may therefore work itself out in
+make-believe only; as for instance in "social duties," and in
+quasi-artistic or quasi-scholarly accomplishments, in the care
+and decoration of the house, in sewing-circle activity or dress
+reform, in proficiency at dress, cards, yachting, golf, and
+various sports. But the fact that it may under stress of
+circumstances eventuate in inanities no more disproves the
+presence of the instinct than the reality of the brooding
+instinct is disproved by inducing a hen to sit on a nestful of
+china eggs.
+
+This latter-day uneasy reaching-out for some form of
+purposeful activity that shall at the same time not be
+indecorously productive of either individual or collective gain
+marks a difference of attitude between the modern leisure class
+and that of the quasi-peaceable stage. At the earlier stage, as
+was said above, the all-dominating institution of slavery and
+status acted resistlessly to discountenance exertion directed to
+other than naively predatory ends. It was still possible to find
+some habitual employment for the inclination to action in the way
+of forcible aggression or repression directed against hostile
+groups or against the subject classes within the group; and this
+sewed to relieve the pressure and draw off the energy of the
+leisure class without a resort to actually useful, or even
+ostensibly useful employments. The practice of hunting also sewed
+the same purpose in some degree. When the community developed
+into a peaceful industrial organization, and when fuller
+occupation of the land had reduced the opportunities for the hunt
+to an inconsiderable residue, the pressure of energy seeking
+purposeful employment was left to find an outlet in some other
+direction. The ignominy which attaches to useful effort also
+entered upon a less acute phase with the disappearance of
+compulsory labor; and the instinct of workmanship then came to
+assert itself with more persistence and consistency.
+
+The line of least resistance has changed in some measure, and the
+energy which formerly found a vent in predatory activity, now in
+part takes the direction of some ostensibly useful end.
+Ostensibly purposeless leisure has come to be deprecated,
+especially among that large portion of the leisure class whose
+plebeian origin acts to set them at variance with the tradition
+of the otium cum dignitate. But that canon of reputability which
+discountenances all employment that is of the nature of
+productive effort is still at hand, and will permit nothing
+beyond the most transient vogue to any employment that is
+substantially useful or productive. The consequence is that a
+change has been wrought in the conspicuous leisure practiced by
+the leisure class; not so much in substance as in form. A
+reconciliation between the two conflicting requirements is
+effected by a resort to make-believe. Many and intricate polite
+observances and social duties of a ceremonial nature are
+developed; many organizations are founded, with some specious
+object of amelioration embodied in their official style and
+title; there is much coming and going, and a deal of talk, to the
+end that the talkers may not have occasion to reflect on what is
+the effectual economic value of their traffic. And along with the
+make-believe of purposeful employment, and woven inextricably
+into its texture, there is commonly, if not invariably, a more or
+less appreciable element of purposeful effort directed to some
+serious end.
+
+In the narrower sphere of vicarious leisure a similar change has
+gone forward. Instead of simply passing her time in visible
+idleness, as in the best days of the patriarchal regime, the
+housewife of the advanced peaceable stage applies herself
+assiduously to household cares. The salient features of this
+development of domestic service have already been indicated.
+Throughout the entire evolution of conspicuous expenditure,
+whether of goods or of services or human life, runs the obvious
+implication that in order to effectually mend the consumer's good
+fame it must be an expenditure of superfluities. In order to be
+reputable it must be wasteful. No merit would accrue from the
+consumption of the bare necessaries of life, except by comparison
+with the abjectly poor who fall short even of the subsistence
+minimum; and no standard of expenditure could result from such a
+comparison, except the most prosaic and unattractive level of
+decency. A standard of life would still be possible which should
+admit of invidious comparison in other respects than that of
+opulence; as, for instance, a comparison in various directions in
+the manifestation of moral, physical, intellectual, or aesthetic
+force. Comparison in all these directions is in vogue today; and
+the comparison made in these respects is commonly so inextricably
+bound up with the pecuniary comparison as to be scarcely
+distinguishable from the latter. This is especially true as
+regards the current rating of expressions of intellectual and
+aesthetic force or proficiency' so that we frequently interpret
+as aesthetic or intellectual a difference which in substance is
+pecuniary only.
+
+The use of the term "waste" is in one respect an unfortunate one.
+As used in the speech of everyday life the word carries an
+undertone of deprecation. It is here used for want of a better
+term that will adequately describe the same range of motives and
+of phenomena, and it is not to be taken in an odious sense, as
+implying an illegitimate expenditure of human products or of
+human life. In the view of economic theory the expenditure in
+question is no more and no less legitimate than any other
+expenditure. It is here called "waste" because this expenditure
+does not serve human life or human well-being on the whole, not
+because it is waste or misdirection of effort or expenditure as
+viewed from the standpoint of the individual consumer who chooses
+it. If he chooses it, that disposes of the question of its
+relative utility to him, as compared with other forms of
+consumption that would not be deprecated on account of their
+wastefulness. Whatever form of expenditure the consumer chooses,
+or whatever end he seeks in making his choice, has utility to him
+by virtue of his preference. As seen from the point of view of
+the individual consumer, the question of wastefulness does not
+arise within the scope of economic theory proper. The use of the
+word "waste" as a technical term, therefore, implies no
+deprecation of the motives or of the ends sought by the consumer
+under this canon of conspicuous waste.
+
+But it is, on other grounds, worth noting that the term "waste"
+in the language of everyday life implies deprecation of what is
+characterized as wasteful. This common-sense implication is
+itself an outcropping of the instinct of workmanship. The popular
+reprobation of waste goes to say that in order to be at peace
+with himself the common man must be able to see in any and all
+human effort and human enjoyment an enhancement of life and
+well-being on the whole. In order to meet with unqualified
+approval, any economic fact must approve itself under the test of
+impersonal usefulness -- usefulness as seen from the point of view
+of the generically human. Relative or competitive advantage of
+one individual in comparison with another does not satisfy the
+economic conscience, and therefore competitive expenditure has
+not the approval of this conscience.
+
+In strict accuracy nothing should be included under the head of
+conspicuous waste but such expenditure as is incurred on the
+ground of an invidious pecuniary comparison. But in order to
+bring any given item or element in under this head it is not
+necessary that it should be recognized as waste in this sense by
+the person incurring the expenditure. It frequently happens that
+an element of the standard of living which set out with being
+primarily wasteful, ends with becoming, in the apprehension of
+the consumer, a necessary of life; and it may in this way become
+as indispensable as any other item of the consumer's habitual
+expenditure. As items which sometimes fall under this head, and
+are therefore available as illustrations of the manner in which
+this principle applies, may be cited carpets and tapestries,
+silver table service, waiter's services, silk hats, starched
+linen, many articles of jewelry and of dress. The
+indispensability of these things after the habit and the
+convention have been formed, however, has little to say in the
+classification of expenditures as waste or not waste in the
+technical meaning of the word. The test to which all expenditure
+must be brought in an attempt to decide that point is the
+question whether it serves directly to enhance human life on the
+whole-whether it furthers the life process taken impersonally.
+For this is the basis of award of the instinct of workmanship,
+and that instinct is the court of final appeal in any question of
+economic truth or adequacy. It is a question as to the award
+rendered by a dispassionate common sense. The question is,
+therefore, not whether, under the existing circumstances of
+individual habit and social custom, a given expenditure conduces
+to the particular consumer's gratification or peace of mind; but
+whether, aside from acquired tastes and from the canons of usage
+and conventional decency, its result is a net gain in comfort or
+in the fullness of life. Customary expenditure must be classed
+under the head of waste in so far as the custom on which it rests
+is traceable to the habit of making an invidious pecuniary
+comparison-in so far as it is conceived that it could not have
+become customary and prescriptive without the backing of this
+principle of pecuniary reputability or relative economic success.
+It is obviously not necessary that a given object of
+expenditure should be exclusively wasteful in order to come in
+under the category of conspicuous waste. An article may be useful
+and wasteful both, and its utility to the consumer may be made up
+of use and waste in the most varying proportions. Consumable
+goods, and even productive goods, generally show the two elements
+in combination, as constituents of their utility; although, in a
+general way, the element of waste tends to predominate in
+articles of consumption, while the contrary is true of articles
+designed for productive use. Even in articles which appear at
+first glance to serve for pure ostentation only, it is always
+possible to detect the presence of some, at least ostensible,
+useful purpose; and on the other hand, even in special machinery
+and tools contrived for some particular industrial process, as
+well as in the rudest appliances of human industry, the traces of
+conspicuous waste, or at least of the habit of ostentation,
+usually become evident on a close scrutiny. It would be hazardous
+to assert that a useful purpose is ever absent from the utility
+of any article or of any service, however obviously its prime
+purpose and chief element is conspicuous waste; and it would be
+only less hazardous to assert of any primarily useful product
+that the element of waste is in no way concerned in its value,
+immediately or remotely.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Five
+
+The Pecuniary Standard of Living
+
+For the great body of the people in any modern community, the
+proximate ground of expenditure in excess of what is required for
+physical comfort is not a conscious effort to excel in the
+expensiveness of their visible consumption, so much as it is a
+desire to live up to the conventional standard of decency in the
+amount and grade of goods consumed. This desire is not guided by
+a rigidly invariable standard, which must be lived up to, and
+beyond which there is no incentive to go. The standard is
+flexible; and especially it is indefinitely extensible, if only
+time is allowed for habituation to any increase in pecuniary
+ability and for acquiring facility in the new and larger scale of
+expenditure that follows such an increase. It is much more
+difficult to recede from a scale of expenditure once adopted than
+it is to extend the accustomed scale in response to an accession
+of wealth. Many items of customary expenditure prove on analysis
+to be almost purely wasteful, and they are therefore honorific
+only, but after they have once been incorporated into the scale
+of decent consumption, and so have become an integral part of
+one's scheme of life, it is quite as hard to give up these as it
+is to give up many items that conduce directly to one's physical
+comfort, or even that may be necessary to life and health. That
+is to say, the conspicuously wasteful honorific expenditure that
+confers spiritual well-being may become more indispensable than
+much of that expenditure which ministers to the "lower" wants of
+physical well-being or sustenance only. It is notoriously just as
+difficult to recede from a "high" standard of living as it is to
+lower a standard which is already relatively low; although in the
+former case the difficulty is a moral one, while in the latter it
+may involve a material deduction from the physical comforts of
+life.
+
+But while retrogression is difficult, a fresh advance in
+conspicuous expenditure is relatively easy; indeed, it takes
+place almost as a matter of course. In the rare cases where it
+occurs, a failure to increase one's visible consumption when the
+means for an increase are at hand is felt in popular apprehension
+to call for explanation, and unworthy motives of miserliness are
+imputed to those who fall short in this respect. A prompt
+response to the stimulus, on the other hand, is accepted as the
+normal effect. This suggests that the standard of expenditure
+which commonly guides our efforts is not the average, ordinary
+expenditure already achieved; it is an ideal of consumption that
+lies just beyond our reach, or to reach which requires some
+strain. The motive is emulation -- the stimulus of an invidious
+comparison which prompts us to outdo those with whom we are in
+the habit of classing ourselves. Substantially the same
+proposition is expressed in the commonplace remark that each
+class envies and emulates the class next above it in the social
+scale, while it rarely compares itself with those below or with
+those who are considerably in advance. That is to say, in other
+words, our standard of decency in expenditure, as in other ends
+of emulation, is set by the usage of those next above us in
+reputability; until, in this way, especially in any community
+where class distinctions are somewhat vague, all canons of
+reputability and decency, and all standards of consumption, are
+traced back by insensible gradations to the usages and habits of
+thought of the highest social and pecuniary class -- the wealthy
+leisure class.
+
+It is for this class to determine, in general outline, what
+scheme of Life the community shall accept as decent or honorific;
+and it is their office by precept and example to set forth this
+scheme of social salvation in its highest, ideal form. But the
+higher leisure class can exercise this quasi-sacerdotal office
+only under certain material limitations. The class cannot at
+discretion effect a sudden revolution or reversal of the popular
+habits of thought with respect to any of these ceremonial
+requirements. It takes time for any change to permeate the mass
+and change the habitual attitude of the people; and especially it
+takes time to change the habits of those classes that are
+socially more remote from the radiant body. The process is slower
+where the mobility of the population is less or where the
+intervals between the several classes are wider and more abrupt.
+But if time be allowed, the scope of the discretion of the
+leisure class as regards questions of form and detail in the
+community's scheme of life is large; while as regards the
+substantial principles of reputability, the changes which it can
+effect lie within a narrow margin of tolerance. Its example and
+precept carries the force of prescription for all classes below
+it; but in working out the precepts which are handed down as
+governing the form and method of reputability -- in shaping the
+usages and the spiritual attitude of the lower classes -- this
+authoritative prescription constantly works under the selective
+guidance of the canon of conspicuous waste, tempered in varying
+degree by the instinct of workmanship. To those norms is to be
+added another broad principle of human nature -- the predatory
+animus -- which in point of generality and of psychological
+content lies between the two just named. The effect of the latter
+in shaping the accepted scheme of life is yet to be discussed.
+The canon of reputability, then, must adapt itself to the
+economic circumstances, the traditions, and the degree of
+spiritual maturity of the particular class whose scheme of life
+it is to regulate. It is especially to be noted that however high
+its authority and however true to the fundamental requirements of
+reputability it may have been at its inception, a specific formal
+observance can under no circumstances maintain itself in force if
+with the lapse of time or on its transmission to a lower
+pecuniary class it is found to run counter to the ultimate ground
+of decency among civilized peoples, namely, serviceability for
+the purpose of an invidious comparison in pecuniary success.
+It is evident that these canons of expenditure have much to say
+in determining the standard of living for any community and for
+any class. It is no less evident that the standard of living
+which prevails at any time or at any given social altitude will
+in its turn have much to say as to the forms which honorific
+expenditure will take, and as to the degree to which this
+"higher" need will dominate a people's consumption. In this
+respect the control exerted by the accepted standard of living is
+chiefly of a negative character; it acts almost solely to prevent
+recession from a scale of conspicuous expenditure that has once
+become habitual.
+
+A standard of living is of the nature of habit. It is an habitual
+scale and method of responding to given stimuli. The difficulty
+in the way of receding from an accustomed standard is the
+difficulty of breaking a habit that has once been formed. The
+relative facility with which an advance in the standard is made
+means that the life process is a process of unfolding activity
+and that it will readily unfold in a new direction whenever and
+wherever the resistance to self-expression decreases. But when
+the habit of expression along such a given line of low resistance
+has once been formed, the discharge will seek the accustomed
+outlet even after a change has taken place in the environment
+whereby the external resistance has appreciably risen. That
+heightened facility of expression in a given direction which is
+called habit may offset a considerable increase in the resistance
+offered by external circumstances to the unfolding of life in the
+given direction. As between the various habits, or habitual modes
+and directions of expression, which go to make up an individual's
+standard of living, there is an appreciable difference in point
+of persistence under counteracting circumstances and in point of
+the degree of imperativeness with which the discharge seeks a
+given direction.
+
+That is to say, in the language of current economic theory, while
+men are reluctant to retrench their expenditures in any
+direction, they are more reluctant to retrench in some directions
+than in others; so that while any accustomed consumption is
+reluctantly given up, there are certain lines of consumption
+which are given up with relatively extreme reluctance. The
+articles or forms of consumption to which the consumer clings
+with the greatest tenacity are commonly the so-called necessaries
+of life, or the subsistence minimum. The subsistence minimum is
+of course not a rigidly determined allowance of goods, definite
+and invariable in kind and quantity; but for the purpose in hand
+it may be taken to comprise a certain, more or less definite,
+aggregate of consumption required for the maintenance of life.
+This minimum, it may be assumed, is ordinarily given up last in
+case of a progressive retrenchment of expenditure. That is to
+say, in a general way, the most ancient and ingrained of the
+habits which govern the individual's life -- those habits that
+touch his existence as an organism -- are the most persistent and
+imperative. Beyond these come the higher wants -- later-formed
+habits of the individual or the race -- in a somewhat irregular
+and by no means invariable gradation. Some of these higher wants,
+as for instance the habitual use of certain stimulants, or the
+need of salvation (in the eschatological sense), or of good
+repute, may in some cases take precedence of the lower or more
+elementary wants. In general, the longer the habituation, the
+more unbroken the habit, and the more nearly it coincides with
+previous habitual forms of the life process, the more
+persistently will the given habit assert itself. The habit will
+be stronger if the particular traits of human nature which its
+action involves, or the particular aptitudes that find exercise
+in it, are traits or aptitudes that are already largely and
+profoundly concerned in the life process or that are intimately
+bound up with the life history of the particular racial stock.
+The varying degrees of ease with which different habits are
+formed by different persons, as well as the varying degrees of
+reluctance with which different habits are given up, goes to say
+that the formation of specific habits is not a matter of length
+of habituation simply. Inherited aptitudes and traits of
+temperament count for quite as much as length of habituation in
+deciding what range of habits will come to dominate any
+individual's scheme of life. And the prevalent type of
+transmitted aptitudes, or in other words the type of temperament
+belonging to the dominant ethnic element in any community, will
+go far to decide what will be the scope and form of expression of
+the community's habitual life process. How greatly the
+transmitted idiosyncrasies of aptitude may count in the way of a
+rapid and definitive formation of habit in individuals is
+illustrated by the extreme facility with which an all-dominating
+habit of alcoholism is sometimes formed; or in the similar
+facility and the similarly inevitable formation of a habit of
+devout observances in the case of persons gifted with a special
+aptitude in that direction. Much the same meaning attaches to
+that peculiar facility of habituation to a specific human
+environment that is called romantic love.
+
+Men differ in respect of transmitted aptitudes, or in respect of
+the relative facility with which they unfold their life activity
+in particular directions; and the habits which coincide with or
+proceed upon a relatively strong specific aptitude or a
+relatively great specific facility of expression become of great
+consequence to the man's well-being. The part played by this
+element of aptitude in determining the relative tenacity of the
+several habits which constitute the standard of living goes to
+explain the extreme reluctance with which men give up any
+habitual expenditure in the way of conspicuous
+consumption. The aptitudes or propensities to which a habit of
+this kind is to be referred as its ground are those aptitudes
+whose exercise is comprised in emulation; and the propensity for
+emulation -- for invidious comparison -- is of ancient growth and
+is a pervading trait of human nature. It is easily called into
+vigorous activity in any new form, and it asserts itself with
+great insistence under any form under which it has once found
+habitual expression. When the individual has once formed the
+habit of seeking expression in a given line of honorific
+expenditure -- when a given set of stimuli have come to be
+habitually responded to in activity of a given kind and direction
+under the guidance of these alert and deep-reaching propensities
+of emulation -- it is with extreme reluctance that such an
+habitual expenditure is given up. And on the other hand, whenever
+an accession of pecuniary strength puts the individual in a
+position to unfold his life process in larger scope and with
+additional reach, the ancient propensities of the race will
+assert themselves in determining the direction which the new
+unfolding of life is to take. And those propensities which are
+already actively in the field under some related form of
+expression, which are aided by the pointed suggestions afforded
+by a current accredited scheme of life, and for the exercise of
+which the material means and opportunities are readily available
+-- these will especially have much to say in shaping the form and
+direction in which the new accession to the individual's
+aggregate force will assert itself. That is to say, in concrete
+terms, in any community where conspicuous consumption is an
+element of the scheme of life, an increase in an individual's
+ability to pay is likely to take the form of an expenditure for
+some accredited line of conspicuous consumption.
+
+With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the
+propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert
+and persistent of the economic motives proper. In an industrial
+community this propensity for emulation expresses itself in
+pecuniary emulation; and this, so far as regards the Western
+civilized communities of the present, is virtually equivalent to
+saying that it expresses itself in some form of conspicuous
+waste. The need of conspicuous waste, therefore, stands ready to
+absorb any increase in the community's industrial efficiency or
+output of goods, after the most elementary physical wants have
+been provided for. Where this result does not follow, under
+modern conditions, the reason for the discrepancy is commonly to
+be sought in a rate of increase in the individual's wealth too
+rapid for the habit of expenditure to keep abreast of it; or it
+may be that the individual in question defers the conspicuous
+consumption of the increment to a later date -- ordinarily with a
+view to heightening the spectacular effect of the aggregate
+expenditure contemplated. As increased industrial efficiency
+makes it possible to procure the means of livelihood with less
+labor, the energies of the industrious members of the community
+are bent to the compassing of a higher result in conspicuous
+expenditure, rather than slackened to a more comfortable pace.
+The strain is not lightened as industrial efficiency increases
+and makes a lighter strain possible, but the increment of output
+is turned to use to meet this want, which is indefinitely
+expansible, after the manner commonly imputed in economic theory
+to higher or spiritual wants. It is owing chiefly to the presence
+of this element in the standard of living that J. S. Mill was
+able to say that "hitherto it is questionable if all the
+mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of
+any human being." The accepted standard of expenditure in the
+community or in the class to which a person belongs largely
+determines what his standard of living will be. It does this
+directly by commending itself to his common sense as right and
+good, through his habitually contemplating it and assimilating
+the scheme of life in which it belongs; but it does so also
+indirectly through popular insistence on conformity to the
+accepted scale of expenditure as a matter of propriety, under
+pain of disesteem and ostracism. To accept and practice the
+standard of living which is in vogue is both agreeable and
+expedient, commonly to the point of being indispensable to
+personal comfort and to success in life. The standard of living
+of any class, so far as concerns the element of conspicuous
+waste, is commonly as high as the earning capacity of the class
+will permit -- with a constant tendency to go higher. The effect
+upon the serious activities of men is therefore to direct them
+with great singleness of purpose to the largest possible
+acquisition of wealth, and to discountenance work that brings no
+pecuniary gain. At the same time the effect on consumption is to
+concentrate it upon the lines which are most patent to the
+observers whose good opinion is sought; while the inclinations
+and aptitudes whose exercise does not involve a honorific
+expenditure of time or substance tend to fall into abeyance
+through disuse.
+
+Through this discrimination in favor of visible consumption it
+has come about that the domestic life of most classes is
+relatively shabby, as compared with the éclat of that overt
+portion of their life that is carried on before the eyes of
+observers. As a secondary consequence of the same discrimination,
+people habitually screen their private life from observation. So
+far as concerns that portion of their consumption that may
+without blame be carried on in secret, they withdraw from all
+contact with their neighbors, hence the exclusiveness of people,
+as regards their domestic life, in most of the industrially
+developed communities; and hence, by remoter derivation, the
+habit of privacy and reserve that is so large a feature in the
+code of proprieties of the better class in all communities. The
+low birthrate of the classes upon whom the requirements of
+reputable expenditure fall with great urgency is likewise
+traceable to the exigencies of a standard of living based on
+conspicuous waste. The conspicuous consumption, and the
+consequent increased expense, required in the reputable
+maintenance of a child is very considerable and acts as a
+powerful deterrent. It is probably the most effectual of the
+Malthusian prudential checks.
+
+ The effect of this factor of the standard of living, both in the
+way of retrenchment in the obscurer elements of consumption that
+go to physical comfort and maintenance, and also in the paucity
+or absence of children, is perhaps seen at its best among the
+classes given to scholarly pursuits. Because of a presumed
+superiority and scarcity of the gifts and attainments that
+characterize their life, these classes are by convention subsumed
+under a higher social grade than their pecuniary grade should
+warrant. The scale of decent expenditure in their case is pitched
+correspondingly high, and it consequently leaves an exceptionally
+narrow margin disposable for the other ends of life. By force of
+circumstances, their habitual sense of what is good and right in
+these matters, as well as the expectations of the community in
+the way of pecuniary decency among the learned, are excessively
+high -- as measured by the prevalent degree of opulence and
+earning capacity of the class, relatively to the non-scholarly
+classes whose social equals they nominally are. In any modern
+community where there is no priestly monopoly of these
+occupations, the people of scholarly pursuits are unavoidably
+thrown into contact with classes that are pecuniarily their
+superiors. The high standard of pecuniary decency in force among
+these superior classes is transfused among the scholarly classes
+with but little mitigation of its rigor; and as a consequence
+there is no class of the community that spends a larger
+proportion of its substance in conspicuous waste than these.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Six
+
+Pecuniary Canons of Taste
+
+The caution has already been repeated more than once, that while
+the regulating norm of consumption is in large part the
+requirement of conspicuous waste, it must not be understood that
+the motive on which the consumer acts in any given case is this
+principle in its bald, unsophisticated form. Ordinarily his
+motive is a wish to conform to established usage, to avoid
+unfavorable notice and comment, to live up to the accepted canons
+of decency in the kind, amount, and grade of goods consumed, as
+well as in the decorous employment of his time and effort. In the
+common run of cases this sense of prescriptive usage is present
+in the motives of the consumer and exerts a direct constraining
+force, especially as regards consumption carried on under the
+eyes of observers. But a considerable element of prescriptive
+expensiveness is observable also in consumption that does not in
+any appreciable degree become known to outsiders -- as, for
+instance, articles of underclothing, some articles of food,
+kitchen utensils, and other household apparatus designed for
+service rather than for evidence. In all such useful articles a
+close scrutiny will discover certain features which add to the
+cost and enhance the commercial value of the goods in question,
+but do not proportionately increase the serviceability of these
+articles for the material purposes which alone they ostensibly
+are designed to serve.
+
+Under the selective surveillance of the law of conspicuous waste
+there grows up a code of accredited canons of consumption, the
+effect of which is to hold the consumer up to a standard of
+expensiveness and wastefulness in his consumption of goods and in
+his employment of time and effort. This growth of prescriptive
+usage has an immediate effect upon economic life, but it has also
+an indirect and remoter effect upon conduct in other respects as
+well. Habits of thought with respect to the expression of life in
+any given direction unavoidably affect the habitual view of what
+is good and right in life in other directions also. In the
+organic complex of habits of thought which make up the substance
+of an individual's conscious life the economic interest does not
+lie isolated and distinct from all other interests. Something,
+for instance, has already been said of its relation to the canons
+of reputability.
+
+The principle of conspicuous waste guides the formation of habits
+of thought as to what is honest and reputable in life and in
+commodities. In so doing, this principle will traverse other
+norms of conduct which do not primarily have to do with the code
+of pecuniary honor, but which have, directly or incidentally, an
+economic significance of some magnitude. So the canon of
+honorific waste may, immediately or remotely, influence the sense
+of duty, the sense of beauty, the sense of utility, the sense of
+devotional or ritualistic fitness, and the scientific sense of
+truth.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to go into a discussion here of the
+particular points at which, or the particular manner in which,
+the canon of honorific expenditure habitually traverses the
+canons of moral conduct. The matter is one which has received
+large attention and illustration at the hands of those whose
+office it is to watch and admonish with respect to any departures
+from the accepted code of morals. In modern communities, where
+the dominant economic and legal feature of the community's life
+is the institution of private property, one of the salient
+features of the code of morals is the sacredness of property.
+There needs no insistence or illustration to gain assent to the
+proposition that the habit of holding private property inviolate
+is traversed by the other habit of seeking wealth for the sake of
+the good repute to be gained through its conspicuous consumption.
+Most offenses against property, especially offenses of an
+appreciable magnitude, come under this head. It is also a matter
+of common notoriety and byword that in offenses which result in a
+large accession of property to the offender he does not
+ordinarily incur the extreme penalty or the extreme obloquy with
+which his offenses would be visited on the ground of the naive
+moral code alone. The thief or swindler who has gained great
+wealth by his delinquency has a better chance than the small
+thief of escaping the rigorous penalty of the law and some good
+repute accrues to him from his increased wealth and from his
+spending the irregularly acquired possessions in a seemly manner.
+A well-bred expenditure of his booty especially appeals with
+great effect to persons of a cultivated sense of the proprieties,
+and goes far to mitigate the sense of moral turpitude with which
+his dereliction is viewed by them. It may be noted also -- and it
+is more immediately to the point -- that we are all inclined to
+condone an offense against property in the case of a man whose
+motive is the worthy one of providing the means of a "decent"
+manner of life for his wife and children. If it is added that the
+wife has been "nurtured in the lap of luxury," that is accepted
+as an additional extenuating circumstance. That is to say, we are
+prone to condone such an offense where its aim is the honorific
+one of enabling the offender's wife to perform for him such an
+amount of vicarious consumption of time and substance as is
+demanded by the standard of pecuniary decency. In such a case the
+habit of approving the accustomed degree of conspicuous waste
+traverses the habit of deprecating violations of ownership, to
+the extent even of sometimes leaving the award of praise or blame
+uncertain. This is peculiarly true where the dereliction involves
+an appreciable predatory or piratical element.
+
+This topic need scarcely be pursued further here; but the remark
+may not be out of place that all that considerable body of morals
+that clusters about the concept of an inviolable ownership is
+itself a psychological precipitate of the traditional
+meritoriousness of wealth. And it should be added that this
+wealth which is held sacred is valued primarily for the sake of
+the good repute to be got through its conspicuous consumption.
+The bearing of pecuniary decency upon the scientific spirit or
+the quest of knowledge will be taken up in some detail in a
+separate chapter. Also as regards the sense of devout or ritual
+merit and adequacy in this connection, little need be said in
+this place. That topic will also come up incidentally in a later
+chapter. Still, this usage of honorific expenditure has much to
+say in shaping popular tastes as to what is right and meritorious
+in sacred matters, and the bearing of the principle of
+conspicuous waste upon some of the commonplace devout observances
+and conceits may therefore be pointed out.
+
+Obviously, the canon of conspicuous waste is accountable for a
+great portion of what may be called devout consumption; as, e.g.,
+the consumption of sacred edifices, vestments, and other goods of
+the same class. Even in those modern cults to whose divinities is
+imputed a predilection for temples not built with hands, the
+sacred buildings and the other properties of the cult are
+constructed and decorated with some view to a reputable degree of
+wasteful expenditure. And it needs but little either of
+observation or introspection -- and either will serve the turn --
+to assure us that the expensive splendor of the house of worship
+has an appreciable uplifting and mellowing effect upon the
+worshipper's frame of mind. It will serve to enforce the same
+fact if we reflect upon the sense of abject shamefulness with
+which any evidence of indigence or squalor about the sacred place
+affects all beholders. The accessories of any devout observance
+should be pecuniarily above reproach. This requirement is
+imperative, whatever latitude may be allowed with regard to these
+accessories in point of aesthetic or other serviceability.
+It may also be in place to notice that in all communities,
+especially in neighborhoods where the standard of pecuniary
+decency for dwellings is not high, the local sanctuary is more
+ornate, more conspicuously wasteful in its architecture and
+decoration, than the dwelling houses of the congregation. This is
+true of nearly all denominations and cults, whether Christian or
+Pagan, but it is true in a peculiar degree of the older and
+maturer cults. At the same time the sanctuary commonly
+contributes little if anything to the physical comfort of the
+members. Indeed, the sacred structure not only serves the
+physical well-being of the members to but a slight extent, as
+compared with their humbler dwelling-houses; but it is felt by
+all men that a right and enlightened sense of the true, the
+beautiful, and the good demands that in all expenditure on the
+sanctuary anything that might serve the comfort of the worshipper
+should be conspicuously absent. If any element of comfort is
+admitted in the fittings of the sanctuary, it should be at least
+scrupulously screened and masked under an ostensible austerity.
+In the most reputable latter-day houses of worship, where no
+expense is spared, the principle of austerity is carried to the
+length of making the fittings of the place a means of mortifying
+the flesh, especially in appearance. There are few persons of
+delicate tastes, in the matter of devout consumption to whom this
+austerely wasteful discomfort does not appeal as intrinsically
+right and good. Devout consumption is of the nature of vicarious
+consumption. This canon of devout austerity is based on the
+pecuniary reputability of conspicuously wasteful consumption,
+backed by the principle that vicarious consumption should
+conspicuously not conduce to the comfort of the vicarious
+consumer.
+
+The sanctuary and its fittings have something of this austerity
+in all the cults in which the saint or divinity to whom the
+sanctuary pertains is not conceived to be present and make
+personal use of the property for the gratification of luxurious
+tastes imputed to him. The character of the sacred paraphernalia
+is somewhat different in this respect in those cults where the
+habits of life imputed to the divinity more nearly approach those
+of an earthly patriarchal potentate -- where he is conceived to
+make use of these consumable goods in person. In the latter case
+the sanctuary and its fittings take on more of the fashion given
+to goods destined for the conspicuous consumption of a temporal
+master or owner. On the other hand, where the sacred apparatus is
+simply employed in the divinity's service, that is to say, where
+it is consumed vicariously on his account by his servants, there
+the sacred properties take the character suited to goods that are
+destined for vicarious consumption only.
+
+In the latter case the sanctuary and the sacred apparatus are so
+contrived as not to enhance the comfort or fullness of life of
+the vicarious consumer, or at any rate not to convey the
+impression that the end of their consumption is the consumer's
+comfort. For the end of vicarious consumption is to enhance, not
+the fullness of life of the consumer, but the pecuniary repute of
+the master for whose behoof the consumption takes place.
+Therefore priestly vestments are notoriously expensive, ornate,
+and inconvenient; and in the cults where the priestly servitor of
+the divinity is not conceived to serve him in the capacity of
+consort, they are of an austere, comfortless fashion. And such it
+is felt that they should be.
+
+It is not only in establishing a devout standard of decent
+expensiveness that the principle of waste invades the domain of
+the canons of ritual serviceability. It touches the ways as well
+as the means, and draws on vicarious leisure as well as on
+vicarious consumption. Priestly demeanor at its best is aloof,
+leisurely, perfunctory, and uncontaminated with suggestions of
+sensuous pleasure. This holds true, in different degrees of
+course, for the different cults and denominations; but in the
+priestly life of all anthropomorphic cults the marks of a
+vicarious consumption of time are visible.
+
+The same pervading canon of vicarious leisure is also visibly
+present in the exterior details of devout observances and need
+only be pointed out in order to become obvious to all beholders.
+All ritual has a notable tendency to reduce itself to a rehearsal
+of formulas. This development of formula is most noticeable in
+the maturer cults, which have at the same time a more austere,
+ornate, and severe priestly life and garb; but it is perceptible
+also in the forms and methods of worship of the newer and fresher
+sects, whose tastes in respect of priests, vestments, and
+sanctuaries are less exacting. The rehearsal of the service (the
+term "service" carries a suggestion significant for the point in
+question) grows more perfunctory as the cult gains in age and
+consistency, and this perfunctoriness of the rehearsal is very
+pleasing to the correct devout taste. And with a good reason, for
+the fact of its being perfunctory goes to say pointedly that the
+master for whom it is performed is exalted above the vulgar need
+of actually proficuous service on the part of his servants. They
+are unprofitable servants, and there is an honorific implication
+for their master in their remaining
+unprofitable. It is needless to point out the close analogy at
+this point between the priestly office and the office of the
+footman. It is pleasing to our sense of what is fitting in these
+matters, in either case, to recognize in the obvious
+perfunctoriness of the service that it is a pro forma execution
+only. There should be no show of agility or of dexterous
+manipulation in the execution of the priestly office, such as
+might suggest a capacity for turning off the work.
+
+In all this there is of course an obvious implication as to the
+temperament, tastes, propensities, and habits of life imputed to
+the divinity by worshippers who live under the tradition of these
+pecuniary canons of reputability. Through its pervading men's
+habits of thought, the principle of conspicuous waste has colored
+the worshippers' notions of the divinity and of the relation in
+which the human subject stands to him. It is of course in the
+more naive cults that this suffusion of pecuniary beauty is most
+patent, but it is visible throughout. All peoples, at whatever
+stage of culture or degree of enlightenment, are fain to eke out
+a sensibly scant degree of authentic formation
+regarding the personality and habitual surroundings of their
+divinities. In so calling in the aid of fancy to enrich and fill
+in their picture of the divinity's presence and manner of life
+they habitually impute to him such traits as go to make up their
+ideal of a worthy man. And in seeking communion with the divinity
+the ways and means of approach are assimilated as nearly as may
+be to the divine ideal that is in men's minds at the time. It is
+felt that the divine presence is entered with the best grace, and
+with the best effect, according to certain accepted methods and
+with the accompaniment of certain material circumstances which in
+popular apprehension are peculiarly consonant with the divine
+nature. This popularly accepted ideal of the bearing and
+paraphernalia adequate to such occasions of communion is, of
+course, to a good extent shaped by the popular apprehension of
+what is intrinsically worthy and beautiful in human carriage and
+surroundings on all occasions of dignified intercourse. It would
+on this account be misleading to attempt an analysis of devout
+demeanor by referring all evidences of the presence of a
+pecuniary standard of reputability back directly and baldly to
+the underlying norm of pecuniary emulation. So it would also be
+misleading to ascribe to the divinity, as popularly conceived, a
+jealous regard for his pecuniary standing and a habit of avoiding
+and condemning squalid situations and surroundings simply because
+they are under grade in the pecuniary respect.
+
+And still, after all allowance has been made, it appears that the
+canons of pecuniary reputability do, directly or
+indirectly, materially affect our notions of the attributes of
+divinity, as well as our notions of what are the fit and adequate
+manner and circumstances of divine communion. It is felt that the
+divinity must be of a peculiarly serene and leisurely habit of
+life. And whenever his local habitation is pictured in poetic
+imagery, for edification or in appeal to the devout fancy, the
+devout word-painter, as a matter of course, brings out before his
+auditors' imagination a throne with a profusion of the insignia
+of opulence and power, and surrounded by a great number of
+servitors. In the common run of such presentations of the
+celestial abodes, the office of this corps of servants is a
+vicarious leisure, their time and efforts being in great measure
+taken up with an industrially unproductive rehearsal of the
+meritorious characteristics and exploits of the divinity; while
+the background of the presentation is filled with the shimmer of
+the precious metals and of the more expensive varieties of
+precious stones. It is only in the crasser expressions of devout
+fancy that this intrusion of pecuniary canons into the devout
+ideals reaches such an extreme. An extreme case occurs in the
+devout imagery of the Negro population of the South. Their
+word-painters are unable to descend to anything cheaper than
+gold; so that in this case the insistence on pecuniary beauty
+gives a startling effect in yellow -- such as would be unbearable
+to a soberer taste. Still, there is probably no cult in which
+ideals of pecuniary merit have not been called in to supplement
+the ideals of ceremonial adequacy that guide men's conception of
+what is right in the matter of sacred apparatus.
+
+Similarly it is felt -- and the sentiment is acted upon -- that
+the priestly servitors of the divinity should not engage in
+industrially productive work; that work of any kind -- any
+employment which is of tangible human use -- must not be carried
+on in the divine presence, or within the precincts of the
+sanctuary; that whoever comes into the presence should come
+cleansed of all profane industrial features in his apparel or
+person, and should come clad in garments of more than everyday
+expensiveness; that on holidays set apart in honor of or for
+communion with the divinity no work that is of human use should
+be performed by any one. Even the remoter, lay dependents should
+render a vicarious leisure to the extent of one day in seven.
+In all these deliverances of men's uninstructed sense of what is
+fit and proper in devout observance and in the relations of the
+divinity, the effectual presence of the canons of
+pecuniary reputability is obvious enough, whether these canons
+have had their effect on the devout judgment in this respect
+immediately or at the second remove.
+
+These canons of reputability have had a similar, but more
+far-reaching and more specifically determinable, effect upon the
+popular sense of beauty or serviceability in consumable goods.
+The requirements of pecuniary decency have, to a very appreciable
+extent, influenced the sense of beauty and of utility in articles
+of use or beauty. Articles are to an extent preferred for use on
+account of their being conspicuously wasteful; they are felt to
+be serviceable somewhat in proportion as they are wasteful and
+ill adapted to their ostensible use.
+
+The utility of articles valued for their beauty depends closely
+upon the expensiveness of the articles. A homely
+illustration will bring out this dependence. A hand-wrought
+silver spoon, of a commercial value of some ten to twenty
+dollars, is not ordinarily more serviceable -- in the first sense
+of the word -- than a machine-made spoon of the same material. It
+may not even be more serviceable than a machine-made spoon of
+some "base" metal, such as aluminum, the value of which may be no
+more than some ten to twenty cents. The former of the two
+utensils is, in fact, commonly a less effective contrivance for
+its ostensible purpose than the latter. The objection is of
+course ready to hand that, in taking this view of the matter, one
+of the chief uses, if not the chief use, of the costlier spoon is
+ignored; the hand-wrought spoon gratifies our taste, our sense of
+the beautiful, while that made by machinery out of the base metal
+has no useful office beyond a brute efficiency. The facts are no
+doubt as the objection states them, but it will be evident on
+rejection that the objection is after all more plausible than
+conclusive. It appears (1) that while the different materials of
+which the two spoons are made each possesses beauty and
+serviceability for the purpose for which it is used, the material
+of the hand-wrought spoon is some one hundred times more valuable
+than the baser metal, without very greatly excelling the latter
+in intrinsic beauty of grain or color, and without being in any
+appreciable degree superior in point of mechanical
+serviceability; (2) if a close inspection should show that the
+supposed hand-wrought spoon were in reality only a very clever
+citation of hand-wrought goods, but an imitation so cleverly
+wrought as to give the same impression of line and surface to any
+but a minute examination by a trained eye, the utility of the
+article, including the gratification which the user derives from
+its contemplation as an object of beauty, would immediately
+decline by some eighty or ninety per cent, or even more; (3) if
+the two spoons are, to a fairly close observer, so nearly
+identical in appearance that the lighter weight of the spurious
+article alone betrays it, this identity of form and color will
+scarcely add to the value of the machine-made spoon, nor
+appreciably enhance the gratification of the user's "sense of
+beauty" in contemplating it, so long as the cheaper spoon is not
+a novelty, ad so long as it can be procured at a nominal cost.
+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. The question is further
+complicated by the fact that many objects, as, for instance, the
+precious stones and the metals and some other materials used for
+adornment and decoration, owe their utility as items of
+conspicuous waste to an antecedent utility as objects of beauty.
+Gold, for instance, has a high degree of sensuous beauty very
+many if not most of the highly prized works of art are
+intrinsically beautiful, though often with material
+qualification; the like is true of some stuffs used for clothing,
+of some landscapes, and of many other things in less degree.
+Except for this intrinsic beauty which they possess, these
+objects would scarcely have been coveted as they are, or have
+become monopolized objects of pride to their possessors and
+users. But the utility of these things to the possessor is
+commonly due less to their intrinsic beauty than to the honor
+which their possession and consumption confers, or to the obloquy
+which it wards off.
+
+Apart from their serviceability in other respects, these objects
+are beautiful and have a utility as such; they are valuable on
+this account if they can be appropriated or
+monopolized; they are, therefore, coveted as valuable
+possessions, and their exclusive enjoyment gratifies the
+possessor's sense of pecuniary superiority at the same time that
+their contemplation gratifies his sense of beauty. But their
+beauty, in the naive sense of the word, is the occasion rather
+than the ground of their monopolization or of their commercial
+value. "Great as is the sensuous beauty of gems, their rarity and
+price adds an expression of distinction to them, which they would
+never have if they were cheap." There is, indeed, in the common
+run of cases under this head, relatively little incentive to the
+exclusive possession and use of these beautiful things, except on
+the ground of their honorific character as items of conspicuous
+waste. Most objects of this general class, with the partial
+exception of articles of personal adornment, would serve all
+other purposes than the honorific one equally well, whether owned
+by the person viewing them or not; and even as regards personal
+ornaments it is to be added that their chief purpose is to lend
+éclat to the person of their wearer (or owner) by comparison
+with other persons who are compelled to do without. The aesthetic
+serviceability of objects of beauty is not greatly nor
+universally heightened by possession.
+
+The generalization for which the discussion so far affords ground
+is that any valuable object in order to appeal to our sense of
+beauty must conform to the requirements of beauty and of
+expensiveness both. But this is not all. Beyond this the canon of
+expensiveness also affects our tastes in such a way as to
+inextricably blend the marks of expensiveness, in our
+appreciation, with the beautiful features of the object, and to
+subsume the resultant effect under the head of an appreciation of
+beauty simply. The marks of expensiveness come to be accepted as
+beautiful features of the expensive articles. They are pleasing
+as being marks of honorific costliness, and the pleasure which
+they afford on this score blends with that afforded by the
+beautiful form and color of the object; so that we often declare
+that an article of apparel, for instance, is "perfectly lovely,"
+when pretty much all that an analysis of the aesthetic value of
+the article would leave ground for is the declaration that it is
+pecuniarily honorific.
+
+This blending and confusion of the elements of expensiveness and
+of beauty is, perhaps, best exemplified in articles of dress and
+of household furniture. The code of reputability in matters of
+dress decides what shapes, colors, materials, and general effects
+in human apparel are for the time to be accepted as suitable; and
+departures from the code are offensive to our taste, supposedly
+as being departures from aesthetic truth. The approval with which
+we look upon fashionable attire is by no means to be accounted
+pure make-believe. We readily, and for the most part with utter
+sincerity, find those things pleasing that are in vogue. Shaggy
+dress-stuffs and pronounced color effects, for instance, offend
+us at times when the vogue is goods of a high, glossy finish and
+neutral colors. A fancy bonnet of this year's model
+unquestionably appeals to our sensibilities today much more
+forcibly than an equally fancy bonnet of the model of last year;
+although when viewed in the perspective of a quarter of a
+century, it would, I apprehend, be a matter of the utmost
+difficulty to award the palm for intrinsic beauty to the one
+rather than to the other of these structures. So, again, it may
+be remarked that, considered simply in their physical
+juxtaposition with the human form, the high gloss of a
+gentleman's hat or of a patent-leather shoe has no more of
+intrinsic beauty than a similarly high gloss on a threadbare
+sleeve; and yet there is no question but that all well-bred
+people (in the Occidental civilized communities) instinctively
+and unaffectedly cleave to the one as a phenomenon of great
+beauty, and eschew the other as offensive to every sense to which
+it can appeal. It is extremely doubtful if any one could be
+induced to wear such a contrivance as the high hat of civilized
+society, except for some urgent reason based on other than
+aesthetic grounds.
+
+By further habituation to an appreciative perception of the marks
+of expensiveness in goods, and by habitually identifying beauty
+with reputability, it comes about that a beautiful article which
+is not expensive is accounted not beautiful. In this way it has
+happened, for instance, that some beautiful flowers pass
+conventionally for offensive weeds; others that can be cultivated
+with relative ease are accepted and admired by the lower middle
+class, who can afford no more expensive luxuries of this kind;
+but these varieties are rejected as vulgar by those people who
+are better able to pay for expensive flowers and who are educated
+to a higher schedule of pecuniary beauty in the florist's
+products; while still other flowers, of no greater intrinsic
+beauty than these, are cultivated at great cost and call out much
+admiration from flower-lovers whose tastes have been matured
+under the critical guidance of a polite environment.
+
+The same variation in matters of taste, from one class of society
+to another, is visible also as regards many other kinds of
+consumable goods, as, for example, is the case with furniture,
+houses, parks, and gardens. This diversity of views as to what is
+beautiful in these various classes of goods is not a diversity of
+the norm according to which the unsophisticated sense of the
+beautiful works. It is not a constitutional difference of
+endowments in the aesthetic respect, but rather a difference in
+the code of reputability which specifies what objects properly
+lie within the scope of honorific consumption for the class to
+which the critic belongs. It is a difference in the traditions of
+propriety with respect to the kinds of things which may, without
+derogation to the consumer, be consumed under the head of objects
+of taste and art. With a certain allowance for variations to be
+accounted for on other grounds, these traditions are determined,
+more or less rigidly, by the pecuniary plane of life of the
+class.
+
+Everyday life affords many curious illustrations of the way in
+which the code of pecuniary beauty in articles of use varies from
+class to class, as well as of the way in which the
+conventional sense of beauty departs in its deliverances from the
+sense untutored by the requirements of pecuniary repute. Such a
+fact is the lawn, or the close-cropped yard or park, which
+appeals so unaffectedly to the taste of the Western peoples. It
+appears especially to appeal to the tastes of the well-to-do
+classes in those communities in which the dolicho-blond element
+predominates in an appreciable degree. The lawn unquestionably
+has an element of sensuous beauty, simply as an object of
+apperception, and as such no doubt it appeals pretty directly to
+the eye of nearly all races and all classes; but it is, perhaps,
+more unquestionably beautiful to the eye of the dolicho-blond
+than to most other varieties of men. This higher appreciation of
+a stretch of greensward in this ethnic element than in the other
+elements of the population, goes along with certain other
+features of the dolicho-blond temperament that indicate that this
+racial element had once been for a long time a pastoral people
+inhabiting a region with a humid climate. The close-cropped lawn
+is beautiful in the eyes of a people whose inherited bent it is
+to readily find pleasure in contemplating a well-preserved
+pasture or grazing land.
+
+For the aesthetic purpose the lawn is a cow pasture; and in some
+cases today -- where the expensiveness of the attendant
+circumstances bars out any imputation of thrift -- the idyl of
+the dolicho-blond is rehabilitated in the introduction of a cow
+into a lawn or private ground. In such cases the cow made use of
+is commonly of an expensive breed. The vulgar suggestion of
+thrift, which is nearly inseparable from the cow, is a standing
+objection to the decorative use of this animal. So that in all
+cases, except where luxurious surroundings negate this
+suggestion, the use of the cow as an object of taste must be
+avoided. Where the predilection for some grazing animal to fill
+out the suggestion of the pasture is too strong to be suppressed,
+the cow's place is often given to some more or less inadequate
+substitute, such as deer, antelopes, or some such exotic beast.
+These substitutes, although less beautiful to the pastoral eye of
+Western man than the cow, are in such cases preferred because of
+their superior expensiveness or futility, and their consequent
+repute. They are not vulgarly lucrative either in fact or in
+suggestion.
+
+Public parks of course fall in the same category with the lawn;
+they too, at their best, are imitations of the pasture. Such a
+park is of course best kept by grazing, and the cattle on the
+grass are themselves no mean addition to the beauty of the thing,
+as need scarcely be insisted on with anyone who has once seen a
+well-kept pasture. But it is worth noting, as an
+expression of the pecuniary element in popular taste, that such a
+method of keeping public grounds is seldom resorted to. The best
+that is done by skilled workmen under the supervision of a
+trained keeper is a more or less close imitation of a pasture,
+but the result invariably falls somewhat short of the artistic
+effect of grazing. But to the average popular apprehension a herd
+of cattle so pointedly suggests thrift and usefulness that their
+presence in the public pleasure ground would be intolerably
+cheap. This method of keeping grounds is comparatively
+inexpensive, therefore it is indecorous.
+
+Of the same general bearing is another feature of public grounds.
+There is a studious exhibition of expensiveness coupled with a
+make-believe of simplicity and crude serviceability. Private
+grounds also show the same physiognomy wherever they are in the
+management or ownership of persons whose tastes have been formed
+under middle-class habits of life or under the upper-class
+traditions of no later a date than the childhood of the
+generation that is now passing. Grounds which conform to the
+instructed tastes of the latter-day upper class do not show these
+features in so marked a degree. The reason for this difference in
+tastes between the past and the incoming generation of the
+well-bred lies in the changing economic situation. A similar
+difference is perceptible in other respects, as well as in the
+accepted ideals of pleasure grounds. In this country as in most
+others, until the last half century but a very small proportion
+of the population were possessed of such wealth as would exempt
+them from thrift. Owing to imperfect means of communication, this
+small fraction were scattered and out of effective touch with one
+another. There was therefore no basis for a growth of taste in
+disregard of expensiveness. The revolt of the well-bred taste
+against vulgar thrift was unchecked. Wherever the unsophisticated
+sense of beauty might show itself sporadically in an approval of
+inexpensive or thrifty surroundings, it would lack the "social
+confirmation" which nothing but a considerable body of
+like-minded people can give. There was, therefore, no effective
+upper-class opinion that would overlook evidences of possible
+inexpensiveness in the management of grounds; and there was
+consequently no appreciable divergence between the leisure-class
+and the lower middle-class ideal in the physiognomy of pleasure
+grounds. Both classes equally constructed their ideals with the
+fear of pecuniary disrepute before their eyes.
+
+Today a divergence in ideals is beginning to be apparent. The
+portion of the leisure class that has been consistently exempt
+from work and from pecuniary cares for a generation or more is
+now large enough to form and sustain opinion in matters of taste.
+Increased mobility of the members has also added to the facility
+with which a "social confirmation" can be attained within the
+class. Within this select class the exemption from thrift is a
+matter so commonplace as to have lost much of its utility as a
+basis of pecuniary decency. Therefore the latter-day upper-class
+canons of taste do not so consistently insist on an unremitting
+demonstration of expensiveness and a strict exclusion of the
+appearance of thrift. So, a predilection for the rustic and the
+"natural" in parks and grounds makes its appearance on these
+higher social and intellectual levels. This predilection is in
+large part an outcropping of the instinct of workmanship; and it
+works out its results with varying degrees of consistency. It is
+seldom altogether unaffected, and at times it shades off into
+something not widely different from that make-believe of
+rusticity which has been referred to above.
+
+A weakness for crudely serviceable contrivances that
+pointedly suggest immediate and wasteless use is present even in
+the middle-class tastes; but it is there kept well in hand under
+the unbroken dominance of the canon of reputable futility.
+Consequently it works out in a variety of ways and means for
+shamming serviceability -- in such contrivances as rustic fences,
+bridges, bowers, pavilions, and the like decorative features. An
+expression of this affectation of serviceability, at what is
+perhaps its widest divergence from the first promptings of the
+sense of economic beauty, is afforded by the cast-iron rustic
+fence and trellis or by a circuitous drive laid across level
+ground.
+
+The select leisure class has outgrown the use of these
+pseudo-serviceable variants of pecuniary beauty, at least at some
+points. But the taste of the more recent accessions to the
+leisure class proper and of the middle and lower classes still
+requires a pecuniary beauty to supplement the aesthetic beauty,
+even in those objects which are primarily admired for the beauty
+that belongs to them as natural growths.
+
+The popular taste in these matters is to be seen in the prevalent
+high appreciation of topiary work and of the
+conventional flower-beds of public grounds. Perhaps as happy an
+illustration as may be had of this dominance of pecuniary beauty
+over aesthetic beauty in middle-class tastes is seen in the
+reconstruction of the grounds lately occupied by the Columbian
+Exposition. The evidence goes to show that the requirement of
+reputable expensiveness is still present in good vigor even where
+all ostensibly lavish display is avoided. The artistic effects
+actually wrought in this work of reconstruction diverge somewhat
+widely from the effect to which the same ground would have lent
+itself in hands not guided by pecuniary canons of taste. And even
+the better class of the city's population view the progress of
+the work with an unreserved approval which suggests that there is
+in this case little if any discrepancy between the tastes of the
+upper and the lower or middle classes of the city. The sense of
+beauty in the population of this representative city of the
+advanced pecuniary culture is very chary of any departure from
+its great cultural principle of conspicuous waste.
+
+The love of nature, perhaps itself borrowed from a
+higher-class code of taste, sometimes expresses itself in
+unexpected ways under the guidance of this canon of pecuniary
+beauty, and leads to results that may seem incongruous to an
+unreflecting beholder. The well-accepted practice of planting
+trees in the treeless areas of this country, for instance, has
+been carried over as an item of honorific expenditure into the
+heavily wooded areas; so that it is by no means unusual for a
+village or a farmer in the wooded country to clear the land of
+its native trees and immediately replant saplings of certain
+introduced varieties about the farmyard or along the streets. In
+this way a forest growth of oak, elm, beech, butternut, hemlock,
+basswood, and birch is cleared off to give room for saplings of
+soft maple, cottonwood, and brittle willow. It is felt that the
+inexpensiveness of leaving the forest trees standing would
+derogate from the dignity that should invest an article which is
+intended to serve a decorative and honorific end.
+
+The like pervading guidance of taste by pecuniary repute is
+traceable in the prevalent standards of beauty in animals. The
+part played by this canon of taste in assigning her place in the
+popular aesthetic scale to the cow has already been spokes of.
+Something to the same effect is true of the other domestic
+animals, so far as they are in an appreciable degree industrially
+useful to the community -- as, for instance, barnyard fowl, hogs,
+cattle, sheep, goats, draught-horses. 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.
+The cat is less reputable than the other two just named, because
+she is less wasteful; she may eves serve a useful end. At the
+same time the cat's temperament does not fit her for the
+honorific purpose. She lives with man on terms of equality, knows
+nothing of that relation of status which is the ancient basis of
+all distinctions of worth, honor, and repute, and she does not
+lend herself with facility to an invidious comparison between her
+owner and his neighbors. The exception to this last rule occurs
+in the case of such scarce and fanciful products as the Angora
+cat, which have some slight honorific value on the ground of
+expensiveness, and have, therefore, some special claim to beauty
+on pecuniary grounds.
+
+The dog has advantages in the way of uselessness as well as in
+special gifts of temperament. He is often spoken of, in an
+eminent sense, as the friend of man, and his intelligence and
+fidelity are praised. The meaning of this is that the dog is
+man's servant and that he has the gift of an unquestioning
+subservience and a slave's quickness in guessing his master's
+mood. Coupled with these traits, which fit him well for the
+relation of status -- and which must for the present purpose be
+set down as serviceable traits -- the dog has some
+characteristics which are of a more equivocal aesthetic value. He
+is the filthiest of the domestic animals in his person and the
+nastiest in his habits. For this he makes up is a servile,
+fawning attitude towards his master, and a readiness to inflict
+damage and discomfort on all else. The dog, then, commends
+himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for
+mastery, and as he is also an item of expense, and commonly
+serves no industrial purpose, he holds a well-assured place in
+men's regard as a thing of good repute. The dog is at the same
+time associated in our imagination with the chase -- a
+meritorious employment and an expression of the honorable
+predatory impulse. Standing on this vantage ground, whatever
+beauty of form and motion and whatever commendable mental traits
+he may possess are conventionally acknowledged and magnified. And
+even those varieties of the dog which have been bred into
+grotesque deformity by the dog-fancier are in good faith
+accounted beautiful by many. These varieties of dogs -- and the
+like is true of other fancy-bred animals -- are rated and graded
+in aesthetic value somewhat in proportion to the degree of
+grotesqueness and instability of the particular fashion which the
+deformity takes in the given case. For the purpose in hand, this
+differential utility on the ground of grotesqueness and
+instability of structure is reducible to terms of a greater
+scarcity and consequent expense. The commercial value of canine
+monstrosities, such as the prevailing styles of pet dogs both for
+men's and women's use, rests on their high cost of production,
+and their value to their owners lies chiefly in their utility as
+items of conspicuous consumption. In directly, through reflection
+Upon their honorific expensiveness, a social worth is imputed to
+them; and so, by an easy substitution of words and ideas, they
+come to be admired and reputed beautiful. Since any attention
+bestowed upon these animals is in no sense gainful or useful, it
+is also reputable; and since the habit of giving them attention
+is consequently not deprecated, it may grow into an habitual
+attachment of great tenacity and of a most benevolent character.
+So that in the affection bestowed on pet animals the canon of
+expensiveness is present more or less remotely as a norm which
+guides and shapes the sentiment and the selection of its object.
+The like is true, as will be noticed presently, with respect to
+affection for persons also; although the manner in which the norm
+acts in that case is somewhat different.
+
+The case of the fast horse is much like that of the dog. He is on
+the whole expensive, or wasteful and useless -- for the
+industrial purpose. What productive use he may possess, in the
+way of enhancing the well-being of the community or making the
+way of life easier for men, takes the form of exhibitions of
+force and facility of motion that gratify the popular aesthetic
+sense. This is of course a substantial serviceability. The horse
+is not endowed with the spiritual aptitude for servile dependence
+in the same measure as the dog; but he ministers effectually to
+his master's impulse to convert the "animate" forces of the
+environment to his own use and discretion and so express his own
+dominating individuality through them. The fast horse is at least
+potentially a race-horse, of high or low degree; and it is as
+such that he is peculiarly serviceable to his owner. The utility
+of the fast horse lies largely in his efficiency as a means of
+emulation; it gratifies the owner's sense of aggression and
+dominance to have his own horse outstrip his neighbor's. This use
+being not lucrative, but on the whole pretty consistently
+wasteful, and quite conspicuously so, it is honorific, and
+therefore gives the fast horse a strong presumptive position of
+reputability. Beyond this, the race-horse proper has also a
+similarly non-industrial but honorific use as a gambling
+instrument.
+
+The fast horse, then, is aesthetically fortunate, in that the
+canon of pecuniary good repute legitimates a free
+appreciation of whatever beauty or serviceability he may possess.
+His pretensions have the countenance of the principle of
+conspicuous waste and the backing of the predatory aptitude for
+dominance and emulation. The horse is, moreover, a beautiful
+animal, although the race-horse is so in no peculiar degree to
+the uninstructed taste of those persons who belong neither in the
+class of race-horse fanciers nor in the class whose sense of
+beauty is held in abeyance by the moral constraint of the horse
+fancier's award. To this untutored taste the most beautiful horse
+seems to be a form which has suffered less radical alteration
+than the race-horse under the breeder's selective development of
+the animal. Still, when a writer or speaker -- especially of
+those whose eloquence is most consistently commonplace wants an
+illustration of animal grace and serviceability, for rhetorical
+use, he habitually turns to the horse; and he commonly makes it
+plain before he is done that what he has in mind is the
+race-horse.
+
+It should be noted that in the graduated appreciation of
+varieties of horses and of dogs, such as one meets with among
+people of even moderately cultivated tastes in these matters,
+there is also discernible another and more direct line of
+influence of the leisure-class canons of reputability. In this
+country, for instance, leisure-class tastes are to some extent
+shaped on usages and habits which prevail, or which are
+apprehended to prevail, among the leisure class of Great Britain.
+In dogs this is true to a less extent than in horses. In horses,
+more particularly in saddle horses -- which at their best serve
+the purpose of wasteful display simply -- it will hold true in a
+general way that a horse is more beautiful in proportion as he is
+more English; the English leisure class being, for purposes of
+reputable usage, the upper leisure class of this country, and so
+the exemplar for the lower grades. This mimicry in the methods of
+the apperception of beauty and in the forming of judgments of
+taste need not result in a spurious, or at any rate not a
+hypocritical or affected, predilection. The predilection is as
+serious and as substantial an award of taste when it rests on
+this basis as when it rests on any other, the difference is that
+this taste is and as substantial an award of taste when it rests
+on this basis as when it rests on any other; the difference is
+that this taste is a taste for the reputably correct, not for the
+aesthetically true.
+
+The mimicry, it should be said, extends further than to the sense
+of beauty in horseflesh simply. It includes trappings and
+horsemanship as well, so that the correct or reputably beautiful
+seat or posture is also decided by English usage, as well as the
+equestrian gait. To show how fortuitous may sometimes be the
+circumstances which decide what shall be becoming and what not
+under the pecuniary canon of beauty, it may be noted that this
+English seat, and the peculiarly distressing gait which has made
+an awkward seat necessary, are a survival from the time when the
+English roads were so bad with mire and mud as to be virtually
+impassable for a horse travelling at a more comfortable gait; so
+that a person of decorous tastes in horsemanship today rides a
+punch with docked tail, in an uncomfortable posture and at a
+distressing gait, because the English roads during a great part
+of the last century were impassable for a horse travelling at a
+more horse-like gait, or for an animal built for moving with ease
+over the firm and open country to which the horse is indigenous.
+It is not only with respect to consumable goods -- including
+domestic animals -- that the canons of taste have been colored by
+the canons of pecuniary reputability. Something to the like
+effect is to be said for beauty in persons. In order to avoid
+whatever may be matter of controversy, no weight will be given in
+this connection to such popular predilection as there may be for
+the dignified (leisurely) bearing and poly presence that are by
+vulgar tradition associated with opulence in mature men. These
+traits are in some measure accepted as elements of personal
+beauty. But there are certain elements of feminine beauty, on the
+other hand, which come in under this head, and which are of so
+concrete and specific a character as to admit of itemized
+appreciation. It is more or less a rule that in communities which
+are at the stage of economic development at which women are
+valued by the upper class for their service, the ideal of female
+beauty is a robust, large-limbed woman. The ground of
+appreciation is the physique, while the conformation of the face
+is of secondary weight only. A well-known instance of this ideal
+of the early predatory culture is that of the maidens of the
+Homeric poems.
+
+This ideal suffers a change in the succeeding development, when,
+in the conventional scheme, the office of the high-class wife
+comes to be a vicarious leisure simply. The ideal then includes
+the characteristics which are supposed to result from or to go
+with a life of leisure consistently enforced. The ideal accepted
+under these circumstances may be gathered from
+descriptions of beautiful women by poets and writers of the
+chivalric times. In the conventional scheme of those days ladies
+of high degree were conceived to be in perpetual tutelage, and to
+be scrupulously exempt from all useful work. The resulting
+chivalric or romantic ideal of beauty takes cognizance chiefly of
+the face, and dwells on its delicacy, and on the delicacy of the
+hands and feet, the slender figure, and especially the slender
+waist. In the pictured representations of the women of that time,
+and in modern romantic imitators of the chivalric thought and
+feeling, the waist is attenuated to a degree that implies extreme
+debility. The same ideal is still extant among a considerable
+portion of the population of modern industrial communities; but
+it is to be said that it has retained its hold most tenaciously
+in those modern communities which are least advanced in point of
+economic and civil development, and which show the most
+considerable survivals of status and of predatory institutions.
+That is to say, the chivalric ideal is best preserved in those
+existing communities which are substantially least modern.
+Survivals of this lackadaisical or romantic ideal occur freely in
+the tastes of the well-to-do classes of Continental countries.
+In modern communities which have reached the higher levels of
+industrial development, the upper leisure class has
+accumulated so great a mass of wealth as to place its women above
+all imputation of vulgarly productive labor. Here the status of
+women as vicarious consumers is beginning to lose its place in
+the sections of the body of the people; and as a consequence the
+ideal of feminine beauty is beginning to change back again from
+the infirmly delicate, translucent, and hazardously slender, to a
+woman of the archaic type that does not disown her hands and
+feet, nor, indeed, the other gross material facts of her person.
+In the course of economic development the ideal of beauty among
+the peoples of the Western culture has shifted from the woman of
+physical presence to the lady, and it is beginning to shift back
+again to the woman; and all in obedience to the changing
+conditions of pecuniary emulation. The exigencies of emulation at
+one time required lusty slaves; at another time they required a
+conspicuous performance of vicarious leisure and consequently an
+obvious disability; but the situation is now beginning to outgrow
+this last requirement, since, under the higher efficiency of
+modern industry, leisure in women is possible so far down the
+scale of reputability that it will no longer serve as a
+definitive mark of the highest pecuniary grade.
+
+Apart from this general control exercised by the norm of
+conspicuous waste over the ideal of feminine beauty, there are
+one or two details which merit specific mention as showing how it
+may exercise an extreme constraint in detail over men's sense of
+beauty in women. It has already been noticed that at the stages
+of economic evolution at which conspicuous leisure is much
+regarded as a means of good repute, the ideal requires delicate
+and diminutive bands and feet and a slender waist. These
+features, together with the other, related faults of structure
+that commonly go with them, go to show that the person so
+affected is incapable of useful effort and must therefore be
+supported in idleness by her owner. She is useless and expensive,
+and she is consequently valuable as evidence of pecuniary
+strength. It results that at this cultural stage women take
+thought to alter their persons, so as to conform more nearly to
+the requirements of the instructed taste of the time; and under
+the guidance of the canon of pecuniary decency, the men find the
+resulting artificially induced pathological features attractive.
+So, for instance, the constricted waist which has had so wide and
+persistent a vogue in the communities of the Western culture, and
+so also the deformed foot of the Chinese. Both of these are
+mutilations of unquestioned repulsiveness to the untrained sense.
+It requires habituation to become reconciled to them. Yet there
+is no room to question their attractiveness to men into whose
+scheme of life they fit as honorific items sanctioned by the
+requirements of pecuniary reputability. They are items of
+pecuniary and cultural beauty which have come to do duty as
+elements of the ideal of womanliness.
+
+The connection here indicated between the aesthetic value and the
+invidious pecuniary value of things is of course not present in
+the consciousness of the valuer. So far as a person, in forming a
+judgment of taste, takes thought and reflects that the object of
+beauty under consideration is wasteful and
+reputable, and therefore may legitimately be accounted beautiful;
+so far the judgment is not a bona fide judgment of taste and does
+not come up for consideration in this connection. The connection
+which is here insisted on between the reputability and the
+apprehended beauty of objects lies through the effect which the
+fact of reputability has upon the valuer's habits of thought. He
+is in the habit of forming judgments of value of various
+kinds-economic, moral, aesthetic, or reputable concerning the
+objects with which he has to do, and his attitude of commendation
+towards a given object on any other ground will affect the degree
+of his appreciation of the object when he comes to value it for
+the aesthetic purpose. This is more particularly true as regards
+valuation on grounds so closely related to the aesthetic ground
+as that of reputability. The valuation for the aesthetic purpose
+and for the purpose of repute are not held apart as distinctly as
+might be. Confusion is especially apt to arise between these two
+kinds of valuation, because the value of objects for repute is
+not habitually distinguished in speech by the use of a special
+descriptive term. The result is that the terms in familiar use to
+designate categories or elements of beauty are applied to cover
+this unnamed element of pecuniary merit, and the corresponding
+confusion of ideas follows by easy consequence. The demands of
+reputability in this way coalesce in the popular apprehension
+with the demands of the sense of beauty, and beauty which is not
+accompanied by the accredited marks of good repute is not
+accepted. But the requirements of pecuniary reputability and
+those of beauty in the naive sense do not in any appreciable
+degree coincide. The elimination from our surroundings of the
+pecuniarily unfit, therefore, results in a more or less thorough
+elimination of that considerable range of elements of beauty
+which do not happen to conform to the pecuniary requirement.
+The underlying norms of taste are of very ancient growth,
+probably far antedating the advent of the pecuniary institutions
+that are here under discussion. Consequently, by force of the
+past selective adaptation of men's habits of thought, it happens
+that the requirements of beauty, simply, are for the most part
+best satisfied by inexpensive contrivances and structures which
+in a straightforward manner suggest both the office which they
+are to perform and the method of serving their end. It may be in
+place to recall the modern psychological position. Beauty of form
+seems to be a question of facility of apperception. The
+proposition could perhaps safely be made broader than this. If
+abstraction is made from association, suggestion, and
+"expression," classed as elements of beauty, then beauty in any
+perceived object means that the mid readily unfolds its
+apperceptive activity in the directions which the object in
+question affords. But the directions in which activity readily
+unfolds or expresses itself are the directions to which long and
+close habituation has made the mind prone. So far as concerns the
+essential elements of beauty, this habituation is an habituation
+so close and long as to have induced not only a proclivity to the
+apperceptive form in question, but an adaptation of physiological
+structure and function as well. So far as the economic interest
+enters into the constitution of beauty, it enters as a suggestion
+or expression of adequacy to a purpose, a manifest and readily
+inferable subservience to the life process. This expression of
+economic facility or economic serviceability in any object --
+what may be called the economic beauty of the object-is best
+sewed by neat and unambiguous suggestion of its office and its
+efficiency for the material ends of life.
+
+On this ground, among objects of use the simple and
+unadorned article is aesthetically the best. But since the
+pecuniary canon of reputability rejects the inexpensive in
+articles appropriated to individual consumption, the satisfaction
+of our craving for beautiful things must be sought by way of
+compromise. The canons of beauty must be circumvented by some
+contrivance which will give evidence of a reputably wasteful
+expenditure, at the same time that it meets the demands of our
+critical sense of the useful and the beautiful, or at least meets
+the demand of some habit which has come to do duty in place of
+that sense. Such an auxiliary sense of taste is the sense of
+novelty; and this latter is helped out in its surrogateship by
+the curiosity with which men view ingenious and puzzling
+contrivances. Hence it comes that most objects alleged to be
+beautiful, and doing duty as such, show considerable ingenuity of
+design and are calculated to puzzle the beholder -- to bewilder
+him with irrelevant suggestions and hints of the improbable -- at
+the same time that they give evidence of an expenditure of labor
+in excess of what would give them their fullest efficency for
+their ostensible economic end.
+
+This may be shown by an illustration taken from outside the range
+of our everyday habits and everyday contact, and so outside the
+range of our bias. Such are the remarkable feather mantles of
+Hawaii, or the well-known cawed handles of the ceremonial adzes
+of several Polynesian islands. These are undeniably beautiful,
+both in the sense that they offer a pleasing composition of form,
+lines, and color, and in the sense that they evince great skill
+and ingenuity in design and construction. At the same time the
+articles are manifestly ill fitted to serve any other economic
+purpose. But it is not always that the evolution of ingenious and
+puzzling contrivances under the guidance of the canon of wasted
+effort works out so happy a result. The result is quite as often
+a virtually complete suppression of all elements that would bear
+scrutiny as expressions of beauty, or of serviceability, and the
+substitution of evidences of misspent ingenuity and labor, backed
+by a conspicuous ineptitude; until many of the objects with which
+we surround ourselves in everyday life, and even many articles of
+everyday dress and ornament, are such as would not be tolerated
+except under the stress of prescriptive tradition. Illustrations
+of this substitution of ingenuity and expense in place of beauty
+and serviceability are to be seen, for instance, in domestic
+architecture, in domestic art or fancy work, in various articles
+of apparel, especially of feminine and priestly apparel.
+
+The canon of beauty requires expression of the generic. The
+"novelty" due to the demands of conspicuous waste traverses this
+canon of beauty, in that it results in making the physiognomy of
+our objects of taste a congeries of idiosyncrasies; and the
+idiosyncrasies are, moreover, under the selective surveillance of
+the canon of expensiveness.
+
+This process of selective adaptation of designs to the end of
+conspicuous waste, and the substitution of pecuniary beauty for
+aesthetic beauty, has been especially effective in the
+development of architecture. It would be extremely difficult to
+find a modern civilized residence or public building which can
+claim anything better than relative inoffensiveness in the eyes
+of anyone who will dissociate the elements of beauty from those
+of honorific waste. The endless variety of fronts presented by
+the better class of tenements and apartment houses in our cities
+is an endless variety of architectural distress and of
+suggestions of expensive discomfort. Considered as objects of
+beauty, the dead walls of the sides and back of these structures,
+left untouched by the hands of the artist, are commonly the best
+feature of the building.
+
+What has been said of the influence of the law of
+conspicuous waste upon the canons of taste will hold true, with
+but a slight change of terms, of its influence upon our notions
+of the serviceability of goods for other ends than the aesthetic
+one. Goods are produced and consumed as a means to the fuller
+unfolding of human life; and their utility consists, in the first
+instance, in their efficiency as means to this end. The end is,
+in the first instance, the fullness of life of the individual,
+taken in absolute terms. But the human proclivity to emulation
+has seized upon the consumption of goods as a means to an
+invidious comparison, and has thereby invested constable goods
+with a secondary utility as evidence of relative ability to pay.
+This indirect or secondary use of consumable goods lends an
+honorific character to consumption and presently also to the
+goods which best serve the emulative end of consumption. The
+consumption of expensive goods is meritorious, and the goods
+which contain an appreciable element of cost in excess of what
+goes to give them serviceability for their ostensible mechanical
+purpose are honorific. The marks of superfluous costliness in the
+goods are therefore marks of worth -- of high efficency for the
+indirect, invidious end to be served by their consumption; and
+conversely, goods are humilific, and therefore unattractive, if
+they show too thrifty an adaptation to the mechanical end sought
+and do not include a margin of expensiveness on which to rest a
+complacent invidious comparison. This indirect utility gives much
+of their value to the "better" grades of goods. In order to
+appeal to the cultivated sense of utility, an article must
+contain a modicum of this indirect utility.
+
+While men may have set out with disapproving an inexpensive
+manner of living because it indicated inability to spend much,
+and so indicated a lack of pecuniary success, they end by falling
+into the habit of disapproving cheap things as being
+intrinsically dishonorable or unworthy because they are cheap. As
+time has gone on, each succeeding generation has received this
+tradition of meritorious expenditure from the generation before
+it, and has in its turn further elaborated and fortified the
+traditional canon of pecuniary reputability in goods consumed;
+until we have finally reached such a degree of conviction as to
+the unworthiness of all inexpensive things, that we have no
+longer any misgivings in formulating the maxim, "Cheap and
+nasty."  So thoroughly has the habit of approving the expensive
+and disapproving the inexpensive been ingrained into our thinking
+that we instinctively insist upon at least some measure of
+wasteful expensiveness in all our consumption, even in the case
+of goods which are consumed in strict privacy and without the
+slightest thought of display. We all feel, sincerely and without
+misgiving, that we are the more lifted up in spirit for having,
+even in the privacy of our own household, eaten our daily meal by
+the help of hand-wrought silver utensils, from hand-painted china
+(often of dubious artistic value) laid on high-priced table
+linen. Any retrogression from the standard of living which we are
+accustomed to regard as worthy in this respect is felt to be a
+grievous violation of our human dignity. So, also, for the last
+dozen years candles have been a more pleasing source of light at
+dinner than any other. Candlelight is now softer, less
+distressing to well-bred eyes, than oil, gas, or electric light.
+The same could not have been said thirty years ago, when candles
+were, or recently had been, the cheapest available light for
+domestic use. Nor are candles even now found to give an
+acceptable or effective light for any other than a ceremonial
+illumination.
+
+A political sage still living has summed up the conclusion of
+this whole matter in the dictum: "A cheap coat makes a cheap
+man," and there is probably no one who does not feel the
+convincing force of the maxim.
+
+The habit of looking for the marks of superfluous
+expensiveness in goods, and of requiring that all goods should
+afford some utility of the indirect or invidious sort, leads to a
+change in the standards by which the utility of goods is gauged.
+The honorific element and the element of brute efficiency are not
+held apart in the consumer's appreciation of commodities, and the
+two together go to make up the unanalyzed aggregate
+serviceability of the goods. Under the resulting standard of
+serviceability, no article will pass muster on the strength of
+material sufficiency alone. In order to completeness and full
+acceptability to the consumer it must also show the honorific
+element. It results that the producers of articles of consumption
+direct their efforts to the production of goods that shall meet
+this demand for the honorific element. They will do this with all
+the more alacrity and effect, since they are themselves under the
+dominance of the same standard of worth in goods, and would be
+sincerely grieved at the sight of goods which lack the proper
+honorific finish. Hence it has come about that there are today no
+goods supplied in any trade which do not contain the honorific
+element in greater or less degree. Any consumer who might,
+Diogenes-like, insist on the elimination of all honorific or
+wasteful elements from his consumption, would be unable to supply
+his most trivial wants in the modern market. Indeed, even if he
+resorted to supplying his wants directly by his own efforts, he
+would find it difficult if not impossible to divest himself of
+the current habits of thought on this head; so that he could
+scarcely compass a supply of the necessaries of life for a day's
+consumption without instinctively and by oversight incorporating
+in his home-made product something of this honorific,
+quasi-decorative element of wasted labor.
+
+It is notorious that in their selection of serviceable goods in
+the retail market purchasers are guided more by the finish and
+workmanship of the goods than by any marks of substantial
+serviceability. Goods, in order to sell, must have some
+appreciable amount of labor spent in giving them the marks of
+decent expensiveness, in addition to what goes to give them
+efficiency for the material use which they are to serve. This
+habit of making obvious costliness a canon of serviceability of
+course acts to enhance the aggregate cost of articles of
+consumption. It puts us on our guard against cheapness by
+identifying merit in some degree with cost. There is ordinarily a
+consistent effort on the part of the consumer to obtain goods of
+the required serviceability at as advantageous a bargain as may
+be; but the conventional requirement of obvious costliness, as a
+voucher and a constituent of the serviceability of the goods,
+leads him to reject as under grade such goods as do not contain a
+large element of conspicuous waste.
+
+It is to be added that a large share of those features of
+consumable goods which figure in popular apprehension as marks of
+serviceability, and to which reference is here had as elements of
+conspicuous waste, commend themselves to the consumer also on
+other grounds than that of expensiveness alone. They usually give
+evidence of skill and effective workmanship, even if they do not
+contribute to the substantial serviceability of the goods; and it
+is no doubt largely on some such ground that any particular mark
+of honorific serviceability first comes into vogue and afterward
+maintains its footing as a normal constituent element of the
+worth of an article. A display of efficient workmanship is
+pleasing simply as such, even where its remoter, for the time
+unconsidered, outcome is futile. There is a gratification of the
+artistic sense in the contemplation of skillful work. But it is
+also to be added that no such evidence of skillful workmanship,
+or of ingenious and effective adaptation of means to an end,
+will, in the long run, enjoy the approbation of the modern
+civilized consumer unless it has the sanction of the Canon of
+conspicuous waste.
+
+The position here taken is enforced in a felicitous manner by the
+place assigned in the economy of consumption to machine products.
+The point of material difference between machine-made goods and
+the hand-wrought goods which serve the same purposes is,
+ordinarily, that the former serve their primary purpose more
+adequately. They are a more perfect product -- show a more
+perfect adaptation of means to end. This does not save them from
+disesteem and deprecation, for they fall short under the test of
+honorific waste. Hand labor is a more wasteful method of
+production; hence the goods turned out by this method are more
+serviceable for the purpose of pecuniary reputability; hence the
+marks of hand labor come to be honorific, and the goods which
+exhibit these marks take rank as of higher grade than the
+corresponding machine product. Commonly, if not invariably, the
+honorific marks of hand labor are certain imperfections and
+irregularities in the lines of the hand-wrought article, showing
+where the workman has fallen short in the execution of the
+design. The ground of the superiority of hand-wrought goods,
+therefore, is a certain margin of crudeness. This margin must
+never be so wide as to show bungling workmanship, since that
+would be evidence of low cost, nor so narrow as to suggest the
+ideal precision attained only by the machine, for that would be
+evidence of low cost.
+
+The appreciation of those evidences of honorific crudeness to
+which hand-wrought goods owe their superior worth and charm in
+the eyes of well-bred people is a matter of nice discrimination.
+It requires training and the formation of right habits of thought
+with respect to what may be called the physiognomy of goods.
+Machine-made goods of daily use are often admired and preferred
+precisely on account of their excessive perfection by the vulgar
+and the underbred who have not given due thought to the
+punctilios of elegant consumption. The ceremonial inferiority of
+machine products goes to show that the perfection of skill and
+workmanship embodied in any costly innovations in the finish of
+goods is not sufficient of itself to secure them acceptance and
+permanent favor. The innovation must have the support of the
+canon of conspicuous waste. Any feature in the physiognomy of
+goods, however pleasing in itself, and however well it may
+approve itself to the taste for effective work, will not be
+tolerated if it proves obnoxious to this norm of pecuniary
+reputability.
+
+The ceremonial inferiority or uncleanness in consumable goods due
+to "commonness," or in other words to their slight cost of
+production, has been taken very seriously by many persons. The
+objection to machine products is often formulated as an objection
+to the commonness of such goods. What is common is within the
+(pecuniary) reach of many people. Its consumption is therefore
+not honorific, since it does not serve the purpose of a favorable
+invidious comparison with other consumers. Hence the consumption,
+or even the sight of such goods, is inseparable from an odious
+suggestion of the lower levels of human life, and one comes away
+from their contemplation with a pervading sense of meanness that
+is extremely distasteful and depressing to a person of
+sensibility. In persons whose tastes assert themselves
+imperiously, and who have not the gift, habit, or incentive to
+discriminate between the grounds of their various judgments of
+taste, the deliverances of the sense of the honorific coalesce
+with those of the sense of beauty and of the sense of
+serviceability -- in the manner already spoken of; the resulting
+composite valuation serves as a judgment of the object's beauty
+or its serviceability, according as the valuer's bias or interest
+inclines him to apprehend the object in the one or the other of
+these aspects. It follows not infrequently that the marks of
+cheapness or commonness are accepted as definitive marks of
+artistic unfitness, and a code or schedule of aesthetic
+proprieties on the one hand, and of aesthetic abominations on the
+other, is constructed on this basis for guidance in questions of
+taste.
+
+As has already been pointed out, the cheap, and therefore
+indecorous, articles of daily consumption in modern industrial
+communities are commonly machine products; and the generic
+feature of the physiognomy of machine-made goods as compared with
+the hand-wrought article is their greater perfection in
+workmanship and greater accuracy in the detail execution of the
+design. Hence it comes about that the visible imperfections of
+the hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are accounted marks of
+superiority in point of beauty, or serviceability, or both. Hence
+has arisen that exaltation of the defective, of which John Ruskin
+and William Morris were such eager spokesmen in their time; and
+on this ground their propaganda of crudity and wasted effort has
+been taken up and carried forward since their time. And hence
+also the propaganda for a return to handicraft and household
+industry. So much of the work and speculations of this group of
+men as fairly comes under the characterization here given would
+have been impossible at a time when the visibly more perfect
+goods were not the cheaper.
+
+It is of course only as to the economic value of this school of
+aesthetic teaching that anything is intended to be said or can be
+said here. What is said is not to be taken in the sense of
+depreciation, but chiefly as a characterization of the tendency
+of this teaching in its effect on consumption and on the
+production of consumable goods.
+
+The manner in which the bias of this growth of taste has worked
+itself out in production is perhaps most cogently
+exemplified in the book manufacture with which Morris busied
+himself during the later years of his life; but what holds true
+of the work of the Kelmscott Press in an eminent degree, holds
+true with but slightly abated force when applied to latter-day
+artistic book-making generally -- as to type, paper,
+illustration, binding materials, and binder's work. The claims to
+excellence put forward by the later products of the bookmaker's
+industry rest in some measure on the degree of its approximation
+to the crudities of the time when the work of book-making was a
+doubtful struggle with refractory materials carried on by means
+of insufficient appliances. These products, since they require
+hand labor, are more expensive; they are also less convenient for
+use than the books turned out with a view to serviceability
+alone; they therefore argue ability on the part of the purchaser
+to consume freely, as well as ability to waste time and effort.
+It is on this basis that the printers of today are returning to
+"old-style," and other more or less obsolete styles of type which
+are less legible and give a cruder appearance to the page than
+the "modern." Even a scientific periodical, with ostensibly no
+purpose but the most effective presentation of matter with which
+its science is concerned, will concede so much to the demands of
+this pecuniary beauty as to publish its scientific discussions in
+oldstyle type, on laid paper, and with uncut edges. But books
+which are not ostensibly concerned with the effective
+presentation of their contents alone, of course go farther in
+this direction. Here we have a somewhat cruder type, printed on
+hand-laid, deckel-edged paper, with excessive margins and uncut
+leaves, with bindings of a painstaking crudeness and elaborate
+ineptitude. The Kelmscott Press reduced the matter to an
+absurdity -- as seen from the point of view of brute
+serviceability alone -- by issuing books for modern use, edited
+with the obsolete spelling, printed in black-letter, and bound in
+limp vellum fitted with thongs. As a further characteristic
+feature which fixes the economic place of artistic book-making,
+there is the fact that these more elegant books are, at their
+best, printed in limited editions. A limited edition is in effect
+a guarantee -- somewhat crude, it is true -- that this book is
+scarce and that it therefore is costly and lends pecuniary
+distinction to its consumer.
+
+The special attractiveness of these book-products to the
+book-buyer of cultivated taste lies, of course, not in a
+conscious, naive recognition of their costliness and superior
+clumsiness. Here, as in the parallel case of the superiority of
+hand-wrought articles over machine products, the conscious ground
+of preference is an intrinsic excellence imputed to the costlier
+and more awkward article. The superior excellence imputed to the
+book which imitates the products of antique and obsolete
+processes is conceived to be chiefly a superior utility in the
+aesthetic respect; but it is not unusual to find a well-bred
+book-lover insisting that the clumsier product is also more
+serviceable as a vehicle of printed speech. So far as regards the
+superior aesthetic value of the decadent book, the chances are
+that the book-lover's contention has some ground. The book is
+designed with an eye single to its beauty, and the result is
+commonly some measure of success on the part of the designer.
+What is insisted on here, however, is that the canon of taste
+under which the designer works is a canon formed under the
+surveillance of the law of conspicuous waste, and that this law
+acts selectively to eliminate any canon of taste that does not
+conform to its demands. That is to say, while the decadent book
+may be beautiful, the limits within which the designer may work
+are fixed by requirements of a non-aesthetic kind. The product,
+if it is beautiful, must also at the same time be costly and ill
+adapted to its ostensible use. This mandatory canon of taste in
+the case of the book-designer, however, is not shaped entirely by
+the law of waste in its first form; the canon is to some extent
+shaped in conformity to that secondary expression of the
+predatory temperament, veneration for the archaic or obsolete,
+which in one of its special developments is called classicism.
+In aesthetic theory it might be extremely difficult, if not quite
+impracticable, to draw a line between the canon of
+classicism, or regard for the archaic, and the canon of beauty.
+For the aesthetic purpose such a distinction need scarcely be
+drawn, and indeed it need not exist. For a theory of taste the
+expression of an accepted ideal of archaism, on whatever basis it
+may have been accepted, is perhaps best rated as an element of
+beauty; there need be no question of its legitimation. But for
+the present purpose -- for the purpose of determining what
+economic grounds are present in the accepted canons of taste and
+what is their significance for the distribution and consumption
+of goods -- the distinction is not similarly beside the point.
+The position of machine products in the civilized scheme of
+consumption serves to point out the nature of the relation which
+subsists between the canon of conspicuous waste and the code of
+proprieties in consumption. Neither in matters of art and taste
+proper, nor as regards the current sense of the serviceability of
+goods, does this canon act as a principle of innovation or
+initiative. It does not go into the future as a creative
+principle which makes innovations and adds new items of
+consumption and new elements of cost. The principle in question
+is, in a certain sense, a negative rather than a positive law. It
+is a regulative rather than a creative principle. It very rarely
+initiates or originates any usage or custom directly. Its action
+is selective only. Conspicuous wastefulness does not directly
+afford ground for variation and growth, but conformity to its
+requirements is a condition to the survival of such innovations
+as may be made on other grounds. In whatever way usages and
+customs and methods of expenditure arise, they are all subject to
+the selective action of this norm of reputability; and the degree
+in which they conform to its requirements is a test of their
+fitness to survive in the competition with other similar usages
+and customs. Other thing being equal, the more obviously wasteful
+usage or method stands the better chance of survival under this
+law. The law of conspicuous waste does not account for the origin
+of variations, but only for the persistence of such forms as are
+fit to survive under its dominance. It acts to conserve the fit,
+not to originate the acceptable. Its office is to prove all
+things and to hold fast that which is good for its purpose.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Seven
+
+Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture
+
+It will in place, by way of illustration, to show in some detail
+how the economic principles so far set forth apply to everyday
+facts in some one direction of the life process. For this purpose
+no line of consumption affords a more apt
+illustration than expenditure on dress. It is especially the rule
+of the conspicuous waste of goods that finds expression in dress,
+although the other, related principles of pecuniary repute are
+also exemplified in the same contrivances. Other methods of
+putting one's pecuniary standing in evidence serve their end
+effectually, and other methods are in vogue always and
+everywhere; but expenditure on dress has this advantage over most
+other methods, that our apparel is always in evidence and affords
+an indication of our pecuniary standing to all observers at the
+first glance. It is also true that admitted expenditure for
+display is more obviously present, and is, perhaps, more
+universally practiced in the matter of dress than in any other
+line of consumption. No one finds difficulty in assenting to the
+commonplace that the greater part of the expenditure incurred by
+all classes for apparel is incurred for the sake of a respectable
+appearance rather than for the protection of the person. And
+probably at no other point is the sense of shabbiness so keenly
+felt as it is if we fall short of the standard set by social
+usage in this matter of dress. It is true of dress in even a
+higher degree than of most other items of consumption, that
+people will undergo a very considerable degree of privation in
+the comforts or the necessaries of life in order to afford what
+is considered a decent amount of wasteful consumption; so that it
+is by no means an uncommon occurrence, in an inclement climate,
+for people to go ill clad in order to appear well dressed. And
+the commercial value of the goods used for clotting in any modern
+community is made up to a much larger extent of the
+fashionableness, the reputability of the goods than of the
+mechanical service which they render in clothing the person of
+the wearer. The need of dress is eminently a "higher" or
+spiritual need.
+
+This spiritual need of dress is not wholly, nor even
+chiefly, a naive propensity for display of expenditure. The law
+of conspicuous waste guides consumption in apparel, as in other
+things, chiefly at the second remove, by shaping the canons of
+taste and decency. In the common run of cases the conscious
+motive of the wearer or purchaser of conspicuously wasteful
+apparel is the need of conforming to established usage, and of
+living up to the accredited standard of taste and reputability.
+It is not only that one must be guided by the code of proprieties
+in dress in order to avoid the mortification that comes of
+unfavorable notice and comment, though that motive in itself
+counts for a great deal; but besides that, the requirement of
+expensiveness is so ingrained into our habits of thought in
+matters of dress that any other than expensive apparel is
+instinctively odious to us. Without reflection or analysis, we
+feel that what is inexpensive is unworthy. "A cheap coat makes a
+cheap man." "Cheap and nasty" is recognized to hold true in dress
+with even less mitigation than in other lines of consumption. On
+the ground both of taste and of serviceability, an inexpensive
+article of apparel is held to be inferior, under the maxim "cheap
+and nasty." We find things beautiful, as well as serviceable,
+somewhat in proportion as they are costly. With few and
+inconsequential exceptions, we all find a costly hand-wrought
+article of apparel much preferable, in point of beauty and of
+serviceability, to a less expensive imitation of it, however
+cleverly the spurious article may imitate the costly original;
+and what offends our sensibilities in the spurious article is not
+that it falls short in form or color, or, indeed, in visual
+effect in any way. The offensive object may be so close an
+imitation as to defy any but the closest scrutiny; and yet so
+soon as the counterfeit is detected, its aesthetic value, and its
+commercial value as well, declines precipitately. Not only that,
+but it may be asserted with but small risk of contradiction that
+the aesthetic value of a detected counterfeit in dress declines
+somewhat in the same proportion as the counterfeit is cheaper
+than its original. It loses caste aesthetically because it falls
+to a lower pecuniary grade.
+
+But the function of dress as an evidence of ability to pay does
+not end with simply showing that the wearer consumes
+valuable goods in excess of what is required for physical
+comfort. Simple conspicuous waste of goods is effective and
+gratifying as far as it goes; it is good prima facie evidence of
+pecuniary success, and consequently prima facie evidence of
+social worth. But dress has subtler and more far-reaching
+possibilities than this crude, first-hand evidence of wasteful
+consumption only. If, in addition to showing that the wearer can
+afford to consume freely and uneconomically, it can also be shown
+in the same stroke that he or she is not under the necessity of
+earning a livelihood, the evidence of social worth is enhanced in
+a very considerable degree. Our dress, therefore, in order to
+serve its purpose effectually, should not only he expensive, but
+it should also make plain to all observers that the wearer is not
+engaged in any kind of productive labor. In the evolutionary
+process by which our system of dress has been elaborated into its
+present admirably perfect adaptation to its purpose, this
+subsidiary line of evidence has received due attention. A
+detailed examination of what passes in popular apprehension for
+elegant apparel will show that it is contrived at every point to
+convey the impression that the wearer does not habitually put
+forth any useful effort. It goes without saying that no apparel
+can be considered elegant, or even decent, if it shows the effect
+of manual labor on the part of the wearer, in the way of soil or
+wear. The pleasing effect of neat and spotless garments is
+chiefly, if not altogether, due to their carrying the suggestion
+of leisure-exemption from personal contact with industrial
+processes of any kind. Much of the charm that invests the
+patent-leather shoe, the stainless linen, the lustrous
+cylindrical hat, and the walking-stick, which so greatly enhance
+the native dignity of a gentleman, comes of their pointedly
+suggesting that the wearer cannot when so attired bear a hand in
+any employment that is directly and immediately of any human use.
+Elegant dress serves its purpose of elegance not only in that it
+is expensive, but also because it is the insignia of leisure. It
+not only shows that the wearer is able to consume a relatively
+large value, but it argues at the same time that he consumes
+without producing.
+
+The dress of women goes even farther than that of men in the way
+of demonstrating the wearer's abstinence from productive
+employment. It needs no argument to enforce the generalization
+that the more elegant styles of feminine bonnets go even farther
+towards making work impossible than does the man's high hat. The
+woman's shoe adds the so-called French heel to the evidence of
+enforced leisure afforded by its polish; because this high heel
+obviously makes any, even the simplest and most necessary manual
+work extremely difficult. The like is true even in a higher
+degree of the skirt and the rest of the drapery which
+characterizes woman's dress. The substantial reason for our
+tenacious attachment to the skirt is just this; it is expensive
+and it hampers the wearer at every turn and incapacitates her for
+all useful exertion. The like is true of the feminine custom of
+wearing the hair excessively long.
+
+But the woman's apparel not only goes beyond that of the modern
+man in the degree in which it argues exemption from labor; it
+also adds a peculiar and highly characteristic feature which
+differs in kind from anything habitually practiced by the men.
+This feature is the class of contrivances of which the corset is
+the typical example. The corset is, in economic theory,
+substantially a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering
+the subject's vitality and rendering her permanently and
+obviously unfit for work. It is true, the corset impairs the
+personal attractions of the wearer, but the loss suffered on that
+score is offset by the gain in reputability which comes of her
+visibly increased expensiveness and infirmity. It may broadly be
+set down that the womanliness of woman's apparel resolves itself,
+in point of substantial fact, into the more effective hindrance
+to useful exertion offered by the garments peculiar to women.
+This difference between masculine and feminine apparel is here
+simply pointed out as a characteristic feature. The ground of its
+occurrence will be discussed presently.
+
+So far, then, we have, as the great and dominant norm of dress,
+the broad principle of conspicuous waste. Subsidiary to this
+principle, and as a corollary under it, we get as a second norm
+the principle of conspicuous leisure. In dress construction this
+norm works out in the shape of divers contrivances going to show
+that the wearer does not and, as far as it may conveniently be
+shown, can not engage in productive labor. Beyond these two
+principles there is a third of scarcely less constraining force,
+which will occur to any one who reflects at all on the subject.
+Dress must not only be conspicuously expensive and inconvenient,
+it must at the same time be up to date. No explanation at all
+satisfactory has hitherto been offered of the phenomenon of
+changing fashions. The imperative requirement of dressing in the
+latest accredited manner, as well as the fact that this
+accredited fashion constantly changes from season to season, is
+sufficiently familiar to every one, but the theory of this flux
+and change has not been worked out. We may of course say, with
+perfect consistency and truthfulness, that this principle of
+novelty is another corollary under the law of conspicuous waste.
+Obviously, if each garment is permitted to serve for but a brief
+term, and if none of last season's apparel is carried over and
+made further use of during the present season, the wasteful
+expenditure on dress is greatly increased. This is good as far as
+it goes, but it is negative only. Pretty much all that this
+consideration warrants us in saying is that the norm of
+conspicuous waste exercises a controlling surveillance in all
+matters of dress, so that any change in the fashions must
+conspicuous waste exercises a controlling surveillance in all
+matters of dress, so that any change in the fashions must conform
+to the requirement of wastefulness; it leaves unanswered the
+question as to the motive for making and accepting a change in
+the prevailing styles, and it also fails to explain why
+conformity to a given style at a given time is so imperatively
+necessary as we know it to be.
+
+For a creative principle, capable of serving as motive to
+invention and innovation in fashions, we shall have to go back to
+the primitive, non-economic motive with which apparel originated
+-- the motive of adornment. Without going into an extended
+discussion of how and why this motive asserts itself under the
+guidance of the law of expensiveness, it may be stated broadly
+that each successive innovation in the fashions is an effort to
+reach some form of display which shall be more acceptable to our
+sense of form and color or of effectiveness, than that which it
+displaces. The changing styles are the expression of a restless
+search for something which shall commend itself to our aesthetic
+sense; but as each innovation is subject to the selective action
+of the norm of conspicuous waste, the range within which
+innovation can take place is somewhat restricted. The innovation
+must not only be more beautiful, or perhaps oftener less
+offensive, than that which it displaces, but it must also come up
+to the accepted standard of expensiveness.
+
+It would seem at first sight that the result of such an
+unremitting struggle to attain the beautiful in dress should be a
+gradual approach to artistic perfection. We might naturally
+expect that the fashions should show a well-marked trend in the
+direction of some one or more types of apparel eminently becoming
+to the human form; and we might even feel that ge have
+substantial ground for the hope that today, after all the
+ingenuity and effort which have been spent on dress these many
+years, the fashions should have achieved a relative perfection
+and a relative stability, closely approximating to a permanently
+tenable artistic ideal. But such is not the case. It would be
+very hazardous indeed to assert that the styles of today are
+intrinsically more becoming than those of ten years ago, or than
+those of twenty, or fifty, or one hundred years ago. On the other
+hand, the assertion freely goes uncontradicted that styles in
+vogue two thousand years ago are more becoming than the most
+elaborate and painstaking constructions of today.
+
+The explanation of the fashions just offered, then, does not
+fully explain, and we shall have to look farther. It is well
+known that certain relatively stable styles and types of costume
+have been worked out in various parts of the world; as, for
+instance, among the Japanese, Chinese, and other Oriental
+nations; likewise among the Greeks, Romans, and other Eastern
+peoples of antiquity so also, in later times, among the, peasants
+of nearly every country of Europe. These national or popular
+costumes are in most cases adjudged by competent critics to be
+more becoming, more artistic, than the fluctuating styles of
+modern civilized apparel. At the same time they are also, at
+least usually, less obviously wasteful; that is to say, other
+elements than that of a display of expense are more readily
+detected in their structure.
+
+These relatively stable costumes are, commonly, pretty strictly
+and narrowly localized, and they vary by slight and systematic
+gradations from place to place. They have in every case been
+worked out by peoples or classes which are poorer than we, and
+especially they belong in countries and localities and times
+where the population, or at least the class to which the costume
+in question belongs, is relatively homogeneous, stable, and
+immobile. That is to say, stable costumes which will bear the
+test of time and perspective are worked out under circumstances
+where the norm of conspicuous waste asserts itself less
+imperatively than it does in the large modern civilized cities,
+whose relatively mobile wealthy population today sets the pace in
+matters of fashion. The countries and classes which have in this
+way worked out stable and artistic costumes have been so placed
+that the pecuniary emulation among them has taken the direction
+of a competition in conspicuous leisure rather than in
+conspicuous consumption of goods. So that it will hold true in a
+general way that fashions are least stable and least becoming in
+those communities where the principle of a conspicuous waste of
+goods asserts itself most imperatively, as among ourselves. All
+this points to an antagonism between expensiveness and artistic
+apparel. In point of practical fact, the norm of conspicuous
+waste is incompatible with the requirement that dress should be
+beautiful or becoming. And this antagonism offers an explanation
+of that restless change in fashion which neither the canon of
+expensiveness nor that of beauty alone can account for.
+
+The standard of reputability requires that dress should show
+wasteful expenditure; but all wastefulness is offensive to native
+taste. The psychological law has already been pointed out that
+all men -- and women perhaps even in a higher degree abhor
+futility, whether of effort or of expenditure -- much as Nature
+was once said to abhor a vacuum. But the principle of conspicuous
+waste requires an obviously futile expenditure; and the resulting
+conspicuous expensiveness of dress is therefore intrinsically
+ugly. Hence we find that in all innovations in dress, each added
+or altered detail strives to avoid condemnation by showing some
+ostensible purpose, at the same time that the requirement of
+conspicuous waste prevents the purposefulness of these
+innovations from becoming anything more than a somewhat
+transparent pretense. Even in its freest flights, fashion rarely
+if ever gets away from a simulation of some ostensible use. The
+ostensible usefulness of the fashionable details of dress,
+however, is always so transparent a make-believe, and their
+substantial futility presently forces itself so baldly upon our
+attention as to become unbearable, and then we take refuge in a
+new style. But the new style must conform to the requirement of
+reputable wastefulness and futility. Its futility presently
+becomes as odious as that of its predecessor; and the only remedy
+which the law of waste allows us is to seek relief in some new
+construction, equally futile and equally untenable. Hence the
+essential ugliness and the unceasing change of fashionable
+attire.
+
+Having so explained the phenomenon of shifting fashions, the next
+thing is to make the explanation tally with everyday facts. Among
+these everyday facts is the well-known liking which all men have
+for the styles that are in vogue at any given time. A new style
+comes into vogue and remains in favor for a season, and, at least
+so long as it is a novelty, people very generally find the new
+style attractive. The prevailing fashion is felt to be beautiful.
+This is due partly to the relief it affords in being different
+from what went before it, partly to its being
+reputable. As indicated in the last chapter, the canon of
+reputability to some extent shapes our tastes, so that under its
+guidance anything will be accepted as becoming until its novelty
+wears off, or until the warrant of reputability is transferred to
+a new and novel structure serving the same general purpose. That
+the alleged beauty, or "loveliness," of the styles in vogue at
+any given time is transient and spurious only is attested by the
+fact that none of the many shifting fashions will bear the test
+of time. When seen in the perspective of half-a-dozen years or
+more, the best of our fashions strike us as grotesque, if not
+unsightly. Our transient attachment to whatever happens to be the
+latest rests on other than aesthetic grounds, and lasts only
+until our abiding aesthetic sense has had time to assert itself
+and reject this latest indigestible contrivance.
+
+The process of developing an aesthetic nausea takes more or less
+time; the length of time required in any given case being
+inversely as the degree of intrinsic odiousness of the style in
+question. This time relation between odiousness and instability
+in fashions affords ground for the inference that the more
+rapidly the styles succeed and displace one another, the more
+offensive they are to sound taste. The presumption, therefore, is
+that the farther the community, especially the wealthy classes of
+the community, develop in wealth and mobility and in the range of
+their human contact, the more imperatively will the law of
+conspicuous waste assert itself in matters of dress, the more
+will the sense of beauty tend to fall into abeyance or be
+overborne by the canon of pecuniary reputability, the more
+rapidly will fashions shift and change, and the more grotesque
+and intolerable will be the varying styles that successively come
+into vogue.
+
+There remains at least one point in this theory of dress yet to
+be discussed. Most of what has been said applies to men's attire
+as well as to that of women; although in modern times it applies
+at nearly all points with greater force to that of women. But at
+one point the dress of women differs substantially from that of
+men. In woman's dress there is obviously greater
+insistence on such features as testify to the wearer's exemption
+from or incapacity for all vulgarly productive employment. This
+characteristic of woman's apparel is of interest, not only as
+completing the theory of dress, but also as confirming what has
+already been said of the economic status of women, both in the
+past and in the present.
+
+As has been seen in the discussion of woman's status under the
+heads of Vicarious Leisure and Vicarious Consumption, it has in
+the course of economic development become the office of the woman
+to consume vicariously for the head of the household; and her
+apparel is contrived with this object in view. It has come about
+that obviously productive labor is in a peculiar degree
+derogatory to respectable women, and therefore special pains
+should be taken in the construction of women's dress, to impress
+upon the beholder the fact (often indeed a fiction) that the
+wearer does not and can not habitually engage in useful work.
+Propriety requires respectable women to abstain more consistently
+from useful effort and to make more of a show of leisure than the
+men of the same social classes. It grates painfully on our nerves
+to contemplate the necessity of any well-bred woman's earning a
+livelihood by useful work. It is not "woman's sphere." Her sphere
+is within the household, which she should "beautify," and of
+which she should be the "chief ornament." The male head of the
+household is not currently spoken of as its ornament. This
+feature taken in conjunction with the other fact that propriety
+requires more unremitting attention to expensive display in the
+dress and other paraphernalia of women, goes to enforce the view
+already implied in what has gone before. By virtue of its descent
+from a patriarchal past, our social system makes it the woman's
+function in an especial degree to put in evidence her household's
+ability to pay. According to the modern civilized scheme of life,
+the good name of the household to which she belongs should be the
+special care of the woman; and the system of honorific
+expenditure and conspicuous leisure by which this good name is
+chiefly sustained is therefore the woman's sphere. In the ideal
+scheme, as it tends to realize itself in the life of the higher
+pecuniary classes, this attention to conspicuous waste of
+substance and effort should normally be the sole economic
+function of the woman.
+
+At the stage of economic development at which the women were
+still in the full sense the property of the men, the performance
+of conspicuous leisure and consumption came to be part of the
+services required of them. The women being not their own masters,
+obvious expenditure and leisure on their part would redound to
+the credit of their master rather than to their own credit; and
+therefore the more expensive and the more obviously unproductive
+the women of the household are, the more creditable and more
+effective for the purpose of reputability of the household or its
+head will their life be. So much so that the women have been
+required not only to afford evidence of a life of leisure, but
+even to disable themselves for useful activity.
+
+It is at this point that the dress of men falls short of that of
+women, and for sufficient reason. Conspicuous waste and
+conspicuous leisure are reputable because they are evidence of
+pecuniary strength; pecuniary strength is reputable or honorific
+because, in the last analysis, it argues success and superior
+force; therefore the evidence of waste and leisure put forth by
+any individual in his own behalf cannot consistently take such a
+form or be carried to such a pitch as to argue incapacity or
+marked discomfort on his part; as the exhibition would in that
+case show not superior force, but inferiority, and so defeat its
+own purpose. So, then, wherever wasteful expenditure and the show
+of abstention from effort is normally, or on an average, carried
+to the extent of showing obvious discomfort or voluntarily
+induced physical disability. There the immediate inference is
+that the individual in question does not perform this wasteful
+expenditure and undergo this disability for her own personal gain
+in pecuniary repute, but in behalf of some one else to whom she
+stands in a relation of economic dependence; a relation which in
+the last analysis must, in economic theory, reduce itself to a
+relation of servitude.
+
+To apply this generalization to women's dress, and put the matter
+in concrete terms: the high heel, the skirt, the
+impracticable bonnet, the corset, and the general disregard of
+the wearer's comfort which is an obvious feature of all civilized
+women's apparel, are so many items of evidence to the effect that
+in the modern civilized scheme of life the woman is still, in
+theory, the economic dependent of the man -- that, perhaps in a
+highly idealized sense, she still is the man's chattel. The
+homely reason for all this conspicuous leisure and attire on the
+part of women lies in the fact that they are servants to whom, in
+the differentiation of economic functions, has been delegated the
+office of putting in evidence their master's ability to pay.
+There is a marked similarity in these respects between the
+apparel of women and that of domestic servants, especially
+liveried servants. In both there is a very elaborate show of
+unnecessary expensiveness, and in both cases there is also a
+notable disregard of the physical comfort of the wearer. But the
+attire of the lady goes farther in its elaborate insistence on
+the idleness, if not on the physical infirmity of the wearer,
+than does that of the domestic. And this is as it should be; for
+in theory, according to the ideal scheme of the pecuniary
+culture, the lady of the house is the chief menial of the
+household.
+
+Besides servants, currently recognized as such, there is at least
+one other class of persons whose garb assimilates them to the
+class of servants and shows many of the features that go to make
+up the womanliness of woman's dress. This is the priestly class.
+Priestly vestments show, in accentuated form, all the features
+that have been shown to be evidence of a servile status and a
+vicarious life. Even more strikingly than the everyday habit of
+the priest, the vestments, properly so called, are ornate,
+grotesque, inconvenient, and, at least ostensibly, comfortless to
+the point of distress. The priest is at the same time expected to
+refrain from useful effort and, when before the public eye, to
+present an impassively disconsolate countenance, very much after
+the manner of a well-trained domestic servant. The shaven face of
+the priest is a further item to the same effect. This
+assimilation of the priestly class to the class of body servants,
+in demeanor and apparel, is due to the similarity of the two
+classes as regards economic function. In economic theory, the
+priest is a body servant, constructively in
+attendance upon the person of the divinity whose livery he wears.
+His livery is of a very expensive character, as it should be in
+order to set forth in a beseeming manner the dignity of his
+exalted master; but it is contrived to show that the wearing of
+it contributes little or nothing to the physical comfort of the
+wearer, for it is an item of vicarious consumption, and the
+repute which accrues from its consumption is to be imputed to the
+absent master, not to the servant.
+
+The line of demarcation between the dress of women, priests, and
+servants, on the one hand, and of men, on the other hand, is not
+always consistently observed in practice, but it will
+scarcely be disputed that it is always present in a more or less
+definite way in the popular habits of thought. There are of
+course also free men, and not a few of them, who, in their blind
+zeal for faultless reputable attire, transgress the theoretical
+line between man's and woman's dress, to the extent of arraying
+themselves in apparel that is obviously designed to vex the
+mortal frame; but everyone recognizes without hesitation that
+such apparel for men is a departure from the normal. We are in
+the habit of saying that such dress is "effeminate"; and one
+sometimes hears the remark that such or such an exquisitely
+attired gentleman is as well dressed as a footman.
+
+Certain apparent discrepancies under this theory of dress merit a
+more detailed examination, especially as they mark a more or less
+evident trend in the later and maturer development of dress. The
+vogue of the corset offers an apparent exception from the rule of
+which it has here been cited as an illustration. A closer
+examination, however, will show that this apparent
+exception is really a verification of the rule that the vogue of
+any given element or feature in dress rests on its utility as an
+evidence of pecuniary standing. It is well known that in the
+industrially more advanced communities the corset is employed
+only within certain fairly well defined social strata. The women
+of the poorer classes, especially of the rural population, do not
+habitually use it, except as a holiday luxury. Among these
+classes the women have to work hard, and it avails them little in
+the way of a pretense of leisure to so crucify the flesh in
+everyday life. The holiday use of the contrivance is due to
+imitation of a higher-class canon of decency. Upwards from this
+low level of indigence and manual labor, the corset was until
+within a generation or two nearly indispensable to a socially
+blameless standing for all women, including the wealthiest and
+most reputable. This rule held so long as there still was no
+large class of people wealthy enough to be above the imputation
+of any necessity for manual labor and at the same time large
+enough to form a self-sufficient, isolated social body whose mass
+would afford a foundation for special rules of conduct within the
+class, enforced by the current opinion of the class alone. But
+now there has grown up a large enough leisure class possessed of
+such wealth that any aspersion on the score of enforced manual
+employment would be idle and harmless calumny; and the corset has
+therefore in large measure fallen into disuse within this class.
+The exceptions under this rule of exemption from the corset are
+more apparent than real. They are the wealthy classes of
+countries with a lower industrial structure -- nearer the
+archaic, quasi-industrial type -- together with the later
+accessions of the wealthy classes in the more advanced industrial
+communities. The latter have not yet had time to divest
+themselves of the plebeian canons of taste and of reputability
+carried over from their former, lower pecuniary grade. Such
+survival of the corset is not infrequent among the higher social
+classes of those American cities, for instance, which have
+recently and rapidly risen into opulence. If the word be used as
+a technical term, without any odious implication, it may be said
+that the corset persists in great measure through the period of
+snobbery -- the interval of uncertainty and of transition from a
+lower to the upper levels of pecuniary culture. That is to say,
+in all countries which have inherited the corset it continues in
+use wherever and so long as it serves its purpose as an evidence
+of honorific leisure by arguing physical disability in the
+wearer. The same rule of course applies to other mutilations and
+contrivances for decreasing the visible efficiency of the
+individual.
+
+Something similar should hold true with respect to divers items
+of conspicuous consumption, and indeed something of the kind does
+seem to hold to a slight degree of sundry features of dress,
+especially if such features involve a marked discomfort or
+appearance of discomfort to the wearer. During the past one
+hundred years there is a tendency perceptible, in the development
+of men's dress especially, to discontinue methods of expenditure
+and the use of symbols of leisure which must have been irksome,
+which may have served a good purpose in their time, but the
+continuation of which among the upper classes today would be a
+work of supererogation; as, for instance, the use of powdered
+wigs and of gold lace, and the practice of constantly shaving the
+face. There has of late years been some slight recrudescence of
+the shaven face in polite society, but this is probably a
+transient and unadvised mimicry of the fashion imposed upon body
+servants, and it may fairly be expected to go the way of the
+powdered wig of our grandfathers.
+
+These indices and others which resemble them in point of the
+boldness with which they point out to all observers the habitual
+uselessness of those persons who employ them, have been replaced
+by other, more dedicate methods of expressing the same fact;
+methods which are no less evident to the trained eyes of that
+smaller, select circle whose good opinion is chiefly sought. The
+earlier and cruder method of advertisement held its ground so
+long as the public to which the exhibitor had to appeal comprised
+large portions of the community who were not trained to detect
+delicate variations in the evidences of wealth and leisure. The
+method of advertisement undergoes a refinement when a
+sufficiently large wealthy class has developed, who have the
+leisure for acquiring skill in interpreting the subtler signs of
+expenditure. "Loud" dress becomes offensive to people of taste,
+as evincing an undue desire to reach and impress the untrained
+sensibilities of the vulgar. To the individual of high breeding,
+it is only the more honorific esteem accorded by the cultivated
+sense of the members of his own high class that is of material
+consequence. Since the wealthy leisure class has grown so large,
+or the contact of the leisure-class individual with members of
+his own class has grown so wide, as to constitute a human
+environment sufficient for the honorific purpose, there arises a
+tendency to exclude the baser elements of the population from the
+scheme even as spectators whose applause or mortification should
+be sought. The result of all this is a refinement of methods, a
+resort to subtler contrivances, and a spiritualization of the
+scheme of symbolism in dress. And as this upper leisure class
+sets the pace in all matters of decency, the result for the rest
+of society also is a gradual amelioration of the scheme of dress.
+As the community advances in wealth and culture, the ability to
+pay is put in evidence by means which require a progressively
+nicer discrimination in the beholder. This nicer discrimination
+between advertising media is in fact a very large element of the
+higher pecuniary culture.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eight
+
+Industrial Exemption and Conservatism
+
+The life of man in society, just like the life of other species,
+is a struggle for existence, and therefore it is a process of
+selective adaptation. The evolution of social
+structure has been a process of natural selection of
+institutions. The progress which has been and is being made in
+human institutions and in human character may be set down,
+broadly, to a natural selection of the fittest habits of thought
+and to a process of enforced adaptation of individuals to an
+environment which has progressively changed with the growth of
+the community and with the changing institutions under which men
+have lived. Institutions are not only themselves the result of a
+selective and adaptive process which shapes the prevailing or
+dominant types of spiritual attitude and aptitudes; they are at
+the same time special methods of life and of human relations, and
+are therefore in their turn efficient factors of selection. So
+that the changing institutions in their turn make for a further
+selection of individuals endowed with the fittest temperament,
+and a further adaptation of individual temperament and habits to
+the changing environment through the formation of new
+institutions.
+
+ The forces which have shaped the development of human life and
+of social structure are no doubt ultimately reducible to terms of
+living tissue and material environment; but proximately for the
+purpose in hand, these forces may best be stated in terms of an
+environment, partly human, partly non-human, and a human subject
+with a more or less definite physical and intellectual
+constitution. Taken in the aggregate or average, this human
+subject is more or less variable; chiefly, no doubt, under a rule
+of selective conservation of favorable variations. The selection
+of favorable variations is perhaps in great measure a selective
+conservation of ethnic types. In the life history of any
+community whose population is made up of a mixture of divers
+ethnic elements, one or another of several persistent and
+relatively stable types of body and of temperament rises into
+dominance at any given point. The situation, including the
+institutions in force at any given time, will favor the survival
+and dominance of one type of character in preference to another;
+and the type of man so selected to continue and to further
+elaborate the institutions handed down from the past will in some
+considerable measure shape these institutions in his own
+likeness. But apart from selection as between relatively stable
+types of character and habits of mind, there is no doubt
+simultaneously going on a process of selective adaptation of
+habits of thought within the general range of aptitudes which is
+characteristic of the dominant ethnic type or types. There may be
+a variation in the fundamental character of any population by
+selection between relatively stable types; but there is also a
+variation due to adaptation in detail within the range of the
+type, and to selection between specific habitual views regarding
+any given social relation or group of relations.
+
+ For the present purpose, however, the question as to the nature
+of the adaptive process -- whether it is chiefly a
+selection between stable types of temperament and character, or
+chiefly an adaptation of men's habits of thought to changing
+circumstances -- is of less importance than the fact that, by one
+method or another, institutions change and develop. Institutions
+must change with changing circumstances, since they are of the
+nature of an habitual method of responding to the stimuli which
+these changing circumstances afford. The development of these
+institutions is the development of society. The institutions are,
+in substance, prevalent habits of thought with respect to
+particular relations and particular functions of the individual
+and of the community; and the scheme of life, which is made up of
+the aggregate of institutions in force at a given time or at a
+given point in the development of any society, may, on the
+psychological side, be broadly characterized as a prevalent
+spiritual attitude or a prevalent theory of life. As regards its
+generic features, this spiritual attitude or theory of life is in
+the last analysis reducible to terms of a prevalent type of
+character.
+
+ The situation of today shapes the institutions of tomorrow
+through a selective, coercive process, by acting upon men's
+habitual view of things, and so altering or fortifying a point of
+view or a mental attitude banded down from the past. The
+institutions -- that is to say the habits of thought -- under the
+guidance of which men live are in this way received from an
+earlier time; more or less remotely earlier, but in any event
+they have been elaborated in and received from the past.
+Institutions are products of the past process, are adapted to
+past circumstances, and are therefore never in full accord with
+the requirements of the present. In the nature of the case, this
+process of selective adaptation can never catch up with the
+progressively changing situation in which the community finds
+itself at any given time; for the environment, the situation, the
+exigencies of life which enforce the adaptation and exercise the
+selection, change from day to day; and each successive situation
+of the community in its turn tends to obsolescence as soon as it
+has been established. When a step in the development has been
+taken, this step itself constitutes a change of situation which
+requires a new adaptation; it becomes the point of departure for
+a new step in the adjustment, and so on interminably.
+
+ It is to be noted then, although it may be a tedious truism,
+that the institutions of today -- the present accepted scheme of
+life -- do not entirely fit the situation of today. At the same
+time, men's present habits of thought tend to persist
+indefinitely, except as circumstances enforce a change. These
+institutions which have thus been handed down, these habits of
+thought, points of view, mental attitudes and aptitudes, or what
+not, are therefore themselves a conservative factor. This is the
+factor of social inertia, psychological inertia, conservatism.
+Social structure changes, develops, adapts itself to an altered
+situation, only through a change in the habits of thought of the
+several classes of the community, or in the last analysis,
+through a change in the habits of thought of the individuals
+which make up the community. The evolution of society is
+substantially a process of mental adaptation on the part of
+individuals under the stress of circumstances which will no
+longer tolerate habits of thought formed under and conforming to
+a different set of circumstances in the past. For the immediate
+purpose it need not be a question of serious importance whether
+this adaptive process is a process of selection and survival of
+persistent ethnic types or a process of individual adaptation and
+an inheritance of acquired traits.
+
+ Social advance, especially as seen from the point of view of
+economic theory, consists in a continued progressive approach to
+an approximately exact "adjustment of inner relations to outer
+relations", but this adjustment is never definitively
+established, since the "outer relations" are subject to constant
+change as a consequence of the progressive change going on in the
+"inner relations." But the degree of approximation may be
+greater or less, depending on the facility with which an
+adjustment is made. A readjustment of men's habits of thought to
+conform with the exigencies of an altered situation is in any
+case made only tardily and reluctantly, and only under the
+coercion exercised by a stipulation which has made the accredited
+views untenable. The readjustment of institutions and habitual
+views to an altered environment is made in response to pressure
+from without; it is of the nature of a response to stimulus.
+Freedom and facility of readjustment, that is to say capacity for
+growth in social structure, therefore depends in great measure on
+the degree of freedom with which the situation at any given time
+acts on the individual members of the community-the degree of
+exposure of the individual members to the constraining forces of
+the environment. If any portion or class of society is sheltered
+from the action of the environment in any essential respect, that
+portion of the community, or that class, will adapt its views and
+its scheme of life more tardily to the altered general situation;
+it will in so far tend to retard the process of social
+transformation. The wealthy leisure class is in such a sheltered
+position with respect to the economic forces that make for change
+and readjustment. And it may be said that the forces which make
+for a readjustment of institutions, especially in the case of a
+modern industrial community, are, in the last analysis, almost
+entirely of an economic nature.
+
+ Any community may be viewed as an industrial or economic
+mechanism, the structure of which is made up of what is called
+its economic institutions. These institutions are habitual
+methods of carrying on the life process of the community in
+contact with the material environment in which it lives. When
+given methods of unfolding human activity in this given
+environment have been elaborated in this way, the life of the
+community will express itself with some facility in these
+habitual directions. The community will make use of the forces of
+the environment for the purposes of its life according to methods
+learned in the past and embodied in these institutions. But as
+population increases, and as men's knowledge and skill in
+directing the forces of nature widen, the habitual methods of
+relation between the members of the group, and the habitual
+method of carrying on the life process of the group as a whole,
+no longer give the same result as before; nor are the resulting
+conditions of life distributed and apportioned in the same manner
+or with the same effect among the various members as before. If
+the scheme according to which the life process of the group was
+carried on under the earlier conditions gave approximately the
+highest attainable result -- under the circumstances -- in the
+way of efficiency or facility of the life process of the group;
+then the same scheme of life unaltered will not yield the highest
+result attainable in this respect under the altered conditions.
+Under the altered conditions of population, skill, and knowledge,
+the facility of life as carried on according to the traditional
+scheme may not be lower than under the earlier conditions; but
+the chances are always that it is less than might be if the
+scheme were altered to suit the altered conditions.
+
+ The group is made up of individuals, and the group's life is the
+life of individuals carried on in at least ostensible
+severalty. The group's accepted scheme of life is the consensus
+of views held by the body of these individuals as to what is
+right, good, expedient, and beautiful in the way of human life.
+In the redistribution of the conditions of life that comes of the
+altered method of dealing with the environment, the outcome is
+not an equable change in the facility of life throughout the
+group. The altered conditions may increase the facility of life
+for the group as a whole, but the redistribution will usually
+result in a decrease of facility or fullness of life for some
+members of the group. An advance in technical methods, in
+population, or in industrial organization will require at least
+some of the members of the community to change their habits of
+life, if they are to enter with facility and effect into the
+altered industrial methods; and in doing so they will be unable
+to live up to the received notions as to what are the right and
+beautiful habits of life.
+
+ Any one who is required to change his habits of life and his
+habitual relations to his fellow men will feel the discrepancy
+between the method of life required of him by the newly arisen
+exigencies, and the traditional scheme of life to which he is
+accustomed. It is the individuals placed in this position who
+have the liveliest incentive to reconstruct the received scheme
+of life and are most readily persuaded to accept new standards;
+and it is through the need of the means of livelihood that men
+are placed in such a position. The pressure exerted by the
+environment upon the group, and making for a readjustment of the
+group's scheme of life, impinges upon the members of the group in
+the form of pecuniary exigencies; and it is owing to this fact --
+that external forces are in great part translated into the form
+of pecuniary or economic exigencies -- it is owing to this fact
+that we can say that the forces which count toward a readjustment
+of institutions in any modern industrial community are chiefly
+economic forces; or more specifically, these forces take the form
+of pecuniary pressure. Such a readjustment as is here
+contemplated is substantially a change in men's views as to what
+is good and right, and the means through which a change is
+wrought in men's apprehension of what is good and right is in
+large part the pressure of pecuniary exigencies.
+
+ Any change in men's views as to what is good and right in human
+life make its way but tardily at the best. Especially is this
+true of any change in the direction of what is called progress;
+that is to say, in the direction of divergence from the archaic
+position -- from the position which may be accounted the point of
+departure at any step in the social evolution of the community.
+Retrogression, reapproach to a standpoint to which the race has
+been long habituated in the past, is easier. This is especially
+true in case the development away from this past standpoint has
+not been due chiefly to a substitution of an ethnic type whose
+temperament is alien to the earlier standpoint.
+The cultural stage which lies immediately back of the present in
+the life history of Western civilization is what has here been
+called the quasi-peaceable stage. At this quasi-peaceable stage
+the law of status is the dominant feature in the scheme of life.
+There is no need of pointing out how prone the men of today are
+to revert to the spiritual attitude of mastery and of personal
+subservience which characterizes that stage. It may rather be
+said to be held in an uncertain abeyance by the economic
+exigencies of today, than to have been definitely supplanted by a
+habit of mind that is in full accord with these later-developed
+exigencies. The predatory and quasi-peaceable stages of economic
+evolution seem to have been of long duration in life history of
+all the chief ethnic elements which go to make up the populations
+of the Western culture. The temperament and the propensities
+proper to those cultural stages have, therefore, attained such a
+persistence as to make a speedy reversion to the broad features
+of the corresponding psychological constitution inevitable in the
+case of any class or community which is removed from the action
+of those forces that make for a maintenance of the
+later-developed habits of thought.
+
+ It is a matter of common notoriety that when individuals, or
+even considerable groups of men, are segregated from a higher
+industrial culture and exposed to a lower cultural environment,
+or to an economic situation of a more primitive character, they
+quickly show evidence of reversion toward the spiritual features
+which characterize the predatory type; and it seems probable that
+the dolicho-blond type of European man is possessed of a greater
+facility for such reversion to barbarism than the other ethnic
+elements with which that type is associated in the Western
+culture. Examples of such a reversion on a small scale abound in
+the later history of migration and colonization. Except for the
+fear of offending that chauvinistic patriotism which is so
+characteristic a feature of the predatory culture, and the
+presence of which is frequently the most striking mark of
+reversion in modern communities, the case of the American
+colonies might be cited as an example of such a reversion on an
+unusually large scale, though it was not a reversion of very
+large scope.
+
+ The leisure class is in great measure sheltered from
+the stress of those economic exigencies which prevail in any
+modern, highly organized industrial community. The exigencies of
+the struggle for the means of life are less exacting for this
+class than for any other; and as a consequence of this privileged
+position we should expect to find it one of the least responsive
+of the classes of society to the demands which the situation
+makes for a further growth of institutions and a readjustment to
+an altered industrial situation. The leisure class is the
+conservative class. The exigencies of the general economic
+situation of the community do not freely or directly impinge upon
+the members of this class. They are not required under penalty of
+forfeiture to change their habits of life and their theoretical
+views of the external world to suit the demands of an altered
+industrial technique, since they are not in the full sense an
+organic part of the industrial community. Therefore these
+exigencies do not readily produce, in the members of this class,
+that degree of uneasiness with the existing order which alone can
+lead any body of men to give up views and methods of life that
+have become habitual to them. The office of the leisure class in
+social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what
+is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel; it has
+long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion.
+
+ The prevalent conviction that the wealthy class is by nature
+conservative has been popularly accepted without much aid from
+any theoretical view as to the place and relation of that class
+in the cultural development. When an explanation of this class
+conservatism is offered, it is commonly the invidious one that
+the wealthy class opposes innovation because it has a vested
+interest, of an unworthy sort, in maintaining the present
+conditions. The explanation here put forward imputes no unworthy
+motive. The opposition of the class to changes in the cultural
+scheme is instinctive, and does not rest primarily on an
+interested calculation of material advantages; it is an
+instinctive revulsion at any departure from the accepted way of
+doing and of looking at things -- a revulsion common to all men
+and only to be overcome by stress of circumstances. All change in
+habits of life and of thought is irksome. The difference in this
+respect between the wealthy and the common run of mankind lies
+not so much in the motive which prompts to conservatism as in the
+degree of exposure to the economic forces that urge a change. The
+members of the wealthy class do not yield to the demand for
+innovation as readily as other men because they are not
+constrained to do so.
+
+ This conservatism of the wealthy class is so obvious a feature
+that it has even come to be recognized as a mark of
+respectability. Since conservatism is a characteristic of the
+wealthier and therefore more reputable portion of the community,
+it has acquired a certain honorific or decorative value. It has
+become prescriptive to such an extent that an adherence to
+conservative views is comprised as a matter of course in our
+notions of respectability; and it is imperatively incumbent on
+all who would lead a blameless life in point of social repute.
+Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous;
+and conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is
+vulgar. The first and most unreflected element in that
+instinctive revulsion and reprobation with which we turn from all
+social innovators is this sense of the essential vulgarity of the
+thing. So that even in cases where one recognizes the substantial
+merits of the case for which the innovator is spokesman -- as may
+easily happen if the evils which he seeks to remedy are
+sufficiently remote in point of time or space or personal contact
+-- still one cannot but be sensible of the fact that the
+innovator is a person with whom it is at least distasteful to be
+associated, and from whose social contact one must shrink.
+Innovation is bad form.
+
+The fact that the usages, actions, and views of the
+well-to-do leisure class acquire the character of a prescriptive
+canon of conduct for the rest of society, gives added weight and
+reach to the conservative influence of that class. It makes it
+incumbent upon all reputable people to follow their lead. So
+that, by virtue of its high position as the avatar of good form,
+the wealthier class comes to exert a retarding influence upon
+social development far in excess of that which the simple
+numerical strength of the class would assign it. Its prescriptive
+example acts to greatly stiffen the resistance of all other
+classes against any innovation, and to fix men's affections upon
+the good institutions handed down from an earlier generation.
+There is a second way in which the influence of the leisure class
+acts in the same direction, so far as concerns hindrance to the
+adoption of a conventional scheme of life more in accord with the
+exigencies of the time. This second method of upper-class guidance
+is not in strict consistency to be brought under the same
+category as the instinctive conservatism and aversion to new
+modes of thought just spoken of; but it may as well be dealt with
+here, since it has at least this much in common with the
+conservative habit of mind that it acts to retard innovation and
+the growth of social structure. The code of proprieties,
+conventionalities, and usages in vogue at any given time and
+among any given people has more or less of the character of an
+organic whole; so that any appreciable change in one point of the
+scheme involves something of a change or readjustment at other
+points also, if not a reorganization all along the line. When a
+change is made which immediately touches only a minor point in
+the scheme, the consequent derangement of the structure of
+conventionalities may be inconspicuous; but even in such a case
+it is safe to say that some derangement of the general scheme,
+more or less far-reaching, will follow. On the other hand, when
+an attempted reform involves the suppression or thorough-going
+remodelling of an institution of first-rate importance in the
+conventional scheme, it is immediately felt that a serious
+derangement of the entire scheme would result; it is felt that a
+readjustment of the structure to the new form taken on by one of
+its chief elements would be a painful and tedious, if not a
+doubtful process.
+
+In order to realize the difficulty which such a radical change in
+any one feature of the conventional scheme of life would involve,
+it is only necessary to suggest the suppression of the monogamic
+family, or of the agnatic system of consanguinity, or of private
+property, or of the theistic faith, in any country of the Western
+civilization; or suppose the suppression of ancestor worship in
+China, or of the caste system in india, or of slavery in Africa,
+or the establishment of equality of the sexes in Mohammedan
+countries. It needs no argument to show that the derangement of
+the general structure of conventionalities in any of these cases
+would be very considerable. In order to effect such an innovation
+a very far-reaching alteration of men's habits of thought would
+be involved also at other points of the scheme than the one
+immediately in question. The aversion to any such innovation
+amounts to a shrinking from an essentially alien scheme of life.
+
+The revulsion felt by good people at any proposed departure from
+the accepted methods of life is a familiar fact of everyday
+experience. It is not unusual to hear those persons who dispense
+salutary advice and admonition to the community express
+themselves forcibly upon the far-reaching pernicious effects
+which the community would suffer from such relatively slight
+changes as the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, an
+increased facility of divorce, adoption of female suffrage,
+prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating
+beverages, abolition or restriction of inheritances, etc. Any one
+of these innovations would, we are told, "shake the social
+structure to its base," "reduce society to chaos," "subvert the
+foundations of morality," "make life intolerable," "confound the
+order of nature," etc. These various locutions are, no doubt, of
+the nature of hyperbole; but, at the same time, like all
+overstatement, they are evidence of a lively sense of the gravity
+of the consequences which they are intended to describe. The
+effect of these and like innovations in deranging the accepted
+scheme of life is felt to be of much graver consequence than the
+simple alteration of an isolated item in a series of contrivances
+for the convenience of men in society. What is true in so obvious
+a degree of innovations of first-rate importance is true in a
+less degree of changes of a smaller immediate importance. The
+aversion to change is in large part an aversion to the bother of
+making the readjustment which any given change will necessitate;
+and this solidarity of the system of institutions of any given
+culture or of any given people strengthens the instinctive
+resistance offered to any change in men's habits of thought, even
+in matters which, taken by themselves, are of minor importance.
+A consequence of this increased reluctance, due to the
+solidarity of human institutions, is that any innovation calls
+for a greater expenditure of nervous energy in making the
+necessary readjustment than would otherwise be the case. It is
+not only that a change in established habits of thought is
+distasteful. The process of readjustment of the accepted theory
+of life involves a degree of mental effort -- a more or less
+protracted and laborious effort to find and to keep one's
+bearings under the altered circumstances. This process requires a
+certain expenditure of energy, and so presumes, for its
+successful accomplishment, some surplus of energy beyond that
+absorbed in the daily struggle for subsistence. Consequently it
+follows that progress is hindered by underfeeding and excessive
+physical hardship, no less effectually than by such a luxurious
+life as will shut out discontent by cutting off the occasion for
+it. The abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are
+entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance, are
+conservative because they cannot afford the effort of taking
+thought for the day after tomorrow; just as the highly prosperous
+are conservative because they have small occasion to be
+discontented with the situation as it stands today.
+
+From this proposition it follows that the institution of a
+leisure class acts to make the lower classes conservative by
+withdrawing from them as much as it may of the means of
+sustenance, and so reducing their consumption, and consequently
+their available energy, to such a point as to make them incapable
+of the effort required for the learning and adoption of new
+habits of thought. The accumulation of wealth at the upper end of
+the pecuniary scale implies privation at the lower end of the
+scale. It is a commonplace that, wherever it occurs, a
+considerable degree of privation among the body of the people is
+a serious obstacle to any innovation.
+
+This direct inhibitory effect of the unequal distribution of
+wealth is seconded by an indirect effect tending to the same
+result. As has already been seen, the imperative example set by
+the upper class in fixing the canons of reputability fosters the
+practice of conspicuous consumption. The prevalence of
+conspicuous consumption as one of the main elements in the
+standard of decency among all classes is of course not traceable
+wholly to the example of the wealthy leisure class, but the
+practice and the insistence on it are no doubt strengthened by
+the example of the leisure class. The requirements of decency in
+this matter are very considerable and very imperative; so that
+even among classes whose pecuniary position is sufficiently
+strong to admit a consumption of goods considerably in excess of
+the subsistence minimum, the disposable surplus left over after
+the more imperative physical needs are satisfied is not
+infrequently diverted to the purpose of a conspicuous decency,
+rather than to added physical comfort and fullness of life.
+Moreover, such surplus energy as is available is also likely to
+be expended in the acquisition of goods for conspicuous
+consumption or conspicuous boarding. The result is that the
+requirements of pecuniary reputability tend (1) to leave but a
+scanty subsistence minimum available for other than conspicuous
+consumption, and (2) to absorb any surplus energy which may be
+available after the bare physical necessities of life have been
+provided for. The outcome of the whole is a strengthening of the
+general conservative attitude of the community. The institution
+of a leisure class hinders cultural development immediately (1)
+by the inertia proper to the class itself, (2) through its
+prescriptive example of conspicuous waste and of conservatism,
+and (3) indirectly through that system of unequal distribution of
+wealth and sustenance on which the institution itself rests.
+To this is to be added that the leisure class has also a material
+interest in leaving things as they are. Under the circumstances
+prevailing at any given time this class is in a privileged
+position, and any departure from the existing order may be
+expected to work to the detriment of the class rather than the
+reverse. The attitude of the class, simply as influenced by its
+class interest, should therefore be to let well-enough alone.
+This interested motive comes in to supplement the strong
+instinctive bias of the class, and so to render it even more
+consistently conservative than it otherwise would be.
+
+All this, of course, has nothing to say in the way of eulogy or
+deprecation of the office of the leisure class as an exponent and
+vehicle of conservatism or reversion in social structure. The
+inhibition which it exercises may be salutary or the reverse.
+Wether it is the one or the other in any given case is a question
+of casuistry rather than of general theory. There may be truth in
+the view (as a question of policy) so often expressed by the
+spokesmen of the conservative element, that without some such
+substantial and consistent resistance to innovation as is offered
+by the conservative well-to-do classes, social innovation and
+experiment would hurry the community into untenable and
+intolerable situations; the only possible result of which would
+be discontent and disastrous reaction. All this, however, is
+beside the present argument.
+
+But apart from all deprecation, and aside from all question as to
+the indispensability of some such check on headlong innovation,
+the leisure class, in the nature of things, consistently acts to
+retard that adjustment to the environment which is called social
+advance or development. The characteristic attitude of the class
+may be summed up in the maxim: "Whatever is, is right" whereas
+the law of natural selection, as applied to human institutions,
+gives the axiom: "Whatever is, is wrong." Not that the
+institutions of today are wholly wrong for the purposes of the
+life of today, but they are, always and in the nature of things,
+wrong to some extent. They are the result of a more or less
+inadequate adjustment of the methods of living to a situation
+which prevailed at some point in the past development; and they
+are therefore wrong by something more than the interval which
+separates the present situation from that of the past. "Right"
+and "wrong" are of course here used without conveying any
+rejection as to what ought or ought not to be. They are applied
+simply from the (morally colorless) evolutionary standpoint, and
+are intended to designate compatibility or incompatibility with
+the effective evolutionary process. The institution of a leisure
+class, by force or class interest and instinct, and by precept
+and prescriptive example, makes for the perpetuation of the
+existing maladjustment of institutions, and even favors a
+reversion to a somewhat more archaic scheme of life; a scheme
+which would be still farther out of adjustment with the
+exigencies of life under the existing situation even than the
+accredited, obsolescent scheme that has come down from the
+immediate past.
+
+But after all has been said on the head of conservation of the
+good old ways, it remains true that institutions change and
+develop. There is a cumulative growth of customs and habits of
+thought; a selective adaptation of conventions and methods of
+life. Something is to be said of the office of the leisure class
+in guiding this growth as well as in retarding it; but little can
+be said here of its relation to institutional growth except as it
+touches the institutions that are primarily and immediately of an
+economic character. These institutions -- the economic structure
+-- may be roughly distinguished into two classes or categories,
+according as they serve one or the other of two divergent
+purposes of economic life.
+
+To adapt the classical terminology, they are institutions of
+acquisition or of production; or to revert to terms already
+employed in a different connection in earlier chapters, they are
+pecuniary or industrial institutions; or in still other terms,
+they are institutions serving either the invidious or the
+non-invidious economic interest. The former category have to do
+with "business," the latter with industry, taking the latter word
+in the mechanical sense. The latter class are not often
+recognized as institutions, in great part because they do not
+immediately concern the ruling class, and are, therefore, seldom
+the subject of legislation or of deliberate convention. When they
+do receive attention they are commonly approached from the
+pecuniary or business side; that being the side or phase of
+economic life that chiefly occupies men's deliberations in our
+time, especially the deliberations of the upper classes. These
+classes have little else than a business interest in things
+economic, and on them at the same time it is chiefly incumbent to
+deliberate upon the community's affairs.
+
+The relation of the leisure (that is, propertied non-industrial)
+class to the economic process is a pecuniary relation -- a
+relation of acquisition, not of production; of exploitation, not
+of serviceability. Indirectly their economic office may, of
+course, be of the utmost importance to the economic life process;
+and it is by no means here intended to depreciate the economic
+function of the propertied class or of the captains of industry.
+The purpose is simply to point out what is the nature of the
+relation of these classes to the industrial process and to
+economic institutions. Their office is of a parasitic character,
+and their interest is to divert what substance they may to their
+own use, and to retain whatever is under their hand. The
+conventions of the business world have grown up under the
+selective surveillance of this principle of predation or
+parasitism. They are conventions of ownership; derivatives, more
+or less remote, of the ancient predatory culture. But these
+pecuniary institutions do not entirely fit the situation of
+today, for they have grown up under a past situation differing
+somewhat from the present. Even for effectiveness in the
+pecuniary way, therefore, they are not as apt as might be. The
+changed industrial life requires changed methods of acquisition;
+and the pecuniary classes have some interest in so adapting the
+pecuniary institutions as to give them the best effect for
+acquisition of private gain that is compatible with the
+continuance of the industrial process out of which this gain
+arises. Hence there is a more or less consistent trend in the
+leisure-class guidance of institutional growth, answering to the
+pecuniary ends which shape leisure-class economic life.
+
+The effect of the pecuniary interest and the pecuniary habit of
+mind upon the growth of institutions is seen in those
+enactments and conventions that make for security of property,
+enforcement of contracts, facility of pecuniary transactions,
+vested interests. Of such bearing are changes affecting
+bankruptcy and receiverships, limited liability, banking and
+currency, coalitions of laborers or employers, trusts and pools.
+The community's institutional furniture of this kind is of
+immediate consequence only to the propertied classes, and in
+proportion as they are propertied; that is to say, in proportion
+as they are to be ranked with the leisure class. But indirectly
+these conventions of business life are of the gravest consequence
+for the industrial process and for the life of the community. And
+in guiding the institutional growth in this respect, the
+pecuniary classes, therefore, serve a purpose of the most serious
+importance to the community, not only in the conservation of the
+accepted social scheme, but also in shaping the industrial
+process proper. The immediate end of this pecuniary institutional
+structure and of its amelioration is the greater facility of
+peaceable and orderly exploitation; but its remoter effects far
+outrun this immediate object. Not only does the more facile
+conduct of business permit industry and extra-industrial life to
+go on with less perturbation; but the resulting elimination of
+disturbances and complications calling for an exercise of astute
+discrimination in everyday affairs acts to make the pecuniary
+class itself superfluous. As fast as pecuniary transactions are
+reduced to routine, the captain of industry can be dispensed
+with. This consummation, it is needless to say, lies yet in the
+indefinite future. The ameliorations wrought in favor of the
+pecuniary interest in modern institutions tend, in another field,
+to substitute the "soulless" joint-stock corporation for the
+captain, and so they make also for the dispensability, of the
+great leisure-class function of ownership. Indirectly, therefore,
+the bent given to the growth of economic institutions by the
+leisure-class influence is of very considerable industrial
+consequence.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Nine
+
+The Conservation of Archaic Traits
+
+The institution of a leisure class has an effect not only upon
+social structure but also upon the individual character of the
+members of society. So soon as a given proclivity or a given
+point of view has won acceptance as an authoritative standard or
+norm of life it will react upon the character of the members of
+the society which has accepted it as a norm. It will to some
+extent shape their habits of thought and will exercise a
+selective surveillance over the development of men's aptitudes
+and inclinations. This effect is wrought partly by a coercive,
+educational adaptation of the habits of all individuals, partly
+by a selective elimination of the unfit individuals and lines of
+descent. Such human material as does not lend itself to the
+methods of life imposed by the accepted scheme suffers more or
+less elimination as well as repression. The principles of
+pecuniary emulation and of industrial exemption have in this way
+been erected into canons of life, and have become coercive
+factors of some importance in the situation to which men have to
+adapt themselves.
+
+These two broad principles of conspicuous waste and
+industrial exemption affect the cultural development both by
+guiding men's habits of thought, and so controlling the growth of
+institutions, and by selectively conserving certain traits of
+human nature that conduce to facility of life under the
+leisure-class scheme, and so controlling the effective temper of
+the community. The proximate tendency of the institution of a
+leisure class in shaping human character runs in the direction of
+spiritual survival and reversion. Its effect upon the temper of a
+community is of the nature of an arrested spiritual development.
+In the later culture especially, the institution has, on the
+whole, a conservative trend. This proposition is familiar enough
+in substance, but it may to many have the appearance of novelty
+in its present application. Therefore a summary review of its
+logical grounds may not be uncalled for, even at the risk of some
+tedious repetition and formulation of commonplaces.
+
+Social evolution is a process of selective adaptation of
+temperament and habits of thought under the stress of the
+circumstances of associated life. The adaptation of habits of
+thought is the growth of institutions. But along with the growth
+of institutions has gone a change of a more substantial
+character. Not only have the habits of men changed with the
+changing exigencies of the situation, but these changing
+exigencies have also brought about a correlative change in human
+nature. The human material of society itself varies with the
+changing conditions of life. This variation of human nature is
+held by the later ethnologists to be a process of selection
+between several relatively stable and persistent ethnic types or
+ethnic elements. Men tend to revert or to breed true, more or
+less closely, to one or another of certain types of human nature
+that have in their main features been fixed in approximate
+conformity to a situation in the past which differed from the
+situation of today. There are several of these relatively stable
+ethnic types of mankind comprised in the populations of the
+Western culture. These ethnic types survive in the race
+inheritance today, not as rigid and invariable moulds, each of a
+single precise and specific pattern, but in the form of a greater
+or smaller number of variants. Some variation of the ethnic types
+has resulted under the protracted selective process to which the
+several types and their hybrids have been subjected during the
+prehistoric and historic growth of culture.
+
+This necessary variation of the types themselves, due to a
+selective process of considerable duration and of a consistent
+trend, has not been sufficiently noticed by the writers who have
+discussed ethnic survival. The argument is here concerned with
+two main divergent variants of human nature resulting from this,
+relatively late, selective adaptation of the ethnic types
+comprised in the Western culture; the point of interest being the
+probable effect of the situation of today in furthering variation
+along one or the other of these two divergent lines.
+
+The ethnological position may be briefly summed up; and in order
+to avoid any but the most indispensable detail the schedule of
+types and variants and the scheme of reversion and survival in
+which they are concerned are here presented with a diagrammatic
+meagerness and simplicity which would not be admissible for any
+other purpose. The man of our industrial communities tends to
+breed true to one or the other of three main ethic types; the
+dolichocephalic-blond, the brachycephalic-brunette, and the
+Mediterranean -- disregarding minor and outlying elements of our
+culture. But within each of these main ethnic types the reversion
+tends to one or the other of at least two main directions of
+variation; the peaceable or antepredatory variant and the
+predatory variant. The former of these two characteristic
+variants is nearer to the generic type in each case, being the
+reversional representative of its type as it stood at the
+earliest stage of associated life of which there is available
+evidence, either archaeological or psychological. This variant is
+taken to represent the ancestors of existing civilized man at the
+peaceable, savage phase of life which preceded the predatory
+culture, the regime of status, and the growth of pecuniary
+emulation. The second or predatory variant of the types is taken
+to be a survival of a more recent modification of the main ethnic
+types and their hybrids -- of these types as they were modified,
+mainly by a selective adaptation, under the discipline of the
+predatory culture and the latter emulative culture of the
+quasi-peaceable stage, or the pecuniary culture proper.
+
+Under the recognized laws of heredity there may be a survival
+from a more or less remote past phase. In the ordinary, average,
+or normal case, if the type has varied, the traits of the type
+are transmitted approximately as they have stood in the recent
+past -- which may be called the hereditary present. For the
+purpose in hand this hereditary present is represented by the
+later predatory and the quasi-peaceable culture.
+
+It is to the variant of human nature which is characteristic of
+this recent -- hereditarily still existing -- predatory or
+quasi-predatory culture that the modern civilized man tends to
+breed true in the common run of cases. This proposition requires
+some qualification so far as concerns the descendants of the
+servile or repressed classes of barbarian times, but the
+qualification necessary is probably not so great as might at
+first thought appear. Taking the population as a whole, this
+predatory, emulative variant does not seem to have attained a
+high degree of consistency or stability. That is to say, the
+human nature inherited by modern Occidental man is not nearly
+uniform in respect of the range or the relative strength of the
+various aptitudes and propensities which go to make it up. The
+man of the hereditary present is slightly archaic as judged for
+the purposes of the latest exigencies of associated life. And the
+type to which the modern man chiefly tends to revert under the
+law of variation is a somewhat more archaic human nature. On the
+other hand, to judge by the reversional traits which show
+themselves in individuals that vary from the prevailing predatory
+style of temperament, the ante-predatory variant seems to have a
+greater stability and greater symmetry in the distribution or
+relative force of its temperamental elements.
+
+This divergence of inherited human nature, as between an earlier
+and a later variant of the ethnic type to which the individual
+tends to breed true, is traversed and obscured by a similar
+divergence between the two or three main ethnic types that go to
+make up the Occidental populations. The individuals in these
+communities are conceived to be, in virtually every
+instance, hybrids of the prevailing ethnic elements combined in
+the most varied proportions; with the result that they tend to
+take back to one or the other of the component ethnic types.
+These ethnic types differ in temperament in a way somewhat
+similar to the difference between the predatory and the
+antepredatory variants of the types; the dolicho-blond type
+showing more of the characteristics of the predatory temperament
+-- or at least more of the violent disposition -- than the
+brachycephalic-brunette type, and especially more than the
+Mediterranean. When the growth of institutions or of the
+effective sentiment of a given community shows a divergence from
+the predatory human nature, therefore, it is impossible to say
+with certainty that such a divergence indicates a reversion to
+the ante-predatory variant. It may be due to an increasing
+dominance of the one or the other of the "lower" ethnic elements
+in the population. Still, although the evidence is not as
+conclusive as might be desired, there are indications that the
+variations in the effective temperament of modern communities is
+not altogether due to a selection between stable ethnic types. It
+seems to be to some appreciable extent a selection between the
+predatory and the peaceable variants of the several types.
+This conception of contemporary human evolution is not
+indispensable to the discussion. The general conclusions reached
+by the use of these concepts of selective adaptation would remain
+substantially true if the earlier, Darwinian and Spencerian,
+terms and concepts were substituted. Under the circumstances,
+some latitude may be admissible in the use of terms. The word
+"type" is used loosely, to denote variations of temperament which
+the ethnologists would perhaps recognize only as trivial variants
+of the type rather than as distinct ethnic types. Wherever a
+closer discrimination seems essential to the argument, the effort
+to make such a closer discrimination will be evident from the
+context.
+
+The ethnic types of today, then, are variants of the
+primitive racial types. They have suffered some alteration, and
+have attained some degree of fixity in their altered form, under
+the discipline of the barbarian culture. The man of the
+hereditary present is the barbarian variant, servile or
+aristocratic, of the ethnic elements that constitute him. But
+this barbarian variant has not attained the highest degree of
+homogeneity or of stability. The barbarian culture -- the
+predatory and quasi-peaceable cultural stages -- though of great
+absolute duration, has been neither protracted enough nor
+invariable enough in character to give an extreme fixity of type.
+Variations from the barbarian human nature occur with some
+frequency, and these cases of variation are becoming more
+noticeable today, because the conditions of modern life no longer
+act consistently to repress departures from the barbarian normal.
+The predatory temperament does not lead itself to all the
+purposes of modern life, and more especially not to modern
+industry.
+
+Departures from the human nature of the hereditary present are
+most frequently of the nature of reversions to an earlier variant
+of the type. This earlier variant is represented by the
+temperament which characterizes the primitive phase of peaceable
+savagery. The circumstances of life and the ends of effort that
+prevailed before the advent of the barbarian culture, shaped
+human nature and fixed it as regards certain fundamental traits.
+And it is to these ancient, generic features that modern men are
+prone to take back in case of variation from the human nature of
+the hereditary present. The conditions under which men lived in
+the most primitive stages of associated life that can properly be
+called human, seem to have been of a peaceful kind; and the
+character -- the temperament and spiritual attitude of men under
+these early conditions or environment and institutions seems to
+have been of a peaceful and unaggressive, not to say an indolent,
+cast. For the immediate purpose this peaceable cultural stage may
+be taken to mark the initial phase of social development. So far
+as concerns the present argument, the dominant spiritual feature
+of this presumptive initial phase of culture seems to have been
+an unreflecting, unformulated sense of group solidarity, largely
+expressing itself in a complacent, but by no means strenuous,
+sympathy with all facility of human life, and an uneasy revulsion
+against apprehended inhibition or futility of life. Through its
+ubiquitous presence in the habits of thought of the
+ante-predatory savage man, this pervading but uneager sense of
+the generically useful seems to have exercised an appreciable
+constraining force upon his life and upon the manner of his
+habitual contact with other members of the group.
+
+The traces of this initial, undifferentiated peaceable phase of
+culture seem faint and doubtful if we look merely to such
+categorical evidence of its existence as is afforded by usages
+and views in vogue within the historical present, whether in
+civilized or in rude communities; but less dubious evidence of
+its existence is to be found in psychological survivals, in the
+way of persistent and pervading traits of human character. These
+traits survive perhaps in an especial degree among those ethic
+elements which were crowded into the background during the
+predatory culture. Traits that were suited to the earlier habits
+of life then became relatively useless in the individual struggle
+for existence. And those elements of the population, or those
+ethnic groups, which were by temperament less fitted to the
+predatory life were repressed and pushed into the background.
+On the transition to the predatory culture the character of the
+struggle for existence changed in some degree from a struggle of
+the group against a non-human environment to a struggle against a
+human environment. This change was accompanied by an increasing
+antagonism and consciousness of antagonism between the individual
+members of the group. The conditions of success within the group,
+as well as the conditions of the survival of the group, changed
+in some measure; and the dominant spiritual attitude for the
+group gradually changed, and brought a different range of
+aptitudes and propensities into the position of legitimate
+dominance in the accepted scheme of life. Among these archaic
+traits that are to be regarded as survivals from the peaceable
+cultural phase, are that instinct of race solidarity which we
+call conscience, including the sense of truthfulness and equity,
+and the instinct of workmanship, in its naive, non-invidious
+expression.
+
+Under the guidance of the later biological and psychological
+science, human nature will have to be restated in terms of habit;
+and in the restatement, this, in outline, appears to be the only
+assignable place and ground of these traits. These habits of life
+are of too pervading a character to be ascribed to the influence
+of a late or brief discipline. The ease with which they are
+temporarily overborne by the special exigencies of recent and
+modern life argues that these habits are the surviving effects of
+a discipline of extremely ancient date, from the teachings of
+which men have frequently been constrained to depart in detail
+under the altered circumstances of a later time; and the almost
+ubiquitous fashion in which they assert themselves whenever the
+pressure of special exigencies is relieved, argues that the
+process by which the traits were fixed and incorporated into the
+spiritual make-up of the type must have lasted for a relatively
+very long time and without serious intermission. The point is not
+seriously affected by any question as to whether it was a process
+of habituation in the old-fashioned sense of the word or a
+process of selective adaptation of the race.
+
+The character and exigencies of life, under that regime of status
+and of individual and class antithesis which covers the entire
+interval from the beginning of predatory culture to the present,
+argue that the traits of temperament here under discussion could
+scarcely have arisen and acquired fixity during that interval. It
+is entirely probable that these traits have come down from an
+earlier method of life, and have survived through the interval of
+predatory and quasi-peaceable culture in a condition of
+incipient, or at least imminent, desuetude, rather than that they
+have been brought out and fixed by this later culture. They
+appear to be hereditary characteristics of the race, and to have
+persisted in spite of the altered requirements of success under
+the predatory and the later pecuniary stages of culture. They
+seem to have persisted by force of the tenacity of transmission
+that belongs to an hereditary trait that is present in some
+degree in every member of the species, and which therefore rests
+on a broad basis of race continuity.
+
+Such a generic feature is not readily eliminated, even under a
+process of selection so severe and protracted as that to which
+the traits here under discussion were subjected during the
+predatory and quasi-peaceable stages. These peaceable traits are
+in great part alien to the methods and the animus of barbarian
+life. The salient characteristic of the barbarian culture is an
+unremitting emulation and antagonism between classes and between
+individuals. This emulative discipline favors those individuals
+and lines of descent which possess the peaceable savage traits in
+a relatively slight degree. It therefore tends to eliminate these
+traits, and it has apparently weakened them, in an appreciable
+degree, in the populations that have been subject to it. Even
+where the extreme penalty for non-conformity to the barbarian
+type of temperament is not paid, there results at least a more or
+less consistent repression of the non-conforming individuals and
+lines of descent. Where life is largely a struggle between
+individuals within the group, the possession of the ancient
+peaceable traits in a marked degree would hamper an individual in
+the struggle for life.
+
+Under any known phase of culture, other or later than the
+presumptive initial phase here spoken of, the gifts of
+good-nature, equity, and indiscriminate sympathy do not
+appreciably further the life of the individual. Their possession
+may serve to protect the individual from hard usage at the hands
+of a majority that insists on a modicum of these ingredients in
+their ideal of a normal man; but apart from their indirect and
+negative effect in this way, the individual fares better under
+the regime of competition in proportion as he has less of these
+gifts. Freedom from scruple, from sympathy, honesty and regard
+for life, may, within fairly wide limits, be said to further the
+success of the individual in the pecuniary culture. The highly
+successful men of all times have commonly been of this type;
+except those whose success has not been scored in terms of either
+wealth or power. It is only within narrow limits, and then only
+in a Pickwickian sense, that honesty is the best policy.
+
+As seen from the point of view of life under modern
+civilized conditions in an enlightened community of the Western
+culture, the primitive, ante-predatory savage, whose character it
+has been attempted to trace in outline above, was not a great
+success. Even for the purposes of that hypothetical culture to
+which his type of human nature owes what stability it has -- even
+for the ends of the peaceable savage group -- this primitive man
+has quite as many and as conspicuous economic failings as he has
+economic virtues -- as should be plain to any one whose sense of
+the case is not biased by leniency born of a fellow-feeling. At
+his best he is "a clever, good-for-nothing fellow." The
+shortcomings of this presumptively primitive type of character
+are weakness, inefficiency, lack of initiative and ingenuity, and
+a yielding and indolent amiability, together with a lively but
+inconsequential animistic sense. Along with these traits go
+certain others which have some value for the collective life
+process, in the sense that they further the facility of life in
+the group. These traits are truthfulness, peaceableness,
+good-will, and a non-emulative, non-invidious interest in men and
+things.
+
+With the advent of the predatory stage of life there comes a
+change in the requirements of the successful human character.
+Men's habits of life are required to adapt themselves to new
+exigencies under a new scheme of human relations. The same
+unfolding of energy, which had previously found expression in the
+traits of savage life recited above, is now required to find
+expression along a new line of action, in a new group of habitual
+responses to altered stimuli. The methods which, as counted in
+terms of facility of life, answered measurably under the earlier
+conditions, are no longer adequate under the new conditions. The
+earlier situation was characterized by a relative absence of
+antagonism or differentiation of interests, the later situation
+by an emulation constantly increasing in relative absence of
+antagonism or differentiation of interests, the later situation
+by an emulation constantly increasing in intensity and narrowing
+in scope. The traits which characterize the predatory and
+subsequent stages of culture, and which indicate the types of man
+best fitted to survive under the regime of status, are (in their
+primary expression) ferocity, self-seeking, clannishness, and
+disingenuousness -- a free resort to force and fraud.
+
+Under the severe and protracted discipline of the regime of
+competition, the selection of ethnic types has acted to give a
+somewhat pronounced dominance to these traits of character, by
+favoring the survival of those ethnic elements which are most
+richly endowed in these respects. At the same time the earlier --
+acquired, more generic habits of the race have never ceased to
+have some usefulness for the purpose of the life of the
+collectivity and have never fallen into definitive abeyance.
+It may be worth while to point out that the dolicho-blond type of
+European man seems to owe much of its dominating
+influence and its masterful position in the recent culture to its
+possessing the characteristics of predatory man in an exceptional
+degree. These spiritual traits, together with a large endowment
+of physical energy -- itself probably a result of selection
+between groups and between lines of descent -- chiefly go to
+place any ethnic element in the position of a leisure or master
+class, especially during the earlier phases of the development of
+the institution of a leisure class. This need not mean that
+precisely the same complement of aptitudes in any individual
+would insure him an eminent personal success. Under the
+competitive regime, the conditions of success for the individual
+are not necessarily the same as those for a class. The success of
+a class or party presumes a strong element of clannishness, or
+loyalty to a chief, or adherence to a tenet; whereas the
+competitive individual can best achieve his ends if he combines
+the barbarian's energy, initiative, self-seeking and
+disingenuousness with the savage's lack of loyalty or
+clannishness. It may be remarked by the way, that the men who
+have scored a brilliant (Napoleonic) success on the basis of an
+impartial self-seeking and absence of scruple, have not
+uncommonly shown more of the physical characteristics of the
+brachycephalic-brunette than of the dolicho-blond. The greater
+proportion of moderately successful individuals, in a
+self-seeking way, however, seem, in physique, to belong to the
+last-named ethnic element.
+
+The temperament induced by the predatory habit of life makes for
+the survival and fullness of life of the individual under a
+regime of emulation; at the same time it makes for the survival
+and success of the group if the group's life as a collectivity is
+also predominantly a life of hostile competition with other
+groups. But the evolution of economic life in the industrially
+more mature communities has now begun to take such a turn that
+the interest of the community no longer coincides with the
+emulative interests of the individual. In their corporate
+capacity, these advanced industrial communities are ceasing to be
+competitors for the means of life or for the right to live --
+except in so far as the predatory propensities of their ruling
+classes keep up the tradition of war and rapine. These
+communities are no longer hostile to one another by force of
+circumstances, other than the circumstances of tradition and
+temperament. Their material interests -- apart, possibly, from
+the interests of the collective good fame -- are not only no
+longer incompatible, but the success of any one of the
+communities unquestionably furthers the fullness of life of any
+other community in the group, for the present and for an
+incalculable time to come. No one of them any longer has any
+material interest in getting the better of any other. The same is
+not true in the same degree as regards individuals and their
+relations to one another.
+
+The collective interests of any modern community center in
+industrial efficiency. The individual is serviceable for the ends
+of the community somewhat in proportion to his efficiency in the
+productive employments vulgarly so called. This collective
+interest is best served by honesty, diligence, peacefulness,
+good-will, an absence of self-seeking, and an habitual
+recognition and apprehension of causal sequence, without
+admixture of animistic belief and without a sense of dependence
+on any preternatural intervention in the course of events. Not
+much is to be said for the beauty, moral excellence, or general
+worthiness and reputability of such a prosy human nature as these
+traits imply; and there is little ground of enthusiasm for the
+manner of collective life that would result from the prevalence
+of these traits in unmitigated dominance. But that is beside the
+point. The successful working of a modern industrial community is
+best secured where these traits concur, and it is attained in the
+degree in which the human material is characterized by their
+possession. Their presence in some measure is required in order
+to have a tolerable adjustment to the circumstances of the modern
+industrial situation. The complex, comprehensive, essentially
+peaceable, and highly organized mechanism of the modern
+industrial community works to the best advantage when these
+traits, or most of them, are present in the highest practicable
+degree. These traits are present in a markedly less degree in the
+man of the predatory type than is useful for the purposes of the
+modern collective life.
+
+On the other hand, the immediate interest of the individual under
+the competitive regime is best served by shrewd trading and
+unscrupulous management. The characteristics named above as
+serving the interests of the community are disserviceable to the
+individual, rather than otherwise. The presence of these
+aptitudes in his make-up diverts his energies to other ends than
+those of pecuniary gain; and also in his pursuit of gain they
+lead him to seek gain by the indirect and ineffectual channels of
+industry, rather than by a free and unfaltering career of sharp
+practice. The industrial aptitudes are pretty consistently a
+hindrance to the individual. Under the regime of emulation the
+members of a modern industrial community are rivals, each of whom
+will best attain his individual and immediate advantage if,
+through an exceptional exemption from scruple, he is able
+serenely to overreach and injure his fellows when the chance
+offers.
+
+It has already been noticed that modern economic institutions
+fall into two roughly distinct categories -- the pecuniary and
+the industrial. The like is true of employments. Under the former
+head are employments that have to do with ownership or
+acquisition; under the latter head, those that have to do with
+workmanship or production. As was found in speaking of the growth
+of institutions, so with regard to employments. The economic
+interests of the leisure class lie in the pecuniary employments;
+those of the working classes lie in both classes of employments,
+but chiefly in the industrial. Entrance to the leisure class lies
+through the pecuniary employments.
+
+These two classes of employment differ materially in respect of
+the aptitudes required for each; and the training which they give
+similarly follows two divergent lines. The discipline of the
+pecuniary employments acts to conserve and to cultivate certain
+of the predatory aptitudes and the predatory animus. It does this
+both by educating those individuals and classes who are occupied
+with these employments and by selectively repressing and
+eliminating those individuals and lines of descent that are unfit
+in this respect. So far as men's habits of thought are shaped by
+the competitive process of acquisition and tenure; so far as
+their economic functions are comprised within the range of
+ownership of wealth as conceived in terms of exchange value, and
+its management and financiering through a permutation of values;
+so far their experience in economic life favors the survival and
+accentuation of the predatory temperament and habits of thought.
+Under the modern, peaceable system, it is of course the peaceable
+range of predatory habits and aptitudes that is chiefly fostered
+by a life of acquisition. That is to say, the pecuniary
+employments give proficiency in the general line of practices
+comprised under fraud, rather than in those that belong under the
+more archaic method of forcible seizure.
+
+These pecuniary employments, tending to conserve the
+predatory temperament, are the employments which have to do with
+ownership -- the immediate function of the leisure class proper
+-- and the subsidiary functions concerned with acquisition and
+accumulation. These cover the class of persons and that range of
+duties in the economic process which have to do with the
+ownership of enterprises engaged in competitive industry;
+especially those fundamental lines of economic management which
+are classed as financiering operations. To these may be added the
+greater part of mercantile occupations. In their best and
+clearest development these duties make up the economic office of
+the "captain of industry." The captain of industry is an astute
+man rather than an ingenious one, and his captaincy is a
+pecuniary rather than an industrial captaincy. Such
+administration of industry as he exercises is commonly of a
+permissive kind. The mechanically effective details of production
+and of industrial organization are delegated to subordinates of a
+less "practical" turn of mind -- men who are possessed of a gift
+for workmanship rather than administrative ability. So far as
+regards their tendency in shaping human nature by education and
+selection, the common run of non-economic employments are to be
+classed with the pecuniary employments. Such are politics and
+ecclesiastical and military employments.
+
+The pecuniary employments have also the sanction of
+reputability in a much higher degree than the industrial
+employments. In this way the leisure-class standards of good
+repute come in to sustain the prestige of those aptitudes that
+serve the invidious purpose; and the leisure-class scheme of
+decorous living, therefore, also furthers the survival and
+culture of the predatory traits. Employments fall into a
+hierarchical gradation of reputability. Those which have to do
+immediately with ownership on a large scale are the most
+reputable of economic employments proper. Next to these in good
+repute come those employments that are immediately subservient to
+ownership and financiering -- such as banking and the law.
+Banking employments also carry a suggestion of large ownership,
+and this fact is doubtless accountable for a share of the
+prestige that attaches to the business. The profession of the law
+does not imply large ownership; but since no taint of
+usefulness, for other than the competitive purpose, attaches to
+the lawyer's trade, it grades high in the conventional scheme.
+The lawyer is exclusively occupied with the details of predatory
+fraud, either in achieving or in checkmating chicanery, and
+success in the profession is therefore accepted as marking a
+large endowment of that barbarian astuteness which has always
+commanded men's respect and fear. Mercantile pursuits are only
+half-way reputable, unless they involve a large element of
+ownership and a small element of usefulness. They grade high or
+low somewhat in proportion as they serve the higher or the lower
+needs; so that the business of retailing the vulgar necessaries
+of life descends to the level of the handicrafts and factory
+labor. Manual labor, or even the work of directing mechanical
+processes, is of course on a precarious footing as regards
+respectability. A qualification is necessary as regards the
+discipline given by the pecuniary employments. As the scale of
+industrial enterprise grows larger, pecuniary management comes to
+bear less of the character of chicanery and shrewd competition in
+detail. That is to say, for an ever-increasing proportion of the
+persons who come in contact with this phase of economic life,
+business reduces itself to a routine in which there is less
+immediate suggestion of overreaching or exploiting a competitor.
+The consequent exemption from predatory habits extends chiefly to
+subordinates employed in business. The duties of ownership and
+administration are virtually untouched by this qualification.
+The case is different as regards those individuals or classes who
+are immediately occupied with the technique and manual operations
+of production. Their daily life is not in the same degree a
+course of habituation to the emulative and invidious motives and
+maneuvers of the pecuniary side of industry. They are
+consistently held to the apprehension and coordination of
+mechanical facts and sequences, and to their appreciation and
+utilization for the purposes of human life. So far as concerns
+this portion of the population, the educative and selective
+action of the industrial process with which they are immediately
+in contact acts to adapt their habits of thought to the
+non-invidious purposes of the collective life. For them,
+therefore, it hastens the obsolescence of the distinctively
+predatory aptitudes and propensities carried over by heredity and
+tradition from the barbarian past of the race.
+
+The educative action of the economic life of the community,
+therefore, is not of a uniform kind throughout all its
+manifestations. That range of economic activities which is
+concerned immediately with pecuniary competition has a tendency
+to conserve certain predatory traits; while those industrial
+occupations which have to do immediately with the production of
+goods have in the main the contrary tendency. But with regard to
+the latter class of employments it is to be noticed in
+qualification that the persons engaged in them are nearly all to
+some extent also concerned with matters of pecuniary competition
+(as, for instance, in the competitive fixing of wages and
+salaries, in the purchase of goods for consumption, etc.).
+Therefore the distinction here made between classes of
+employments is by no means a hard and fast distinction between
+classes of persons.
+
+The employments of the leisure classes in modern industry are
+such as to keep alive certain of the predatory habits and
+aptitudes. So far as the members of those classes take part in
+the industrial process, their training tends to conserve in them
+the barbarian temperament. But there is something to be said on
+the other side. Individuals so placed as to be exempt from strain
+may survive and transmit their characteristics even if they
+differ widely from the average of the species both in physique
+and in spiritual make-up. The chances for a survival and
+transmission of atavistic traits are greatest in those classes
+that are most sheltered from the stress of circumstances. The
+leisure class is in some degree sheltered from the stress of the
+industrial situation, and should, therefore, afford an
+exceptionally great proportion of reversions to the peaceable or
+savage temperament. It should be possible for such aberrant or
+atavistic individuals to unfold their life activity on
+ante-predatory lines without suffering as prompt a repression or
+elimination as in the lower walks of life.
+
+Something of the sort seems to be true in fact. There is, for
+instance, an appreciable proportion of the upper classes whose
+inclinations lead them into philanthropic work, and there is a
+considerable body of sentiment in the class going to support
+efforts of reform and amelioration. And much of this
+philanthropic and reformatory effort, moreover, bears the marks
+of that amiable "cleverness" and incoherence that is
+characteristic of the primitive savage. But it may still be
+doubtful whether these facts are evidence of a larger proportion
+of reversions in the higher than in the lower strata, even if the
+same inclinations were present in the impecunious classes, it
+would not as easily find expression there; since those classes
+lack the means and the time and energy to give effect to their
+inclinations in this respect. The prima facie evidence of the
+facts can scarcely go unquestioned.
+
+In further qualification it is to be noted that the leisure class
+of today is recruited from those who have been successful in a
+pecuniary way, and who, therefore, are presumably endowed with
+more than an even complement of the predatory traits. Entrance
+into the leisure class lies through the pecuniary employments,
+and these employments, by selection and adaptation, act to admit
+to the upper levels only those lines of descent that are
+pecuniarily fit to survive under the predatory test. And so soon
+as a case of reversion to non-predatory human nature shows itself
+on these upper levels, it is commonly weeded out and thrown back
+to the lower pecuniary levels. In order to hold its place in the
+class, a stock must have the pecuniary temperament; otherwise its
+fortune would be dissipated and it would presently lose caste.
+Instances of this kind are sufficiently frequent. The
+constituency of the leisure class is kept up by a continual
+selective process, whereby the individuals and lines of descent
+that are eminently fitted for an aggressive pecuniary competition
+are withdraw from the lower classes. In order to reach the upper
+levels the aspirant must have, not only a fair average complement
+of the pecuniary aptitudes, but he must have these gifts in such
+an eminent degree as to overcome very material difficulties that
+stand in the way of his ascent. Barring accidents, the nouveaux
+arrivés are a picked body.
+
+This process of selective admission has, of course, always been
+going on; ever since the fashion of pecuniary emulation set in --
+which is much the same as saying, ever since the
+institution of a leisure class was first installed. But the
+precise ground of selection has not always been the same, and the
+selective process has therefore not always given the same
+results. In the early barbarian, or predatory stage proper, the
+test of fitness was prowess, in the naive sense of the word. To
+gain entrance to the class, the candidate had to be gifted with
+clannishness, massiveness, ferocity, unscrupulousness, and
+tenacity of purpose. These were the qualities that counted toward
+the accumulation and continued tenure of wealth. The economic
+basis of the leisure class, then as later, was the possession of
+wealth; but the methods of accumulating wealth, and the gifts
+required for holding it, have changed in some degree since the
+early days of the predatory culture. In consequence of the
+selective process the dominant traits of the early barbarian
+leisure class were bold aggression, an alert sense of status, and
+a free resort to fraud. The members of the class held their place
+by tenure of prowess. In the later barbarian culture society
+attained settled methods of acquisition and possession under the
+quasi-peaceable regime of status. Simple aggression and
+unrestrained violence in great measure gave place to shrewd
+practice and chicanery, as the best approved method of
+accumulating wealth. A different range of aptitudes and
+propensities would then be conserved in the leisure class.
+Masterful aggression, and the correlative massiveness, together
+with a ruthlessly consistent sense of status, would still count
+among the most splendid traits of the class. These have remained
+in our traditions as the typical "aristocratic virtues." But with
+these were associated an increasing complement of the less
+obtrusive pecuniary virtues; such as providence, prudence, and
+chicanery. As time has gone on, and the modern peaceable stage of
+pecuniary culture has been approached, the last-named range of
+aptitudes and habits has gained in relative effectiveness for
+pecuniary ends, and they have counted for relatively more in the
+selective process under which admission is gained and place is
+held in the leisure class.
+
+The ground of selection has changed, until the aptitudes which
+now qualify for admission to the class are the pecuniary
+aptitudes only. What remains of the predatory barbarian traits is
+the tenacity of purpose or consistency of aim which distinguished
+the successful predatory barbarian from the peaceable savage whom
+he supplanted. But this trait can not be said characteristically
+to distinguish the pecuniarily successful upper-class man from
+the rank and file of the industrial classes. The training and the
+selection to which the latter are exposed in modern industrial
+life give a similarly decisive weight to this trait. Tenacity of
+purpose may rather be said to distinguish both these classes from
+two others; the shiftless ne'er do-well and the lower-class
+delinquent. In point of natural endowment the pecuniary man
+compares with the delinquent in much the same way as the
+industrial man compares with the good-natured shiftless
+dependent. The ideal pecuniary man is like the ideal delinquent
+in his unscrupulous conversion of goods and persons to his own
+ends, and in a callous disregard of the feelings and wishes of
+others and of the remoter effects of his actions; but he is
+unlike him in possessing a keener sense of status, and in working
+more consistently and farsightedly to a remoter end. The kinship
+of the two types of temperament is further shown in a proclivity
+to "sport" and gambling, and a relish of aimless emulation. The
+ideal pecuniary man also shows a curious kinship with the
+delinquent in one of the concomitant variations of the predatory
+human nature. The delinquent is very commonly of a superstitious
+habit of mind; he is a great believer in luck, spells, divination
+and destiny, and in omens and shamanistic ceremony. Where
+circumstances are favorable, this proclivity is apt to express
+itself in a certain servile devotional fervor and a punctilious
+attention to devout observances; it may perhaps be better
+characterized as devoutness than as religion. At this point the
+temperament of the delinquent has more in common with the
+pecuniary and leisure classes than with the industrial man or
+with the class of shiftless dependents.
+
+Life in a modern industrial community, or in other words life
+under the pecuniary culture, acts by a process of selection to
+develop and conserve a certain range of aptitudes and
+propensities. The present tendency of this selective process is
+not simply a reversion to a given, immutable ethnic type. It
+tends rather to a modification of human nature differing in some
+respects from any of the types or variants transmitted out of the
+past. The objective point of the evolution is not a single one.
+The temperament which the evolution acts to establish as normal
+differs from any one of the archaic variants of human nature in
+its greater stability of aim -- greater singleness of purpose and
+greater persistence in effort. So far as concerns economic
+theory, the objective point of the selective process is on the
+whole single to this extent; although there are minor tendencies
+of considerable importance diverging from this line of
+development. But apart from this general trend the line of
+development is not single. As concerns economic theory, the
+development in other respects runs on two divergent lines. So far
+as regards the selective conservation of capacities or aptitudes
+in individuals, these two lines may be called the pecuniary and
+the industrial. As regards the conservation of propensities,
+spiritual attitude, or animus, the two may be called the
+invidious or self-regarding and the non-invidious or economical.
+As regards the intellectual or cognitive bent of the two
+directions of growth, the former may be characterized as the
+personal standpoint, of conation, qualitative relation, status,
+or worth; the latter as the impersonal standpoint, of sequence,
+quantitative relation, mechanical efficiency, or use.
+
+The pecuniary employments call into action chiefly the former of
+these two ranges of aptitudes and propensities, and act
+selectively to conserve them in the population. The industrial
+employments, on the other hand, chiefly exercise the latter
+range, and act to conserve them. An exhaustive psychological
+analysis will show that each of these two ranges of aptitudes and
+propensities is but the multiform expression of a given
+temperamental bent. By force of the unity or singleness of the
+individual, the aptitudes, animus, and interests comprised in the
+first-named range belong together as expressions of a given
+variant of human nature. The like is true of the latter range.
+The two may be conceived as alternative directions of human life,
+in such a way that a given individual inclines more or less
+consistently to the one or the other. The tendency of the
+pecuniary life is, in a general way, to conserve the barbarian
+temperament, but with the substitution of fraud and prudence, or
+administrative ability, in place of that predilection for
+physical damage that characterizes the early barbarian. This
+substitution of chicanery in place of devastation takes place
+only in an uncertain degree. Within the pecuniary employments the
+selective action runs pretty consistently in this direction, but
+the discipline of pecuniary life, outside the competition for
+gain, does not work consistently to the same effect. The
+discipline of modern life in the consumption of time and goods
+does not act unequivocally to eliminate the aristocratic virtues
+or to foster the bourgeois virtues. The conventional scheme of
+decent living calls for a considerable exercise of the earlier
+barbarian traits. Some details of this traditional scheme of
+life, bearing on this point, have been noticed in earlier
+chapters under the head of leisure, and further details will be
+shown in later chapters.
+
+From what has been said, it appears that the leisure-class life
+and the leisure-class scheme of life should further the
+conservation of the barbarian temperament; chiefly of the
+quasi-peaceable, or bourgeois, variant, but also in some measure
+of the predatory variant. In the absence of disturbing factors,
+therefore, it should be possible to trace a difference of
+temperament between the classes of society. The aristocratic and
+the bourgeois virtues -- that is to say the destructive and
+pecuniary traits -- should be found chiefly among the upper
+classes, and the industrial virtues -- that is to say the
+peaceable traits -- chiefly among the classes given to mechanical
+industry.
+
+In a general and uncertain way this holds true, but the test is
+not so readily applied nor so conclusive as might be wished.
+There are several assignable reasons for its partial failure. All
+classes are in a measure engaged in the pecuniary struggle, and
+in all classes the possession of the pecuniary traits counts
+towards the success and survival of the individual. Wherever the
+pecuniary culture prevails, the selective process by which men's
+habits of thought are shaped, and by which the survival of rival
+lines of descent is decided, proceeds proximately on the basis of
+fitness for acquisition. Consequently, if it were not for the
+fact that pecuniary efficiency is on the whole incompatible with
+industrial efficiency, the selective action of all occupations
+would tend to the unmitigated dominance of the pecuniary
+temperament. The result would be the installation of what has
+been known as the "economic man," as the normal and definitive
+type of human nature. But the "economic man," whose only interest
+is the self-regarding one and whose only human trait is prudence
+is useless for the purposes of modern industry.
+
+The modern industry requires an impersonal, non-invidious
+interest in the work in hand. Without this the elaborate
+processes of industry would be impossible, and would, indeed,
+never have been conceived. This interest in work differentiates
+the workman from the criminal on the one hand, and from the
+captain of industry on the other. Since work must be done in
+order to the continued life of the community, there results a
+qualified selection favoring the spiritual aptitude for work,
+within a certain range of occupations. This much, however, is to
+be conceded, that even within the industrial occupations the
+selective elimination of the pecuniary traits is an uncertain
+process, and that there is consequently an appreciable survival
+of the barbarian temperament even within these occupations. On
+this account there is at present no broad distinction in this
+respect between the leisure-class character and the character of
+the common run of the population.
+
+The whole question as to a class distinction in respect to
+spiritual make-up is also obscured by the presence, in all
+classes of society, of acquired habits of life that closely
+simulate inherited traits and at the same time act to develop in
+the entire body of the population the traits which they simulate.
+These acquired habits, or assumed traits of character, are most
+commonly of an aristocratic cast. The prescriptive position of
+the leisure class as the exemplar of reputability has imposed
+many features of the leisure-class theory of life upon the lower
+classes; with the result that there goes on, always and
+throughout society, a more or less persistent cultivation of
+these aristocratic traits. On this ground also these traits have
+a better chance of survival among the body of the people than
+would be the case if it were not for the precept and example of
+the leisure class. As one channel, and an important one, through
+which this transfusion of aristocratic views of life, and
+consequently more or less archaic traits of character goes on,
+may be mentioned the class of domestic servants. These have their
+notions of what is good and beautiful shaped by contact with the
+master class and carry the preconceptions so acquired back among
+their low-born equals, and so disseminate the higher ideals
+abroad through the community without the loss of time which this
+dissemination might otherwise suffer. The saying "Like master,
+like man," has a greater significance than is commonly
+appreciated for the rapid popular acceptance of many elements of
+upper-class culture.
+
+There is also a further range of facts that go to lessen class
+differences as regards the survival of the pecuniary virtues. The
+pecuniary struggle produces an underfed class, of large
+proportions. This underfeeding consists in a deficiency of the
+necessaries of life or of the necessaries of a decent
+expenditure. In either case the result is a closely enforced
+struggle for the means with which to meet the daily needs;
+whether it be the physical or the higher needs. The strain of
+self-assertion against odds takes up the whole energy of the
+individual; he bends his efforts to compass his own invidious
+ends alone, and becomes continually more narrowly self-seeking.
+The industrial traits in this way tend to obsolescence through
+disuse. Indirectly, therefore, by imposing a scheme of pecuniary
+decency and by withdrawing as much as may be of the means of life
+from the lower classes, the institution of a leisure class acts
+to conserve the pecuniary traits in the body of the population.
+The result is an assimilation of the lower classes to the type of
+human nature that belongs primarily to the upper classes only.
+It appears, therefore, that there is no wide difference in
+temperament between the upper and the lower classes; but it
+appears also that the absence of such a difference is in good
+part due to the prescriptive example of the leisure class and to
+the popular acceptance of those broad principles of conspicuous
+waste and pecuniary emulation on which the institution of a
+leisure class rests. The institution acts to lower the industrial
+efficiency of the community and retard the adaptation of human
+nature to the exigencies of modern industrial life. It affects
+the prevalent or effective human nature in a conservative
+direction, (1) by direct transmission of archaic traits, through
+inheritance within the class and wherever the leisure-class blood
+is transfused outside the class, and (2) by conserving and
+fortifying the traditions of the archaic regime, and so making
+the chances of survival of barbarian traits greater also outside
+the range of transfusion of leisure-class blood.
+
+But little if anything has been done towards collecting or
+digesting data that are of special significance for the question
+of survival or elimination of traits in the modern populations.
+Little of a tangible character can therefore be offered in
+support of the view here taken, beyond a discursive review of
+such everyday facts as lie ready to hand. Such a recital can
+scarcely avoid being commonplace and tedious, but for all that it
+seems necessary to the completeness of the argument, even in the
+meager outline in which it is here attempted. A degree of
+indulgence may therefore fairly be bespoken for the succeeding
+chapters, which offer a fragmentary recital of this kind.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Ten
+
+Modern Survivals of Prowess
+
+The leisure class lives by the industrial community rather than
+in it. Its relations to industry are of a pecuniary rather than
+an industrial kind. Admission to the class is gained by exercise
+of the pecuniary aptitudes -- aptitudes for acquisition rather
+than for serviceability. There is, therefore, a continued
+selective sifting of the human material that makes up the leisure
+class, and this selection proceeds on the ground of fitness for
+pecuniary pursuits. But the scheme of life of the class is in
+large part a heritage from the past, and embodies much of the
+habits and ideals of the earlier barbarian period. This archaic,
+barbarian scheme of life imposes itself also on the lower orders,
+with more or less mitigation. In its turn the scheme of life, of
+conventions, acts selectively and by education to shape the human
+material, and its action runs chiefly in the direction of
+conserving traits, habits, and ideals that belong to the early
+barbarian age -- the age of prowess and predatory life.
+
+The most immediate and unequivocal expression of that archaic
+human nature which characterizes man in the predatory stage is
+the fighting propensity proper. In cases where the predatory
+activity is a collective one, this propensity is frequently
+called the martial spirit, or, latterly, patriotism. It needs no
+insistence to find assent to the proposition that in the
+countries of civilized Europe the hereditary leisure class is
+endowed with this martial spirit in a higher degree than the
+middle classes. Indeed, the leisure class claims the distinction
+as a matter of pride, and no doubt with some grounds. War is
+honorable, and warlike prowess is eminently honorific in the eyes
+of the generality of men; and this admiration of warlike prowess
+is itself the best voucher of a predatory temperament in the
+admirer of war. The enthusiasm for war, and the predatory temper
+of which it is the index, prevail in the largest measure among
+the upper classes, especially among the hereditary leisure class.
+Moreover, the ostensible serious occupation of the upper class is
+that of government, which, in point of origin and developmental
+content, is also a predatory occupation.
+
+The only class which could at all dispute with the
+hereditary leisure class the honor of an habitual bellicose frame
+of mind is that of the lower-class delinquents. In ordinary
+times, the large body of the industrial classes is relatively
+apathetic touching warlike interests. When unexcited, this body
+of the common people, which makes up the effective force of the
+industrial community, is rather averse to any other than a
+defensive fight; indeed, it responds a little tardily even to a
+provocation which makes for an attitude of defense. In the more
+civilized communities, or rather in the communities which have
+reached an advanced industrial development, the spirit of warlike
+aggression may be said to be obsolescent among the common people.
+This does not say that there is not an appreciable number of
+individuals among the industrial classes in whom the martial
+spirit asserts itself obtrusively. Nor does it say that the body
+of the people may not be fired with martial ardor for a time
+under the stimulus of some special provocation, such as is seen
+in operation today in more than one of the countries of Europe,
+and for the time in America. But except for such seasons of
+temporary exaltation, and except for those individuals who are
+endowed with an archaic temperament of the predatory type,
+together with the similarly endowed body of individuals among the
+higher and the lowest classes, the inertness of the mass of any
+modern civilized community in this respect is probably so great
+as would make war impracticable, except against actual invasion.
+The habits and aptitudes of the common run of men make for an
+unfolding of activity in other, less picturesque directions than
+that of war.
+
+This class difference in temperament may be due in part to a
+difference in the inheritance of acquired traits in the several
+classes, but it seems also, in some measure, to correspond with a
+difference in ethnic derivation. The class difference is in this
+respect visibly less in those countries whose population is
+relatively homogeneous, ethnically, than in the countries where
+there is a broader divergence between the ethnic elements that
+make up the several classes of the community. In the same
+connection it may be noted that the later accessions to the
+leisure class in the latter countries, in a general way, show
+less of the martial spirit than contemporary representatives of
+the aristocracy of the ancient line. These nouveaux arrivés have
+recently emerged from the commonplace body of the population and
+owe their emergence into the leisure class to the exercise of
+traits and propensities which are not to be classed as prowess in
+the ancient sense.
+
+Apart from warlike activity proper, the institution of the duel
+is also an expression of the same superior readiness for combat;
+and the duel is a leisure-class institution. The duel is in
+substance a more or less deliberate resort to a fight as a final
+settlement of a difference of opinion. In civilized communities
+it prevails as a normal phenomenon only where there is an
+hereditary leisure class, and almost exclusively among that
+class. The exceptions are (1) military and naval officers who are
+ordinarily members of the leisure class, and who are at the same
+time specially trained to predatory habits of mind and (2) the
+lower-class delinquents -- who are by inheritance, or training,
+or both, of a similarly predatory disposition and habit. It is
+only the high-bred gentleman and the rowdy that normally resort
+to blows as the universal solvent of differences of opinion. The
+plain man will ordinarily fight only when excessive momentary
+irritation or alcoholic exaltation act to inhibit the more
+complex habits of response to the stimuli that make for
+provocation. He is then thrown back upon the simpler, less
+differentiated forms of the instinct of self-assertion; that is
+to say, he reverts temporarily and without reflection to an
+archaic habit of mind.
+
+This institution of the duel as a mode of finally settling
+disputes and serious questions of precedence shades off into the
+obligatory, unprovoked private fight, as a social obligation due
+to one's good repute. As a leisure-class usage of this kind we
+have, particularly, that bizarre survival of bellicose chivalry,
+the German student duel. In the lower or spurious leisure class
+of the delinquents there is in all countries a similar, though
+less formal, social obligation incumbent on the rowdy to assert
+his manhood in unprovoked combat with his fellows. And spreading
+through all grades of society, a similar usage prevails among the
+boys of the community. The boy usually knows to nicety, from day
+to day, how he and his associates grade in respect of relative
+fighting capacity; and in the community of boys there is
+ordinarily no secure basis of reputability for any one who, by
+exception, will not or can not fight on invitation.
+
+All this applies especially to boys above a certain somewhat
+vague limit of maturity. The child's temperament does not
+commonly answer to this description during infancy and the years
+of close tutelage, when the child still habitually seeks contact
+with its mother at every turn of its daily life. During this
+earlier period there is little aggression and little propensity
+for antagonism. The transition from this peaceable temper to the
+predaceous, and in extreme cases malignant, mischievousness of
+the boy is a gradual one, and it is accomplished with more
+completeness, covering a larger range of the individual's
+aptitudes, in some cases than in others. In the earlier stage of
+his growth, the child, whether boy or girl, shows less of
+initiative and aggressive self-assertion and less of an
+inclination to isolate himself and his interests from the
+domestic group in which he lives, and he shows more of
+sensitiveness to rebuke, bashfulness, timidity, and the need of
+friendly human contact. In the common run of cases this early
+temperament passes, by a gradual but somewhat rapid obsolescence
+of the infantile features, into the temperament of the boy
+proper; though there are also cases where the predaceous futures
+of boy life do not emerge at all, or at the most emerge in but a
+slight and obscure degree.
+
+In girls the transition to the predaceous stage is seldom
+accomplished with the same degree of completeness as in boys; and
+in a relatively large proportion of cases it is scarcely
+undergone at all. In such cases the transition from infancy to
+adolescence and maturity is a gradual and unbroken process of the
+shifting of interest from infantile purposes and aptitudes to the
+purposes, functions, and relations of adult life. In the girls
+there is a less general prevalence of a predaceous interval in
+the development; and in the cases where it occurs, the predaceous
+and isolating attitude during the interval is commonly less
+accentuated.
+
+In the male child the predaceous interval is ordinarily fairly
+well marked and lasts for some time, but it is commonly
+terminated (if at all) with the attainment of maturity. This last
+statement may need very material qualification. The cases are by
+no means rare in which the transition from the boyish to the
+adult temperament is not made, or is made only partially --
+understanding by the "adult" temperament the average temperament
+of those adult individuals in modern industrial life who have
+some serviceability for the purposes of the collective life
+process, and who may therefore be said to make up the effective
+average of the industrial community.
+
+The ethnic composition of the European populations varies. In
+some cases even the lower classes are in large measure made up of
+the peace-disturbing dolicho-blond; while in others this ethnic
+element is found chiefly among the hereditary leisure class. The
+fighting habit seems to prevail to a less extent among the
+working-class boys in the latter class of populations than among
+the boys of the upper classes or among those of the
+populations first named.
+
+If this generalization as to the temperament of the boy among the
+working classes should be found true on a fuller and closer
+scrutiny of the field, it would add force to the view that the
+bellicose temperament is in some appreciable degree a race
+characteristic; it appears to enter more largely into the make-up
+of the dominant, upper-class ethnic type -- the dolicho-blond --
+of the European countries than into the subservient, lower-class
+types of man which are conceived to constitute the body of the
+population of the same communities.
+
+The case of the boy may seem not to bear seriously on the
+question of the relative endowment of prowess with which the
+several classes of society are gifted; but it is at least of some
+value as going to show that this fighting impulse belongs to a
+more archaic temperament than that possessed by the average adult
+man of the industrious classes. In this, as in many other
+features of child life, the child reproduces, temporarily and in
+miniature, some of the earlier phases of the development of adult
+man. Under this interpretation, the boy's predilection for
+exploit and for isolation of his own interest is to be taken as a
+transient reversion to the human nature that is normal to the
+early barbarian culture -- the predatory culture proper. In this
+respect, as in much else, the leisure-class and the
+delinquent-class character shows a persistence into adult life of
+traits that are normal to childhood and youth, and that are
+likewise normal or habitual to the earlier stages of culture.
+Unless the difference is traceable entirely to a fundamental
+difference between persistent ethnic types, the traits that
+distinguish the swaggering delinquent and the punctilious
+gentleman of leisure from the common crowd are, in some measure,
+marks of an arrested spiritual development. They mark an immature
+phase, as compared with the stage of development attained by the
+average of the adults in the modern industrial community. And it
+will appear presently that the puerile spiritual make-up of these
+representatives of the upper and the lowest social strata shows
+itself also in the presence of other archaic traits than this
+proclivity to ferocious exploit and isolation.
+
+As if to leave no doubt about the essential immaturity of the
+fighting temperament, we have, bridging the interval between
+legitimate boyhood and adult manhood, the aimless and playful,
+but more or less systematic and elaborate, disturbances of the
+peace in vogue among schoolboys of a slightly higher age. In the
+common run of cases, these disturbances are confined to the
+period of adolescence. They recur with decreasing frequency and
+acuteness as youth merges into adult life, and so they reproduce,
+in a general way, in the life of the individual, the sequence by
+which the group has passed from the predatory to a more settled
+habit of life. In an appreciable number of cases the spiritual
+growth of the individual comes to a close before he emerges from
+this puerile phase; in these cases the fighting temper persists
+through life. Those individuals who in spiritual development
+eventually reach man's estate, therefore, ordinarily pass through
+a temporary archaic phase corresponding to the permanent
+spiritual level of the fighting and sporting men. Different
+individuals will, of course, achieve spiritual maturity and
+sobriety in this respect in different degrees; and those who fail
+of the average remain as an undissolved residue of crude humanity
+in the modern industrial community and as a foil for that
+selective process of adaptation which makes for a heightened
+industrial efficiency and the fullness of life of the
+collectivity. This arrested spiritual development may express
+itself not only in a direct participation by adults in youthful
+exploits of ferocity, but also indirectly in aiding and abetting
+disturbances of this kind on the part of younger persons. It
+thereby furthers the formation of habits of ferocity which may
+persist in the later life of the growing generation, and so
+retard any movement in the direction of a more peaceable
+effective temperament on the part of the community. If a person
+so endowed with a proclivity for exploits is in a position to
+guide the development of habits in the adolescent members of the
+community, the influence which he exerts in the direction of
+conservation and reversion to prowess may be very considerable.
+This is the significance, for instance, of the fostering care
+latterly bestowed by many clergymen and other pillars of society
+upon "boys' brigades" and similar pseudo-military organizations.
+The same is true of the encouragement given to the growth of
+"college spirit," college athletics, and the like, in the higher
+institutions of learning.
+
+These manifestations of the predatory temperament are all to be
+classed under the head of exploit. They are partly simple and
+unreflected expressions of an attitude of emulative ferocity,
+partly activities deliberately entered upon with a view to
+gaining repute for prowess. Sports of all kinds are of the same
+general character, including prize-fights, bull-fights,
+athletics, shooting, angling, yachting, and games of skill, even
+where the element of destructive physical efficiency is not an
+obtrusive feature. Sports shade off from the basis of hostile
+combat, through skill, to cunning and chicanery, without its
+being possible to draw a line at any point. The ground of an
+addiction to sports is an archaic spiritual constitution -- the
+possession of the predatory emulative propensity in a relatively
+high potency, a strong proclivity to adventuresome exploit and to
+the infliction of damage is especially pronounced in those
+employments which are in colloquial usage specifically called
+sportsmanship.
+
+It is perhaps truer, or at least more evident, as regards sports
+than as regards the other expressions of predatory emulation
+already spoken of, that the temperament which inclines men to
+them is essentially a boyish temperament. The addiction to
+sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested
+development of the man's moral nature. This peculiar boyishness
+of temperament in sporting men immediately becomes apparent when
+attention is directed to the large element of make-believe that
+is present in all sporting activity. Sports share this character
+of make-believe with the games and exploits to which children,
+especially boys, are habitually inclined. Make-believe does not
+enter in the same proportion into all sports, but it is present
+in a very appreciable degree in all. It is apparently present in
+a larger measure in sportsmanship proper and in athletic contests
+than in set games of skill of a more sedentary character;
+although this rule may not be found to apply with any great
+uniformity. It is noticeable, for instance, that even very
+mild-mannered and matter-of-fact men who go out shooting are apt
+to carry an excess of arms and accoutrements in order to impress
+upon their own imagination the seriousness of their undertaking.
+These huntsmen are also prone to a histrionic, prancing gait and
+to an elaborate exaggeration of the motions, whether of stealth
+or of onslaught, involved in their deeds of exploit. Similarly in
+athletic sports there is almost invariably present a good share
+of rant and swagger and ostensible mystification -- features
+which mark the histrionic nature of these employments. In all
+this, of course, the reminder of boyish make-believe is plain
+enough. The slang of athletics, by the way, is in great part made
+up of extremely sanguinary locutions borrowed from the
+terminology of warfare. Except where it is adopted as a necessary
+means of secret communication, the use of a special slang in any
+employment is probably to be accepted as evidence that the
+occupation in question is substantially make-believe.
+
+A further feature in which sports differ from the duel and
+similar disturbances of the peace is the peculiarity that they
+admit of other motives being assigned for them besides the
+impulses of exploit and ferocity. There is probably little if any
+other motive present in any given case, but the fact that other
+reasons for indulging in sports are frequently assigned goes to
+say that other grounds are sometimes present in a subsidiary way.
+Sportsmen -- hunters and anglers -- are more or less in the habit
+of assigning a love of nature, the need of recreation, and the
+like, as the incentives to their favorite pastime. These motives
+are no doubt frequently present and make up a part of the
+attractiveness of the sportsman's life; but these can not be the
+chief incentives. These ostensible needs could be more readily
+and fully satisfied without the accompaniment of a systematic
+effort to take the life of those creatures that make up an
+essential feature of that "nature" that is beloved by the
+sportsman. It is, indeed, the most noticeable effect of the
+sportsman's activity to keep nature in a state of chronic
+desolation by killing off all living thing whose destruction he
+can compass.
+
+Still, there is ground for the sportsman's claim that under the
+existing conventionalities his need of recreation and of contact
+with nature can best be satisfied by the course which he takes.
+Certain canons of good breeding have been imposed by the
+prescriptive example of a predatory leisure class in the past and
+have been somewhat painstakingly conserved by the usage of the
+latter-day representatives of that class; and these canons will
+not permit him, without blame, to seek contact with nature on
+other terms. From being an honorable employment handed down from
+the predatory culture as the highest form of everyday leisure,
+sports have come to be the only form of outdoor activity that has
+the full sanction of decorum. Among the proximate incentives to
+shooting and angling, then, may be the need of recreation and
+outdoor life. The remoter cause which imposes the necessity of
+seeking these objects under the cover of systematic slaughter is
+a prescription that can not be violated except at the risk of
+disrepute and consequent lesion to one's self-respect.
+
+The case of other kinds of sport is somewhat similar. Of these,
+athletic games are the best example. Prescriptive usage with
+respect to what forms of activity, exercise, and recreation are
+permissible under the code of reputable living is of course
+present here also. Those who are addicted to athletic sports, or
+who admire them, set up the claim that these afford the best
+available means of recreation and of "physical culture." And
+prescriptive usage gives countenance to the claim. The canons of
+reputable living exclude from the scheme of life of the leisure
+class all activity that can not be classed as conspicuous
+leisure. And consequently they tend by prescription to exclude it
+also from the scheme of life of the community generally. At the
+same time purposeless physical exertion is tedious and
+distasteful beyond tolerance. As has been noticed in another
+connection, recourse is in such a case had to some form of
+activity which shall at least afford a colorable pretense of
+purpose, even if the object assigned be only a make-believe.
+Sports satisfy these requirements of substantial futility
+together with a colorable make-believe of purpose. In addition to
+this they afford scope for emulation, and are attractive also on
+that account. In order to be decorous, an employment must conform
+to the leisure-class canon of reputable waste; at the same time
+all activity, in order to be persisted in as an habitual, even if
+only partial, expression of life, must conform to the generically
+human canon of efficiency for some serviceable objective end. The
+leisure-class canon demands strict and comprehensive futility,
+the instinct of workmanship demands purposeful action. The
+leisure-class canon of decorum acts slowly and pervasively, by a
+selective elimination of all substantially useful or purposeful
+modes of action from the accredited scheme of life; the instinct
+of workmanship acts impulsively and may be satisfied,
+provisionally, with a proximate purpose. It is only as the
+apprehended ulterior futility of a given line of action enters
+the reflective complex of consciousness as an element essentially
+alien to the normally purposeful trend of the life process that
+its disquieting and deterrent effect on the consciousness of the
+agent is wrought.
+
+The individual's habits of thought make an organic complex, the
+trend of which is necessarily in the direction of
+serviceability to the life process. When it is attempted to
+assimilate systematic waste or futility, as an end in life, into
+this organic complex, there presently supervenes a revulsion. But
+this revulsion of the organism may be avoided if the attention
+can be confined to the proximate, unreflected purpose of
+dexterous or emulative exertion. Sports -- hunting, angling,
+athletic games, and the like -- afford an exercise for dexterity
+and for the emulative ferocity and astuteness characteristic of
+predatory life. So long as the individual is but slightly gifted
+with reflection or with a sense of the ulterior trend of his
+actions so long as his life is substantially a life of naive
+impulsive action -- so long the immediate and unreflected
+purposefulness of sports, in the way of an expression of
+dominance, will measurably satisfy his instinct of workmanship.
+This is especially true if his dominant impulses are the
+unreflecting emulative propensities of the predaceous
+temperament. At the same time the canons of decorum will commend
+sports to him as expressions of a pecuniarily blameless life. It
+is by meeting these two requirements, of ulterior wastefulness
+and proximate purposefulness, that any given employment holds its
+place as a traditional and habitual mode of decorous recreation.
+In the sense that other forms of recreation and exercise are
+morally impossible to persons of good breeding and delicate
+sensibilities, then, sports are the best available means of
+recreation under existing circumstances.
+
+But those members of respectable society who advocate athletic
+games commonly justify their attitude on this head to themselves
+and to their neighbors on the ground that these games serve as an
+invaluable means of development. They not only improve the
+contestant's physique, but it is commonly added that they also
+foster a manly spirit, both in the participants and in the
+spectators. Football is the particular game which will probably
+first occur to any one in this community when the question of the
+serviceability of athletic games is raised, as this form of
+athletic contest is at present uppermost in the mind of those who
+plead for or against games as a means of physical or moral
+salvation. This typical athletic sport may, therefore, serve to
+illustrate the bearing of athletics upon the development of the
+contestant's character and physique. It has been said, not
+inaptly, that the relation of football to physical culture is
+much the same as that of the bull-fight to agriculture.
+Serviceability for these lusory institutions requires sedulous
+training or breeding. The material used, whether brute or human,
+is subjected to careful selection and discipline, in order to
+secure and accentuate certain aptitudes and propensities which
+are characteristic of the ferine state, and which tend to
+obsolescence under domestication. This does not mean that the
+result in either case is an all around and consistent
+rehabilitation of the ferine or barbarian habit of mind and body.
+The result is rather a one-sided return to barbarism or to the
+feroe natura -- a rehabilitation and accentuation of those ferine
+traits which make for damage and desolation, without a
+corresponding development of the traits which would serve the
+individual's self-preservation and fullness of life in a ferine
+environment. The culture bestowed in football gives a product of
+exotic ferocity and cunning. It is a rehabilitation of the early
+barbarian temperament, together with a suppression of those
+details of temperament, which, as seen from the standpoint of the
+social and economic exigencies, are the redeeming features of the
+savage character.
+
+The physical vigor acquired in the training for athletic games --
+so far as the training may be said to have this effect -- is of
+advantage both to the individual and to the collectivity, in
+that, other things being equal, it conduces to economic
+serviceability. The spiritual traits which go with athletic
+sports are likewise economically advantageous to the individual,
+as contradistinguished from the interests of the collectivity.
+This holds true in any community where these traits are present
+in some degree in the population. Modern competition is in large
+part a process of self-assertion on the basis of these traits of
+predatory human nature. In the sophisticated form in which they
+enter into the modern, peaceable emulation, the possession of
+these traits in some measure is almost a necessary of life to the
+civilized man. But while they are indispensable to the
+competitive individual, they are not directly serviceable to the
+community. So far as regards the serviceability of the individual
+for the purposes of the collective life, emulative efficiency is
+of use only indirectly if at all. Ferocity and cunning are of no
+use to the community except in its hostile dealings with other
+communities; and they are useful to the individual only because
+there is so large a proportion of the same traits actively
+present in the human environment to which he is exposed. Any
+individual who enters the competitive struggle without the due
+endowment of these traits is at a disadvantage, somewhat as a
+hornless steer would find himself at a disadvantage in a drove of
+horned cattle.
+
+The possession and the cultivation of the predatory traits of
+character may, of course, be desirable on other than economic
+grounds. There is a prevalent aesthetic or ethical predilection
+for the barbarian aptitudes, and the traits in question minister
+so effectively to this predilection that their serviceability in
+the aesthetic or ethical respect probably offsets any economic
+unserviceability which they may give. But for the present purpose
+that is beside the point. Therefore nothing is said here as to
+the desirability or advisability of sports on the whole, or as to
+their value on other than economic grounds.
+
+In popular apprehension there is much that is admirable in the
+type of manhood which the life of sport fosters. There is
+self-reliance and good-fellowship, so termed in the somewhat
+loose colloquial use of the words. From a different point of view
+the qualities currently so characterized might be described as
+truculence and clannishness. The reason for the current approval
+and admiration of these manly qualities, as well as for their
+being called manly, is the same as the reason for their
+usefulness to the individual. The members of the community, and
+especially that class of the community which sets the pace in
+canons of taste, are endowed with this range of propensities in
+sufficient measure to make their absence in others felt as a
+shortcoming, and to make their possession in an exceptional
+degree appreciated as an attribute of superior merit. The traits
+of predatory man are by no means obsolete in the common run of
+modern populations. They are present and can be called out in
+bold relief at any time by any appeal to the sentiments in which
+they express themselves -- unless this appeal should clash with
+the specific activities that make up our habitual occupations and
+comprise the general range of our everyday interests. The common
+run of the population of any industrial community is emancipated
+from these, economically considered, untoward propensities only
+in the sense that, through partial and temporary disuse, they
+have lapsed into the background of sub-conscious motives. With
+varying degrees of potency in different individuals, they remain
+available for the aggressive shaping of men's actions and
+sentiments whenever a stimulus of more than everyday intensity
+comes in to call them forth. And they assert themselves forcibly
+in any case where no occupation alien to the predatory culture
+has usurped the individual's everyday range of interest and
+sentiment. This is the case among the leisure class and among
+certain portions of the population which are ancillary to that
+class. Hence the facility with which any new accessions to the
+leisure class take to sports; and hence the rapid growth of
+sports and of the sporting sentient in any industrial community
+where wealth has accumulated sufficiently to exempt a
+considerable part of the population from work.
+
+A homely and familiar fact may serve to show that the predaceous
+impulse does not prevail in the same degree in all classes. Taken
+simply as a feature of modern life, the habit of carrying a
+walking-stick may seem at best a trivial detail; but the usage
+has a significance for the point in question. The classes among
+whom the habit most prevails -- the classes with whom the
+walking-stick is associated in popular apprehension -- are the
+men of the leisure class proper, sporting men, and the
+lower-class delinquents. To these might perhaps be added the men
+engaged in the pecuniary employments. The same is not true of the
+common run of men engaged in industry and it may be noted by the
+way that women do not carry a stick except in case of infirmity,
+where it has a use of a different kind. The practice is of course
+in great measure a matter of polite usage; but the basis of
+polite usage is, in turn, the proclivities of the class which
+sets the pace in polite usage. The walking-stick serves the
+purpose of an advertisement that the bearer's hands are employed
+otherwise than in useful effort, and it therefore has utility as
+an evidence of leisure. But it is also a weapon, and it meets a
+felt need of barbarian man on that ground. The handling of so
+tangible and primitive a means of offense is very comforting to
+any one who is gifted with even a moderate share of ferocity.
+The exigencies of the language make it impossible to avoid an
+apparent implication of disapproval of the aptitudes,
+propensities, and expressions of life here under discussion. It
+is, however, not intended to imply anything in the way of
+deprecation or commendation of any one of these phases of human
+character or of the life process. The various elements of the
+prevalent human nature are taken up from the point of view of
+economic theory, and the traits discussed are gauged and graded
+with regard to their immediate economic bearing on the facility
+of the collective life process. That is to say, these phenomena
+are here apprehended from the economic point of view and are
+valued with respect to their direct action in furtherance or
+hindrance of a more perfect adjustment of the human collectivity
+to the environment and to the institutional structure required by
+the economic situation of the collectivity for the present and
+for the immediate future. For these purposes the traits handed
+down from the predatory culture are less serviceable than might
+be. Although even in this connection it is not to be overlooked
+that the energetic aggressiveness and pertinacity of predatory
+man is a heritage of no mean value. The economic value -- with
+some regard also to the social value in the narrower sense -- of
+these aptitudes and propensities is attempted to be passed upon
+without reflecting on their value as seen from another point of
+view. When contrasted with the prosy mediocrity of the latter-day
+industrial scheme of life, and judged by the accredited standards
+of morality, and more especially by the standards of aesthetics
+and of poetry, these survivals from a more primitive type of
+manhood may have a very different value from that here assigned
+them. But all this being foreign to the purpose in hand, no
+expression of opinion on this latter head would be in place here.
+All that is admissible is to enter the caution that these
+standards of excellence, which are alien to the present purpose,
+must not be allowed to influence our economic appreciation of
+these traits of human character or of the activities which foster
+their growth. This applies both as regards those persons who
+actively participate in sports and those whose sporting
+experience consists in contemplation only. What is here said of
+the sporting propensity is likewise pertinent to sundry
+reflections presently to be made in this connection on what would
+colloquially be known as the religious life.
+
+The last paragraph incidentally touches upon the fact that
+everyday speech can scarcely be employed in discussing this class
+of aptitudes and activities without implying deprecation or
+apology. The fact is significant as showing the habitual attitude
+of the dispassionate common man toward the propensities which
+express themselves in sports and in exploit generally. And this
+is perhaps as convenient a place as any to discuss that undertone
+of deprecation which runs through all the voluminous discourse in
+defense or in laudation of athletic sports, as well as of other
+activities of a predominantly predatory character. The same
+apologetic frame of mind is at least beginning to be observable
+in the spokesmen of most other institutions handed down from the
+barbarian phase of life. Among these archaic institutions which
+are felt to need apology are comprised, with others, the entire
+existing system of the distribution of wealth, together with the
+resulting class distinction of status; all or nearly all forms of
+consumption that come under the head of conspicuous waste; the
+status of women under the patriarchal system; and many features
+of the traditional creeds and devout observances, especially the
+exoteric expressions of the creed and the naive apprehension of
+received observances. What is to be said in this connection of
+the apologetic attitude taken in commending sports and the
+sporting character will therefore apply, with a suitable change
+in phraseology, to the apologies offered in behalf of these
+other, related elements of our social heritage.
+
+There is a feeling -- usually vague and not commonly avowed in so
+many words by the apologist himself, but ordinarily
+perceptible in the manner of his discourse -- that these sports,
+as well as the general range of predaceous impulses and habits of
+thought which underlie the sporting character, do not altogether
+commend themselves to common sense. "As to the majority of
+murderers, they are very incorrect characters." This aphorism
+offers a valuation of the predaceous temperament, and of the
+disciplinary effects of its overt expression and exercise, as
+seen from the moralist's point of view. As such it affords an
+indication of what is the deliverance of the sober sense of
+mature men as to the degree of availability of the predatory
+habit of mind for the purposes of the collective life. It is felt
+that the presumption is against any activity which involves
+habituation to the predatory attitude, and that the burden of
+proof lies with those who speak for the rehabilitation of the
+predaceous temper and for the practices which strengthen it.
+There is a strong body of popular sentiment in favor of
+diversions and enterprises of the kind in question; but there is
+at the same time present in the community a pervading sense that
+this ground of sentiment wants legitimation. The required
+legitimation is ordinarily sought by showing that although sports
+are substantially of a predatory, socially disintegrating effect;
+although their proximate effect runs in the direction of
+reversion to propensities that are industrially disserviceable;
+yet indirectly and remotely -- by some not readily comprehensible
+process of polar induction, or counter-irritation perhaps --
+sports are conceived to foster a habit of mind that is
+serviceable for the social or industrial purpose. That is to say,
+although sports are essentially of the nature of invidious
+exploit, it is presumed that by some remote and obscure effect
+they result in the growth of a temperament conducive to
+non-invidious work. It is commonly attempted to show all this
+empirically or it is rather assumed that this is the empirical
+generalization which must be obvious to any one who cares to see
+it. In conducting the proof of this thesis the treacherous ground
+of inference from cause to effect is somewhat shrewdly avoided,
+except so far as to show that the "manly virtues" spoken of above
+are fostered by sports. But since it is these manly virtues that
+are (economically) in need of legitimation, the chain of proof
+breaks off where it should begin. In the most general economic
+terms, these apologies are an effort to show that, in spite of
+the logic of the thing, sports do in fact further what may
+broadly be called workmanship. So long as he has not succeeded in
+persuading himself or others that this is their effect the
+thoughtful apologist for sports will not rest content, and
+commonly, it is to be admitted, he does not rest content. His
+discontent with his own vindication of the practice in question
+is ordinarily shown by his truculent tone and by the eagerness
+with which he heaps up asseverations in support of his position.
+But why are apologies needed? If there prevails a body of popular
+sentient in favor of sports, why is not that fact a sufficient
+legitimation? The protracted discipline of prowess to which the
+race has been subjected under the predatory and quasi-peaceable
+culture has transmitted to the men of today a temperament that
+finds gratification in these expressions of ferocity and cunning.
+So, why not accept these sports as legitimate expressions of a
+normal and wholesome human nature? What other norm is there that
+is to be lived up to than that given in the aggregate range of
+propensities that express themselves in the sentiments of this
+generation, including the hereditary strain of prowess? The
+ulterior norm to which appeal is taken is the instinct of
+workmanship, which is an instinct more fundamental, of more
+ancient prescription, than the propensity to predatory emulation.
+The latter is but a special development of the instinct of
+workmanship, a variant, relatively late and ephemeral in spite of
+its great absolute antiquity. The emulative predatory impulse --
+or the instinct of sportsmanship, as it might well be called --
+is essentially unstable in comparison with the primordial
+instinct of workmanship out of which it has been developed and
+differentiated. Tested by this ulterior norm of life, predatory
+emulation, and therefore the life of sports, falls short.
+
+The manner and the measure in which the institution of a leisure
+class conduces to the conservation of sports and
+invidious exploit can of course not be succinctly stated. From
+the evidence already recited it appears that, in sentient and
+inclinations, the leisure class is more favorable to a warlike
+attitude and animus than the industrial classes. Something
+similar seems to be true as regards sports. But it is chiefly in
+its indirect effects, though the canons of decorous living, that
+the institution has its influence on the prevalent sentiment with
+respect to the sporting life. This indirect effect goes almost
+unequivocally in the direction of furthering a survival of the
+predatory temperament and habits; and this is true even with
+respect to those variants of the sporting life which the higher
+leisure-class code of proprieties proscribes; as, e.g.,
+prize-fighting, cock-fighting, and other like vulgar expressions
+of the sporting temper. Whatever the latest authenticated
+schedule of detail proprieties may say, the accredited canons of
+decency sanctioned by the institution say without equivocation
+that emulation and waste are good and their opposites are
+disreputable. In the crepuscular light of the social nether
+spaces the details of the code are not apprehended with all the
+facility that might be desired, and these broad underlying canons
+of decency are therefore applied somewhat unreflectingly, with
+little question as to the scope of their competence or the
+exceptions that have been sanctioned in detail.
+
+Addiction to athletic sports, not only in the way of direct
+participation, but also in the way of sentiment and moral
+support, is, in a more or less pronounced degree, a
+characteristic of the leisure class; and it is a trait which that
+class shares with the lower-class delinquents, and with such
+atavistic elements throughout the body of the community as are
+endowed with a dominant predaceous trend. Few individuals among
+the populations of Western civilized countries are so far devoid
+of the predaceous instinct as to find no diversion in
+contemplating athletic sports and games, but with the common run
+of individuals among the industrial classes the inclination to
+sports does not assert itself to the extent of constituting what
+may fairly be called a sporting habit. With these classes sports
+are an occasional diversion rather than a serious feature of
+life. This common body of the people can therefore not be said to
+cultivate the sporting propensity. Although it is not obsolete in
+the average of them, or even in any appreciable number of
+individuals, yet the predilection for sports in the commonplace
+industrial classes is of the nature of a reminiscence, more or
+less diverting as an occasional interest, rather than a vital and
+permanent interest that counts as a dominant factor in shaping
+the organic complex of habits of thought into which it enters.
+As it manifests itself in the sporting life of today, this
+propensity may not appear to be an economic factor of grave
+consequence. Taken simply by itself it does not count for a great
+deal in its direct effects on the industrial efficiency or the
+consumption of any given individual; but the prevalence and the
+growth of the type of human nature of which this propensity is a
+characteristic feature is a matter of some consequence. It
+affects the economic life of the collectivity both as regards the
+rate of economic development and as regards the character of the
+results attained by the development. For better or worse, the
+fact that the popular habits of thought are in any degree
+dominated by this type of character can not but greatly affect
+the scope, direction, standards, and ideals of the collective
+economic life, as well as the degree of adjustment of the
+collective life to the environment.
+
+Something to a like effect is to be said of other traits that go
+to make up the barbarian character. For the purposes of economic
+theory, these further barbarian traits may be taken as
+concomitant variations of that predaceous temper of which prowess
+is an expression. In great measure they are not primarily of an
+economic character, nor do they have much direct economic
+bearing. They serve to indicate the stage of economic evolution
+to which the individual possessed of them is adapted. They are of
+importance, therefore, as extraneous tests of the degree of
+adaptation of the character in which they are comprised to the
+economic exigencies of today, but they are also to some extent
+important as being aptitudes which themselves go to increase or
+diminish the economic serviceability of the individual.
+
+As it finds expression in the life of the barbarian, prowess
+manifests itself in two main directions -- force and fraud. In
+varying degrees these two forms of expression are similarly
+present in modern warfare, in the pecuniary occupations, and in
+sports and games. Both lines of aptitudes are cultivated and
+strengthened by the life of sport as well as by the more serious
+forms of emulative life. Strategy or cunning is an element
+invariably present in games, as also in warlike pursuits and in
+the chase. In all of these employments strategy tends to develop
+into finesse and chicanery. Chicanery, falsehood, browbeating,
+hold a well-secured place in the method of procedure of any
+athletic contest and in games generally. The habitual employment
+of an umpire, and the minute technical regulations governing the
+limits and details of permissible fraud and strategic advantage,
+sufficiently attest the fact that fraudulent practices and
+attempts to overreach one's opponents are not adventitious
+features of the game. In the nature of the case habituation to
+sports should conduce to a fuller development of the aptitude for
+fraud; and the prevalence in the community of that predatory
+temperament which inclines men to sports connotes a prevalence of
+sharp practice and callous disregard of the interests of others,
+individually and collectively. Resort to fraud, in any guise and
+under any legitimation of law or custom, is an expression of a
+narrowly self-regarding habit of mind. It is needless to dwell at
+any length on the economic value of this feature of the sporting
+character.
+
+In this connection it is to be noted that the most obvious
+characteristic of the physiognomy affected by athletic and other
+sporting men is that of an extreme astuteness. The gifts and
+exploits of Ulysses are scarcely second to those of Achilles,
+either in their substantial furtherance of the game or in the
+éclat which they give the astute sporting man among his
+associates. The pantomime of astuteness is commonly the first
+step in that assimilation to the professional sporting man which
+a youth undergoes after matriculation in any reputable school, of
+the secondary or the higher education, as the case may be. And
+the physiognomy of astuteness, as a decorative feature, never
+ceases to receive the thoughtful attention of men whose serious
+interest lies in athletic games, races, or other contests of a
+similar emulative nature. As a further indication of their
+spiritual kinship, it may be pointed out that the members of the
+lower delinquent class usually show this physiognomy of
+astuteness in a marked degree, and that they very commonly show
+the same histrionic exaggeration of it that is often seen in the
+young candidate for athletic honors. This, by the way, is the
+most legible mark of what is vulgarly called "toughness" in
+youthful aspirants for a bad name.
+
+The astute man, it may be remarked, is of no economic value to
+the community -- unless it be for the purpose of sharp
+practice in dealings with other communities. His functioning is
+not a furtherance of the generic life process. At its best, in
+its direct economic bearing, it is a conversion of the economic
+substance of the collectivity to a growth alien to the collective
+life process -- very much after the analogy of what in medicine
+would be called a benign tumor, with some tendency to transgress
+the uncertain line that divides the benign from the malign
+growths. The two barbarian traits, ferocity and astuteness, go to
+make up the predaceous temper or spiritual attitude. They are the
+expressions of a narrowly self-regarding habit of mind. Both are
+highly serviceable for individual expediency in a life looking to
+invidious success. Both also have a high aesthetic value. Both
+are fostered by the pecuniary culture. But both alike are of no
+use for the purposes of the collective life.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eleven
+
+The Belief in Luck
+
+The gambling propensity is another subsidiary trait of the
+barbarian temperament. It is a concomitant variation of character
+of almost universal prevalence among sporting men and among men
+given to warlike and emulative activities generally. This trait
+also has a direct economic value. It is recognized to be a
+hindrance to the highest industrial efficiency of the aggregate
+in any community where it prevails in an appreciable degree.
+The gambling proclivity is doubtfully to be classed as a feature
+belonging exclusively to the predatory type of human nature. The
+chief factor in the gambling habit is the belief in luck; and
+this belief is apparently traceable, at least in its elements, to
+a stage in human evolution antedating the predatory culture. It
+may well have been under the predatory culture that the belief in
+luck was developed into the form in which it is present, as the
+chief element of the gambling proclivity, in the sporting
+temperament. It probably owes the specific form under which it
+occurs in the modern culture to the predatory discipline. But the
+belief in luck is in substance a habit of more ancient date than
+the predatory culture. It is one form of the artistic
+apprehension of things. The belief seems to be a trait carried
+over in substance from an earlier phase into the barbarian
+culture, and transmuted and transmitted through that culture to a
+later stage of human development under a specific form imposed by
+the predatory discipline. But in any case, it is to be taken as
+an archaic trait, inherited from a more or less remote past, more
+or less incompatible with the requirements of the modern
+industrial process, and more or less of a hindrance to the
+fullest efficiency of the collective economic life of the
+present.
+
+While the belief in luck is the basis of the gambling habit, it
+is not the only element that enters into the habit of betting.
+Betting on the issue of contests of strength and skill proceeds
+on a further motive, without which the belief in luck would
+scarcely come in as a prominent feature of sporting life. This
+further motive is the desire of the anticipated winner, or the
+partisan of the anticipated winning side, to heighten his side's
+ascendency at the cost of the loser. Not only does the stronger
+side score a more signal victory, and the losing side suffer a
+more painful and humiliating defeat, in proportion as the
+pecuniary gain and loss in the wager is large; although this
+alone is a consideration of material weight. But the wager is
+commonly laid also with a view, not avowed in words nor even
+recognized in set terms in petto, to enhancing the chances of
+success for the contestant on which it is laid. It is felt that
+substance and solicitude expended to this end can not go for
+naught in the issue. There is here a special manifestation of the
+instinct of workmanship, backed by an even more manifest sense
+that the animistic congruity of things must decide for a
+victorious outcome for the side in whose behalf the propensity
+inherent in events has been propitiated and fortified by so much
+of conative and kinetic urging. This incentive to the wager
+expresses itself freely under the form of backing one's favorite
+in any contest, and it is unmistakably a predatory feature. It is
+as ancillary to the predaceous impulse proper that the belief in
+luck expresses itself in a wager. So that it may be set down that
+in so far as the belief in luck comes to expression in the form
+of laying a wager, it is to be accounted an integral element of
+the predatory type of character. The belief is, in its elements,
+an archaic habit which belongs substantially to early,
+undifferentiated human nature; but when this belief is helped out
+by the predatory emulative impulse, and so is differentiated into
+the specific form of the gambling habit, it is, in this
+higher-developed and specific form, to be classed as a trait of
+the barbarian character.
+
+The belief in luck is a sense of fortuitous necessity in the
+sequence of phenomena. In its various mutations and expressions,
+it is of very serious importance for the economic efficiency of
+any community in which it prevails to an appreciable extent. So
+much so as to warrant a more detailed discussion of its origin
+and content and of the bearing of its various ramifications upon
+economic structure and function, as well as a discussion of the
+relation of the leisure class to its growth, differentiation, and
+persistence. In the developed, integrated form in which it is
+most readily observed in the barbarian of the predatory culture
+or in the sporting man of modern communities, the belief
+comprises at least two distinguishable elements -- which are to
+be taken as two different phases of the same fundamental habit of
+thought, or as the same psychological factor in two successive
+phases of its evolution. The fact that these two elements are
+successive phases of the same general line of growth of belief
+does not hinder their coexisting in the habits of thought of any
+given individual. The more primitive form (or the more archaic
+phase) is an incipient animistic belief, or an animistic sense of
+relations and things, that imputes a quasi-personal character to
+facts. To the archaic man all the obtrusive and obviously
+consequential objects and facts in his environment have a
+quasi-personal individuality. They are conceived to be possessed
+of volition, or rather of propensities, which enter into the
+complex of causes and affect events in an inscrutable manner. The
+sporting man's sense of luck and chance, or of fortuitous
+necessity, is an inarticulate or inchoate animism. It applies to
+objects and situations, often in a very vague way; but it is
+usually so far defined as to imply the possibility of
+propitiating, or of deceiving and cajoling, or otherwise
+disturbing the holding of propensities resident in the objects
+which constitute the apparatus and accessories of any game of
+skill or chance. There are few sporting men who are not in the
+habit of wearing charms or talismans to which more or less of
+efficacy is felt to belong. And the proportion is not much less
+of those who instinctively dread the "hoodooing" of the
+contestants or the apparatus engaged in any contest on which they
+lay a wager; or who feel that the fact of their backing a given
+contestant or side in the game does and ought to strengthen that
+side; or to whom the "mascot" which they cultivate means
+something more than a jest.
+
+In its simple form the belief in luck is this instinctive sense
+of an inscrutable teleological propensity in objects or
+situations. Objects or events have a propensity to eventuate in a
+given end, whether this end or objective point of the sequence is
+conceived to be fortuitously given or deliberately sought. From
+this simple animism the belief shades off by insensible
+gradations into the second, derivative form or phase above
+referred to, which is a more or less articulate belief in an
+inscrutable preternatural agency. The preternatural agency works
+through the visible objects with which it is associated, but is
+not identified with these objects in point of individuality. The
+use of the term "preternatural agency" here carries no further
+implication as to the nature of the agency spoken of as
+preternatural. This is only a farther development of animistic
+belief. The preternatural agency is not necessarily conceived to
+be a personal agent in the full sense, but it is an agency which
+partakes of the attributes of personality to the extent of
+somewhat arbitrarily influencing the outcome of any enterprise,
+and especially of any contest. The pervading belief in the
+hamingia or gipta (gaefa, authna) which lends so much of color to
+the Icelandic sagas specifically, and to early Germanic
+folk-legends, is an illustration of this sense of an
+extra-physical propensity in the course of events.
+
+In this expression or form of the belief the propensity is
+scarcely personified although to a varying extent an
+individuality is imputed to it; and this individuated propensity
+is sometimes conceived to yield to circumstances, commonly to
+circumstances of a spiritual or preternatural character. A
+well-known and striking exemplification of the belief -- in a
+fairly advanced stage of differentiation and involving an
+anthropomorphic personification of the preternatural agent
+appealed to -- is afforded by the wager of battle. Here the
+preternatural agent was conceived to act on request as umpire,
+and to shape the outcome of the contest in accordance with some
+stipulated ground of decision, such as the equity or legality of
+the respective contestants' claims. The like sense of an
+inscrutable but spiritually necessary tendency in events is still
+traceable as an obscure element in current popular belief, as
+shown, for instance, by the well-accredited maxim, "Thrice is he
+armed who knows his quarrel just," -- a maxim which retains much
+of its significance for the average unreflecting person even in
+the civilized communities of today. The modern reminiscence of
+the belief in the hamingia, or in the guidance of an unseen hand,
+which is traceable in the acceptance of this maxim is faint and
+perhaps uncertain; and it seems in any case to be blended with
+other psychological moments that are not clearly of an animistic
+character.
+
+For the purpose in hand it is unnecessary to look more closely
+into the psychological process or the ethnological line of
+descent by which the later of these two animistic
+apprehensions of propensity is derived from the earlier. This
+question may be of the gravest importance to folk-psychology or
+to the theory of the evolution of creeds and cults. The same is
+true of the more fundamental question whether the two are related
+at all as successive phases in a sequence of development.
+Reference is here made to the existence of these questions only
+to remark that the interest of the present discussion does not
+lie in that direction. So far as concerns economic theory, these
+two elements or phases of the belief in luck, or in an
+extra-causal trend or propensity in things, are of substantially
+the same character. They have an economic significance as habits
+of thought which affect the individual's habitual view of the
+facts and sequences with which he comes in contact, and which
+thereby affect the individual's serviceability for the industrial
+purpose. Therefore, apart from all question of the beauty, worth,
+or beneficence of any animistic belief, there is place for a
+discussion of their economic bearing on the serviceability of the
+individual as an economic factor, and especially as an industrial
+agent.
+
+It has already been noted in an earlier connection, that in order
+to have the highest serviceability in the complex
+industrial processes of today, the individual must be endowed
+with the aptitude and the habit of readily apprehending and
+relating facts in terms of causal sequence. Both as a whole and
+in its details, the industrial process is a process of
+quantitative causation. The "intelligence" demanded of the
+workman, as well as of the director of an industrial process, is
+little else than a degree of facility in the apprehension of and
+adaptation to a quantitatively determined causal sequence. This
+facility of apprehension and adaptation is what is lacking in
+stupid workmen, and the growth of this facility is the end sought
+in their education -- so far as their education aims to enhance
+their industrial efficiency.
+
+In so far as the individual's inherited aptitudes or his training
+incline him to account for facts and sequences in other terms
+than those of causation or matter-of-fact, they lower his
+productive efficiency or industrial usefulness. This lowering of
+efficiency through a penchant for animistic methods of
+apprehending facts is especially apparent when taken in the
+mass-when a given population with an animistic turn is viewed as
+a whole. The economic drawbacks of animism are more patent and
+its consequences are more far-reaching under the modern system of
+large industry than under any other. In the modern industrial
+communities, industry is, to a constantly increasing extent,
+being organized in a comprehensive system of organs and functions
+mutually conditioning one another; and therefore freedom from all
+bias in the causal apprehension of phenomena grows constantly
+more requisite to efficiency on the part of the men concerned in
+industry. Under a system of handicraft an advantage in dexterity,
+diligence, muscular force, or endurance may, in a very large
+measure, offset such a bias in the habits of thought of the
+workmen.
+
+Similarly in agricultural industry of the traditional kind, which
+closely resembles handicraft in the nature of the demands made
+upon the workman. In both, the workman is himself the prime mover
+chiefly depended upon, and the natural forces engaged are in
+large part apprehended as inscrutable and fortuitous agencies,
+whose working lies beyond the workman's control or discretion. In
+popular apprehension there is in these forms of industry
+relatively little of the industrial process left to the fateful
+swing of a comprehensive mechanical sequence which must be
+comprehended in terms of causation and to which the operations of
+industry and the movements of the workmen must be adapted. As
+industrial methods develop, the virtues of the handicraftsman
+count for less and less as an offset to scanty intelligence or a
+halting acceptance of the sequence of cause and effect. The
+industrial organization assumes more and more of the character of
+a mechanism, in which it is man's office to discriminate and
+select what natural forces shall work out their effects in his
+service. The workman's part in industry changes from that of a
+prime mover to that of discrimination and valuation of
+quantitative sequences and mechanical facts. The faculty of a
+ready apprehension and unbiased appreciation of causes in his
+environment grows in relative economic importance and any element
+in the complex of his habits of thought which intrudes a bias at
+variance with this ready appreciation of matter-of-fact sequence
+gains proportionately in importance as a disturbing element
+acting to lower his industrial usefulness. Through its cumulative
+effect upon the habitual attitude of the population, even a
+slight or inconspicuous bias towards accounting for everyday
+facts by recourse to other ground than that of quantitative
+causation may work an appreciable lowering of the collective
+industrial efficiency of a community.
+
+The animistic habit of mind may occur in the early,
+undifferentiated form of an inchoate animistic belief, or in the
+later and more highly integrated phase in which there is an
+anthropomorphic personification of the propensity imputed to
+facts. The industrial value of such a lively animistic sense, or
+of such recourse to a preternatural agency or the guidance of an
+unseen hand, is of course very much the same in either case. As
+affects the industrial serviceability of the individual, the
+effect is of the same kind in either case; but the extent to
+which this habit of thought dominates or shapes the complex of
+his habits of thought varies with the degree of immediacy,
+urgency, or exclusiveness with which the individual habitually
+applies the animistic or anthropomorphic formula in dealing with
+the facts of his environment. The animistic habit acts in all
+cases to blur the appreciation of causal sequence; but the
+earlier, less reflected, less defined animistic sense of
+propensity may be expected to affect the intellectual processes
+of the individual in a more pervasive way than the higher forms
+of anthropomorphism. Where the animistic habit is present in the
+naive form, its scope and range of application are not defined or
+limited. It will therefore palpably affect his thinking at every
+turn of the person's life -- wherever he has to do with the
+material means of life. In the later, maturer development of
+animism, after it has been defined through the process of
+anthropomorphic elaboration, when its application has been
+limited in a somewhat consistent fashion to the remote and the
+invisible, it comes about that an increasing range of everyday
+facts are provisionally accounted for without recourse to the
+preternatural agency in which a cultivated animism expresses
+itself. A highly integrated, personified preternatural agency is
+not a convenient means of handling the trivial occurrences of
+life, and a habit is therefore easily fallen into of accounting
+for many trivial or vulgar phenomena in terms of sequence. The
+provisional explanation so arrived at is by neglect allowed to
+stand as definitive, for trivial purposes, until special
+provocation or perplexity recalls the individual to his
+allegiance. But when special exigencies arise, that is to say,
+when there is peculiar need of a full and free recourse to the
+law of cause and effect, then the individual commonly has
+recourse to the preternatural agency as a universal solvent, if
+he is possessed of an anthropomorphic belief.
+
+The extra-causal propensity or agent has a very high utility as a
+recourse in perplexity, but its utility is altogether of a
+non-economic kind. It is especially a refuge and a fund of
+comfort where it has attained the degree of consistency and
+specialization that belongs to an anthropomorphic divinity. It
+has much to commend it even on other grounds than that of
+affording the perplexed individual a means of escape from the
+difficulty of accounting for phenomena in terms of causal
+sequence. It would scarcely be in place here to dwell on the
+obvious and well-accepted merits of an anthropomorphic divinity,
+as seen from the point of view of the aesthetic, moral, or
+spiritual interest, or even as seen from the less remote
+standpoint of political, military, or social policy. The question
+here concerns the less picturesque and less urgent economic value
+of the belief in such a preternatural agency, taken as a habit of
+thought which affects the industrial serviceability of the
+believer. And even within this narrow, economic range, the
+inquiry is perforce confined to the immediate bearing of this
+habit of thought upon the believer's workmanlike serviceability,
+rather than extended to include its remoter economic effects.
+These remoter effects are very difficult to trace. The inquiry
+into them is so encumbered with current preconceptions as to the
+degree in which life is enhanced by spiritual contact with such a
+divinity, that any attempt to inquire into their economic value
+must for the present be fruitless.
+
+The immediate, direct effect of the animistic habit of thought
+upon the general frame of mind of the believer goes in the
+direction of lowering his effective intelligence in the respect
+in which intelligence is of especial consequence for modern
+industry. The effect follows, in varying degree, whether the
+preternatural agent or propensity believed in is of a higher or a
+lower cast. This holds true of the barbarian's and the sporting
+man's sense of luck and propensity, and likewise of the somewhat
+higher developed belief in an anthropomorphic divinity, such as
+is commonly possessed by the same class. It must be taken to hold
+true also -- though with what relative degree of cogency is not
+easy to say -- of the more adequately developed anthropomorphic
+cults, such as appeal to the devout civilized man. The industrial
+disability entailed by a popular adherence to one of the higher
+anthropomorphic cults may be relatively slight, but it is not to
+be overlooked. And even these high-class cults of the Western
+culture do not represent the last dissolving phase of this human
+sense of extra-causal propensity. Beyond these the same animistic
+sense shows itself also in such attenuations of anthropomorphism
+as the eighteenth-century appeal to an order of nature and
+natural rights, and in their modern representative, the
+ostensibly post-Darwinian concept of a meliorative trend in the
+process of evolution. This animistic explanation of phenomena is
+a form of the fallacy which the logicians knew by the name of
+ignava ratio. For the purposes of industry or of science it
+counts as a blunder in the apprehension and valuation of facts.
+Apart from its direct industrial consequences, the animistic
+habit has a certain significance for economic theory on other
+grounds. (1) It is a fairly reliable indication of the presence,
+and to some extent even of the degree of potency, of certain
+other archaic traits that accompany it and that are of
+substantial economic consequence; and (2) the material
+consequences of that code of devout proprieties to which the
+animistic habit gives rise in the development of an
+anthropomorphic cult are of importance both (a) as affecting the
+community's consumption of goods and the prevalent canons of
+taste, as already suggested in an earlier chapter, and (b) by
+inducing and conserving a certain habitual recognition of the
+relation to a superior, and so stiffening the current sense of
+status and allegiance.
+
+As regards the point last named (b), that body of habits of
+thought which makes up the character of any individual is in some
+sense an organic whole. A marked variation in a given direction
+at any one point carries with it, as its correlative, a
+concomitant variation in the habitual expression of life in other
+directions or other groups of activities. These various habits of
+thought, or habitual expressions of life, are all phases of the
+single life sequence of the individual; therefore a habit formed
+in response to a given stimulus will necessarily affect the
+character of the response made to other stimuli. A modification
+of human nature at any one point is a modification of human
+nature as a whole. On this ground, and perhaps to a still greater
+extent on obscurer grounds that can not be discussed here, there
+are these concomitant variations as between the different traits
+of human nature. So, for instance, barbarian peoples with a
+well-developed predatory scheme of life are commonly also
+possessed of a strong prevailing animistic habit, a well-formed
+anthropomorphic cult, and a lively sense of status. On the other
+hand, anthropomorphism and the realizing sense of an animistic
+propensity in material are less obtrusively present in the life
+of the peoples at the cultural stages which precede and which
+follow the barbarian culture. The sense of status is also
+feebler; on the whole, in peaceable communities. It is to be
+remarked that a lively, but slightly specialized, animistic
+belief is to be found in most if not all peoples living in the
+ante-predatory, savage stage of culture. The primitive savage
+takes his animism less seriously than the barbarian or the
+degenerate savage. With him it eventuates in fantastic
+myth-making, rather than in coercive superstition. The barbarian
+culture shows sportsmanship, status, and anthropomorphism. There
+is commonly observable a like concomitance of variations in the
+same respects in the individual temperament of men in the
+civilized communities of today. Those modern representatives of
+the predaceous barbarian temper that make up the sporting element
+are commonly believers in luck; at least they have a strong sense
+of an animistic propensity in things, by force of which they are
+given to gambling. So also as regards anthropomorphism in this
+class. Such of them as give in their adhesion to some creed
+commonly attach themselves to one of the naively and consistently
+anthropomorphic creeds; there are relatively few sporting men who
+seek spiritual comfort in the less anthropomorphic cults, such as
+the Unitarian or the Universalist.
+
+Closely bound up with this correlation of anthropomorphism and
+prowess is the fact that anthropomorphic cults act to
+conserve, if not to initiate, habits of mind favorable to a
+regime of status. As regards this point, it is quite impossible
+to say where the disciplinary effect of the cult ends and where
+the evidence of a concomitance of variations in inherited traits
+begins. In their finest development, the predatory temperament,
+the sense of status, and the anthropomorphic cult all together
+belong to the barbarian culture; and something of a mutual causal
+relation subsists between the three phenomena as they come into
+sight in communities on that cultural level. The way in which
+they recur in correlation in the habits and attitudes of
+individuals and classes today goes far to imply a like causal or
+organic relation between the same psychological phenomena
+considered as traits or habits of the individual. It has appeared
+at an earlier point in the discussion that the relation of
+status, as a feature of social structure, is a consequence of the
+predatory habit of life. As regards its line of derivation, it is
+substantially an elaborated expression of the predatory attitude.
+On the other hand, an anthropomorphic cult is a code of detailed
+relations of status superimposed upon the concept of a
+preternatural, inscrutable propensity in material things. So
+that, as regards the external facts of its derivation, the cult
+may be taken as an outgrowth of archaic man's pervading animistic
+sense, defined and in some degree transformed by the predatory
+habit of life, the result being a personified preternatural
+agency, which is by imputation endowed with a full complement of
+the habits of thought that characterize the man of the predatory
+culture.
+
+The grosser psychological features in the case, which have an
+immediate bearing on economic theory and are consequently to be
+taken account of here, are therefore: (a) as has appeared in an
+earlier chapter, the predatory, emulative habit of mind here
+called prowess is but the barbarian variant of the generically
+human instinct of workmanship, which has fallen into this
+specific form under the guidance of a habit of invidious
+comparison of persons; (b) the relation of status is a formal
+expression of such an invidious comparison duly gauged and graded
+according to a sanctioned schedule; (c) an anthropomorphic cult,
+in the days of its early vigor at least, is an institution the
+characteristic element of which is a relation of status between
+the human subject as inferior and the personified preternatural
+agency as superior. With this in mind, there should be no
+difficulty in recognizing the intimate relation which subsists
+between these three phenomena of human nature and of human life;
+the relation amounts to an identity in some of their substantial
+elements. On the one hand, the system of status and the predatory
+habit of life are an expression of the instinct of workmanship as
+it takes form under a custom of invidious comparison; on the
+other hand, the anthropomorphic cult and the habit of devout
+observances are an expression of men's animistic sense of a
+propensity in material things, elaborated under the guidance of
+substantially the same general habit of invidious comparison. The
+two categories -- the emulative habit of life and the habit of
+devout observances -- are therefore to be taken as complementary
+elements of the barbarian type of human nature and of its modern
+barbarian variants. They are expressions of much the same range
+of aptitudes, made in response to different sets of stimuli.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twelve
+
+Devout Observances
+
+A discoursive rehearsal of certain incidents of modern life will
+show the organic relation of the anthropomorphic cults to the
+barbarian culture and temperament. It will likewise serve to show
+how the survival and efficacy of the cults and he prevalence of
+their schedule of devout observances are related to the
+institution of a leisure class and to the springs of action
+underlying that institution. Without any intention to commend or
+to deprecate the practices to be spoken of under the head of
+devout observances, or the spiritual and intellectual traits of
+which these observances are the expression, the everyday
+phenomena of current anthropomorphic cults may be taken up from
+the point of view of the interest which they have for economic
+theory. What can properly be spoken of here are the tangible,
+external features of devout observances. The moral, as well as
+the devotional value of the life of faith lies outside of the
+scope of the present inquiry. Of course no question is here
+entertained as to the truth or beauty of the creeds on which the
+cults proceed. And even their remoter economic bearing can not be
+taken up here; the subject is too recondite and of too grave
+import to find a place in so slight a sketch.
+
+Something has been said in an earlier chapter as to the influence
+which pecuniary standards of value exert upon the processes of
+valuation carried out on other bases, not related to the
+pecuniary interest. The relation is not altogether one-sided. The
+economic standards or canons of valuation are in their turn
+influenced by extra-economic standards of value. Our judgments of
+the economic bearing of facts are to some extent shaped by the
+dominant presence of these weightier interests. There is a point
+of view, indeed, from which the economic interest is of weight
+only as being ancillary to these higher, non-economic interests.
+For the present purpose, therefore, some thought must be taken to
+isolate the economic interest or the economic hearing of these
+phenomena of anthropomorphic cults. It takes some effort to
+divest oneself of the more serious point of view, and to reach an
+economic appreciation of these facts, with as little as may be of
+the bias due to higher interests extraneous to economic theory.
+In the discussion of the sporting temperament, it has
+appeared that the sense of an animistic propensity in material
+things and events is what affords the spiritual basis of the
+sporting man's gambling habit. For the economic purpose, this
+sense of propensity is substantially the same psychological
+element as expresses itself, under a variety of forms, in
+animistic beliefs and anthropomorphic creeds. So far as concerns
+those tangible psychological features with which economic theory
+has to deal, the gambling spirit which pervades the sporting
+element shades off by insensible gradations into that frame of
+mind which finds gratification in devout observances. As seen
+from the point of view of economic theory, the sporting character
+shades off into the character of a religious devotee. Where the
+betting man's animistic sense is helped out by a somewhat
+consistent tradition, it has developed into a more or less
+articulate belief in a preternatural or hyperphysical agency,
+with something of an anthropomorphic content. And where this is
+the case, there is commonly a perceptible inclination to make
+terms with the preternatural agency by some approved method of
+approach and conciliation. This element of propitiation and
+cajoling has much in common with the crasser forms of worship --
+if not in historical derivation, at least in actual psychological
+content. It obviously shades off in unbroken continuity into what
+is recognized as superstitious practice and belief, and so
+asserts its claim to kinship with the grosser anthropomorphic
+cults.
+
+The sporting or gambling temperament, then, comprises some of the
+substantial psychological elements that go to make a believer in
+creeds and an observer of devout forms, the chief point of
+coincidence being the belief in an inscrutable propensity or a
+preternatural interposition in the sequence of events. For the
+purpose of the gambling practice the belief in preternatural
+agency may be, and ordinarily is, less closely formulated,
+especially as regards the habits of thought and the scheme of
+life imputed to the preternatural agent; or, in other words, as
+regards his moral character and his purposes in interfering in
+events. With respect to the individuality or personality of the
+agency whose presence as luck, or chance, or hoodoo, or mascot,
+etc., he feels and sometimes dreads and endeavors to evade, the
+sporting man's views are also less specific, less integrated and
+differentiated. The basis of his gambling activity is, in great
+measure, simply an instinctive sense of the presence of a
+pervasive extraphysical and arbitrary force or propensity in
+things or situations, which is scarcely recognized as a personal
+agent. The betting man is not infrequently both a believer in
+luck, in this naive sense, and at the same time a pretty staunch
+adherent of some form of accepted creed. He is especially prone
+to accept so much of the creed as concerts the inscrutable power
+and the arbitrary habits of the divinity which has won his
+confidence. In such a case he is possessed of two, or sometimes
+more than two, distinguishable phases of animism. Indeed, the
+complete series of successive phases of animistic belief is to be
+found unbroken in the spiritual furniture of any sporting
+community. Such a chain of animistic conceptions will comprise
+the most elementary form of an instinctive sense of luck and
+chance and fortuitous necessity at one end of the series,
+together with the perfectly developed anthropomorphic divinity at
+the other end, with all intervening stages of integration.
+Coupled with these beliefs in preternatural agency goes an
+instinctive shaping of conduct to conform with the surmised
+requirements of the lucky chance on the one hand, and a more or
+less devout submission to the inscrutable decrees of the divinity
+on the other hand.
+
+There is a relationship in this respect between the sporting
+temperament and the temperament of the delinquent classes; and
+the two are related to the temperament which inclines to an
+anthropomorphic cult. Both the delinquent and the sporting man
+are on the average more apt to be adherents of some accredited
+creed, and are also rather more inclined to devout observances,
+than the general average of the community. It is also noticeable
+that unbelieving members of these classes show more of a
+proclivity to become proselytes to some accredited faith than the
+average of unbelievers. This fact of observation is avowed by the
+spokesmen of sports, especially in apologizing for the more
+naively predatory athletic sports. Indeed, it is somewhat
+insistently claimed as a meritorious feature of sporting life
+that the habitual participants in athletic games are in some
+degree peculiarly given to devout practices. And it is observable
+that the cult to which sporting men and the predaceous delinquent
+classes adhere, or to which proselytes from these classes
+commonly attach themselves, is ordinarily not one of the
+so-called higher faiths, but a cult which has to do with a
+thoroughly anthropomorphic divinity. Archaic, predatory human
+nature is not satisfied with abstruse conceptions of a dissolving
+personality that shades off into the concept of quantitative
+causal sequence, such as the speculative, esoteric creeds of
+Christendom impute to the First Cause, Universal Intelligence,
+World Soul, or Spiritual Aspect. As an instance of a cult of the
+character which the habits of mind of the athlete and the
+delinquent require, may be cited that branch of the church
+militant known as the Salvation Army. This is to some extent
+recruited from the lower-class delinquents, and it appears to
+comprise also, among its officers especially, a larger proportion
+of men with a sporting record than the proportion of such men in
+the aggregate population of the community.
+
+College athletics afford a case in point. It is contended by
+exponents of the devout element in college life -- and there
+seems to be no ground for disputing the claim -- that the
+desirable athletic material afforded by any student body in this
+country is at the same time predominantly religious; or that it
+is at least given to devout observances to a greater degree than
+the average of those students whose interest in athletics and
+other college sports is less. This is what might be expected on
+theoretical grounds. It may be remarked, by the way, that from
+one point of view this is felt to reflect credit on the college
+sporting life, on athletic games, and on those persons who occupy
+themselves with these matters. It happens not frequently that
+college sporting men devote themselves to religious propaganda,
+either as a vocation or as a by-occupation; and it is observable
+that when this happens they are likely to become propagandists of
+some one of the more anthropomorphic cults. In their teaching
+they are apt to insist chiefly on the personal relation of status
+which subsists between an anthropomorphic divinity and the human
+subject.
+
+This intimate relation between athletics and devout
+observance among college men is a fact of sufficient notoriety;
+but it has a special feature to which attention has not been
+called, although it is obvious enough. The religious zeal which
+pervades much of the college sporting element is especially prone
+to express itself in an unquestioning devoutness and a naive and
+complacent submission to an inscrutable Providence. It therefore
+by preference seeks affliation with some one of those lay
+religious organizations which occupy themselves with the spread
+of the exoteric forms of faith -- as, e.g., the Young Men's
+Christian Association or the Young People's Society for Christian
+Endeavor. These lay bodies are organized to further "practical"
+religion; and as if to enforce the argument and firmly establish
+the close relationship between the sporting temperament and the
+archaic devoutness, these lay religious bodies commonly devote
+some appreciable portion of their energies to the furtherance of
+athletic contests and similar games of chance and skill. It might
+even be said that sports of this kind are apprehended to have
+some efficacy as a means of grace. They are apparently useful as
+a means of proselyting, and as a means of sustaining the devout
+attitude in converts once made. That is to say, the games which
+give exercise to the animistic sense and to the emulative
+propensity help to form and to conserve that habit of mind to
+which the more exoteric cults are congenial. Hence, in the hands
+of the lay organizations, these sporting activities come to do
+duty as a novitiate or a means of induction into that fuller
+unfolding of the life of spiritual status which is the privilege
+of the full communicant along.
+
+That the exercise of the emulative and lower animistic
+proclivities are substantially useful for the devout purpose
+seems to be placed beyond question by the fact that the
+priesthood of many denominations is following the lead of the lay
+organizations in this respect. Those ecclesiastical organizations
+especially which stand nearest the lay organizations in their
+insistence on practical religion have gone some way towards
+adopting these or analogous practices in connection with the
+traditional devout observances. So there are "boys' brigades,"
+and other organizations, under clerical sanction, acting to
+develop the emulative proclivity and the sense of status in the
+youthful members of the congregation. These pseudo-military
+organizations tend to elaborate and accentuate the proclivity to
+emulation and invidious comparison, and so strengthen the native
+facility for discerning and approving the relation of personal
+mastery and subservience. And a believer is eminently a person
+who knows how to obey and accept chastisement with good grace.
+But the habits of thought which these practices foster and
+conserve make up but one half of the substance of the
+anthropomorphic cults. The other, complementary element of devout
+life -- the animistic habit of mind -- is recruited and conserved
+by a second range of practices organized under clerical sanction.
+These are the class of gambling practices of which the church
+bazaar or raffle may be taken as the type. As indicating the
+degree of legitimacy of these practices in connection with devout
+observances proper, it is to be remarked that these raffles, and
+the like trivial opportunities for gambling, seem to appeal with
+more effect to the common run of the members of religious
+organizations than they do to persons of a less devout habit of
+mind.
+
+All this seems to argue, on the one hand, that the same
+temperament inclines people to sports as inclines them to the
+anthropomorphic cults, and on the other hand that the habituation
+to sports, perhaps especially to athletic sports, acts to develop
+the propensities which find satisfaction in devout observances.
+Conversely; it also appears that habituation to these observances
+favors the growth of a proclivity for athletic sports and for all
+games that give play to the habit of invidious comparison and of
+the appeal to luck. Substantially the same range of propensities
+finds expression in both these directions of the spiritual life.
+That barbarian human nature in which the predatory instinct and
+the animistic standpoint predominate is normally prone to both.
+The predatory habit of mind involves an accentuated sense of
+personal dignity and of the relative standing of individuals. The
+social structure in which the predatory habit has been the
+dominant factor in the shaping of institutions is a structure
+based on status. The pervading norm in the predatory community's
+scheme of life is the relation of superior and inferior, noble
+and base, dominant and subservient persons and classes, master
+and slave. The anthropomorphic cults have come down from that
+stage of industrial development and have been shaped by the same
+scheme of economic differentiation -- a differentiation into
+consumer and producer -- and they are pervaded by the same
+dominant principle of mastery and subservience. The cults impute
+to their divinity the habits of thought answering to the stage of
+economic differentiation at which the cults took shape. The
+anthropomorphic divinity is conceived to be punctilious in all
+questions of precedence and is prone to an assertion of mastery
+and an arbitrary exercise of power -- an habitual resort to force
+as the final arbiter.
+
+In the later and maturer formulations of the anthropomorphic
+creed this imputed habit of dominance on the part of a divinity
+of awful presence and inscrutable power is chastened into "the
+fatherhood of God." The spiritual attitude and the aptitudes
+imputed to the preternatural agent are still such as belong under
+the regime of status, but they now assume the patriarchal cast
+characteristic of the quasi-peaceable stage of culture. Still it
+is to be noted that even in this advanced phase of the cult the
+observances in which devoutness finds expression consistently aim
+to propitiate the divinity by extolling his greatness and glory
+and by professing subservience and fealty. The act of
+propitiation or of worship is designed to appeal to a sense of
+status imputed to the inscrutable power that is thus approached.
+The propitiatory formulas most in vogue are still such as carry
+or imply an invidious comparison. A loyal attachment to the
+person of an anthropomorphic divinity endowed with such an
+archaic human nature implies the like archaic propensities in the
+devotee. For the purposes of economic theory, the relation of
+fealty, whether to a physical or to an extraphysical person, is
+to be taken as a variant of that personal subservience which
+makes up so large a share of the predatory and the
+quasi-peaceable scheme of life.
+
+The barbarian conception of the divinity, as a warlike chieftain
+inclined to an overbearing manner of government, has been greatly
+softened through the milder manners and the soberer habits of
+life that characterize those cultural phases which lie between
+the early predatory stage and the present. But even after this
+chastening of the devout fancy, and the consequent mitigation of
+the harsher traits of conduct and character that are currently
+imputed to the divinity, there still remains in the popular
+apprehension of the divine nature and temperament a very
+substantial residue of the barbarian conception. So it comes
+about, for instance, that in characterizing the divinity and his
+relations to the process of human life, speakers and writers are
+still able to make effective use of similes borrowed from the
+vocabulary of war and of the predatory manner of life, as well as
+of locutions which involve an invidious comparison. Figures of
+speech of this import are used with good effect even in
+addressing the less warlike modern audiences, made up of
+adherents of the blander variants of the creed. This effective
+use of barbarian epithets and terms of comparison by popular
+speakers argues that the modern generation has retained a lively
+appreciation of the dignity and merit of the barbarian virtues;
+and it argues also that there is a degree of congruity between
+the devout attitude and the predatory habit of mind. It is only
+on second thought, if at all, that the devout fancy of modern
+worshippers revolts at the imputation of ferocious and vengeful
+emotions and actions to the object of their adoration. It is a
+matter of common observation that sanguinary epithets applied to
+the divinity have a high aesthetic and honorific value in the
+popular apprehension. That is to say, suggestions which these
+epithets carry are very acceptable to our unreflecting
+apprehension.
+
+  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
+  He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
+  He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;
+  His truth is marching on.
+
+The guiding habits of thought of a devout person move on the
+plane of an archaic scheme of life which has outlived much of its
+usefulness for the economic exigencies of the collective life of
+today. In so far as the economic organization fits the exigencies
+of the collective life of today, it has outlived the regime of
+status, and has no use and no place for a relation of personal
+subserviency. So far as concerns the economic efficiency of the
+community, the sentiment of personal fealty, and the general
+habit of mind of which that sentiment is an expression, are
+survivals which cumber the ground and hinder an adequate
+adjustment of human institutions to the existing situation. The
+habit of mind which best lends itself to the purposes of a
+peaceable, industrial community, is that matter-of-fact temper
+which recognizes the value of material facts simply as opaque
+items in the mechanical sequence. It is that frame of mind which
+does not instinctively impute an animistic propensity to things,
+nor resort to preternatural intervention as an explanation of
+perplexing phenomena, nor depend on an unseen hand to shape the
+course of events to human use. To meet the requirements of the
+highest economic efficiency under modern conditions, the world
+process must habitually be apprehended in terms of quantitative,
+dispassionate force and sequence.
+
+As seen from the point of view of the later economic
+exigencies, devoutness is, perhaps in all cases, to be looked
+upon as a survival from an earlier phase of associated life -- a
+mark of arrested spiritual development. Of course it remains true
+that in a community where the economic structure is still
+substantially a system of status; where the attitude of the
+average of persons in the community is consequently shaped by and
+adapted to the relation of personal dominance and personal
+subservience; or where for any other reason -- of tradition or of
+inherited aptitude -- the population as a whole is strongly
+inclined to devout observances; there a devout habit of mind in
+any individual, not in excess of the average of the community,
+must be taken simply as a detail of the prevalent habit of life.
+In this light, a devout individual in a devout community can not
+be called a case of reversion, since he is abreast of the average
+of the community. But as seen from the point of view of the
+modern industrial situation, exceptional devoutness -- devotional
+zeal that rises appreciably above the average pitch of devoutness
+in the community -- may safely be set down as in all cases an
+atavistic trait.
+
+It is, of course, equally legitimate to consider these phenomena
+from a different point of view. They may be appreciated for a
+different purpose, and the characterization here offered may be
+turned about. In speaking from the point of view of the
+devotional interest, or the interest of devout taste, it may,
+with equal cogency, be said that the spiritual attitude bred in
+men by the modern industrial life is unfavorable to a free
+development of the life of faith. It might fairly be objected to
+the later development of the industrial process that its
+discipline tends to "materialism," to the elimination of filial
+piety. From the aesthetic point of view, again, something to a
+similar purport might be said. But, however legitimate and
+valuable these and the like reflections may be for their purpose,
+they would not be in place in the present inquiry, which is
+exclusively concerned with the valuation of these phenomena from
+the economic point of view.
+
+The grave economic significance of the anthropomorphic habit of
+mind and of the addiction to devout observances must serve as
+apology for speaking further on a topic which it can not but be
+distasteful to discuss at all as an economic phenomenon in a
+community so devout as ours. Devout observances are of economic
+importance as an index of a concomitant variation of temperament,
+accompanying the predatory habit of mind and so indicating the
+presence of industrially disserviceable traits. They indicate the
+presence of a mental attitude which has a certain economic value
+of its own by virtue of its influence upon the industrial
+serviceability of the individual. But they are also of importance
+more directly, in modifying the economic activities of the
+community, especially as regards the distribution and consumption
+of goods.
+
+The most obvious economic bearing of these observances is seen in
+the devout consumption of goods and services. The
+consumption of ceremonial paraphernalia required by any cult, in
+the way of shrines, temples, churches, vestments, sacrifices,
+sacraments, holiday attire, etc., serves no immediate material
+end. All this material apparatus may, therefore, without implying
+deprecation, be broadly characterized as items of conspicuous
+waste. The like is true in a general way of the personal service
+consumed under this head; such as priestly education, priestly
+service, pilgrimages, fasts, holidays, household devotions, and
+the like. At the same time the observances in the execution of
+which this consumption takes place serve to extend and protract
+the vogue of those habits of thought on which an anthropomorphic
+cult rests. That is to say, they further the habits of thought
+characteristic of the regime of status. They are in so far an
+obstruction to the most effective organization of industry under
+modern circumstances; and are, in the first instance,
+antagonistic to the development of economic institutions in the
+direction required by the situation of today. For the present
+purpose, the indirect as well as the direct effects of this
+consumption are of the nature of a curtailment of the community's
+economic efficiency. In economic theory, then, and considered in
+its proximate consequences, the consumption of goods and effort
+in the service of an anthropomorphic divinity means a lowering of
+the vitality of the community. What may be the remoter, indirect,
+moral effects of this class of consumption does not admit of a
+succinct answer, and it is a question which can not be taken up
+here.
+
+It will be to the point, however, to note the general economic
+character of devout consumption, in comparison with consumption
+for other purposes. An indication of the range of motives and
+purposes from which devout consumption of goods proceeds will
+help toward an appreciation of the value both of this consumption
+itself and of the general habit of mind to which it is congenial.
+There is a striking parallelism, if not rather a substantial
+identity of motive, between the consumption which goes to the
+service of an anthropomorphic divinity and that which goes to the
+service of a gentleman of leisure chieftain or patriarch -- in
+the upper class of society during the barbarian culture. Both in
+the case of the chieftain and in that of the divinity there are
+expensive edifices set apart for the behoof of the person served.
+These edifices, as well as the properties which supplement them
+in the service, must not be common in kind or grade; they always
+show a large element of conspicuous waste. It may also be noted
+that the devout edifices are invariably of an archaic cast in
+their structure and fittings. So also the servants, both of the
+chieftain and of the divinity, must appear in the presence
+clothed in garments of a special, ornate character. The
+characteristic economic feature of this apparel is a more than
+ordinarily accentuated conspicuous waste, together with the
+secondary feature -- more accentuated in the case of the priestly
+servants than in that of the servants or courtiers of the
+barbarian potentate -- that this court dress must always be in
+some degree of an archaic fashion. Also the garments worn by the
+lay members of the community when they come into the presence,
+should be of a more expensive kind than their everyday apparel.
+Here, again, the parallelism between the usage of the chieftain's
+audience hall and that of the sanctuary is fairly well marked. In
+this respect there is required a certain ceremonial "cleanness"
+of attire, the essential feature of which, in the economic
+respect, is that the garments worn on these occasions should
+carry as little suggestion as may be of any industrial occupation
+or of any habitual addiction to such employments as are of
+material use.
+
+This requirement of conspicuous waste and of ceremonial cleanness
+from the traces of industry extends also to the apparel, and in a
+less degree to the food, which is consumed on sacred holidays;
+that is to say, on days set apart -- tabu -- for the divinity or
+for some member of the lower ranks of the preternatural leisure
+class. In economic theory, sacred holidays are obviously to be
+construed as a season of vicarious leisure performed for the
+divinity or saint in whose name the tabu is imposed and to whose
+good repute the abstention from useful effort on these days is
+conceived to inure. The characteristic feature of all such
+seasons of devout vicarious leisure is a more or less rigid tabu
+on all activity that is of human use. In the case of fast-days
+the conspicuous abstention from gainful occupations and from all
+pursuits that (materially) further human life is further
+accentuated by compulsory abstinence from such consumption as
+would conduce to the comfort or the fullness of life of the
+consumer.
+
+It may be remarked, parenthetically, that secular holidays are of
+the same origin, by slightly remoter derivation. They shade off
+by degrees from the genuinely sacred days, through an
+intermediate class of semi-sacred birthdays of kings and great
+men who have been in some measure canonized, to the deliberately
+invented holiday set apart to further the good repute of some
+notable event or some striking fact, to which it is intended to
+do honor, or the good fame of which is felt to be in need of
+repair. The remoter refinement in the employment of vicarious
+leisure as a means of augmenting the good repute of a phenomenon
+or datum is seen at its best in its very latest application. A
+day of vicarious leisure has in some communities been set apart
+as Labor Day. This observance is designed to augment the prestige
+of the fact of labor, by the archaic, predatory method of a
+compulsory abstention from useful effort. To this datum of
+labor-in-general is imputed the good repute attributable to the
+pecuniary strength put in evidence by abstaining from labor.
+Sacred holidays, and holidays generally, are of the nature of a
+tribute levied on the body of the people. The tribute is paid in
+vicarious leisure, and the honorific effect which emerges is
+imputed to the person or the fact for whose good repute the
+holiday has been instituted. Such a tithe of vicarious leisure is
+a perquisite of all members of the preternatural leisure class
+and is indispensable to their good fame. Un saint qu'on ne chôme
+pas is indeed a saint fallen on evil days.
+
+Besides this tithe of vicarious leisure levied on the laity,
+there are also special classes of persons -- the various grades
+of priests and hierodules -- whose time is wholly set apart for a
+similar service. It is not only incumbent on the priestly class
+to abstain from vulgar labor, especially so far as it is
+lucrative or is apprehended to contribute to the temporal
+well-being of mankind. The tabu in the case of the priestly class
+goes farther and adds a refinement in the form of an injunction
+against their seeking worldly gain even where it may be had
+without debasing application to industry. It is felt to be
+unworthy of the servant of the divinity, or rather unworthy the
+dignity of the divinity whose servant he is, that he should seek
+material gain or take thought for temporal matters. "Of all
+contemptible things a man who pretends to be a priest of God and
+is a priest to his own comforts and ambitions is the most
+contemptible." There is a line of discrimination, which a
+cultivated taste in matters of devout observance finds little
+difficulty in drawing, between such actions and conduct as
+conduce to the fullness of human life and such as conduce to the
+good fame of the anthropomorphic divinity; and the activity of
+the priestly class, in the ideal barbarian scheme, falls wholly
+on the hither side of this line. What falls within the range of
+economics falls below the proper level of solicitude of the
+priesthood in its best estate. Such apparent exceptions to this
+rule as are afforded, for instance, by some of the medieval
+orders of monks (the members of which actually labored to some
+useful end), scarcely impugn the rule. These outlying orders of
+the priestly class are not a sacerdotal element in the full sense
+of the term. And it is noticeable also that these doubtfully
+sacerdotal orders, which countenanced their members in earning a
+living, fell into disrepute through offending the sense of
+propriety in the communities where they existed.
+
+The priest should not put his hand to mechanically
+productive work; but he should consume in large measure. But even
+as regards his consumption it is to be noted that it should take
+such forms as do not obviously conduce to his own comfort or
+fullness of life; it should conform to the rules governing
+vicarious consumption, as explained under that head in an earlier
+chapter. It is not ordinarily in good form for the priestly class
+to appear well fed or in hilarious spirits. Indeed, in many of
+the more elaborate cults the injunction against other than
+vicarious consumption by this class frequently goes so far as to
+enjoin mortification of the flesh. And even in those modern
+denominations which have been organized under the latest
+formulations of the creed, in a modern industrial community, it
+is felt that all levity and avowed zest in the enjoyment of the
+good things of this world is alien to the true clerical decorum.
+Whatever suggests that these servants of an invisible master are
+living a life, not of devotion to their master's good fame, but
+of application to their own ends, jars harshly on our
+sensibilities as something fundamentally and eternally wrong.
+They are a servant class, although, being servants of a very
+exalted master, they rank high in the social scale by virtue of
+this borrowed light. Their consumption is vicarious consumption;
+and since, in the advanced cults, their master has no need of
+material gain, their occupation is vicarious leisure in the full
+sense. "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do,
+do all to the glory of God." It may be added that so far as the
+laity is assimilated to the priesthood in the respect that they
+are conceived to be servants of the divinity. So far this imputed
+vicarious character attaches also to the layman's life. The range
+of application of this corollary is somewhat wide. It applies
+especially to such movements for the reform or rehabilitation of
+the religious life as are of an austere, pietistic, ascetic cast
+-- where the human subject is conceived to hold his life by a
+direct servile tenure from his spiritual sovereign. That is to
+say, where the institution of the priesthood lapses, or where
+there is an exceptionally lively sense of the immediate and
+masterful presence of the divinity in the affairs of life, there
+the layman is conceived to stand in an immediate servile relation
+to the divinity, and his life is construed to be a performance of
+vicarious leisure directed to the enhancement of his master's
+repute. In such cases of reversion there is a return to the
+unmediated relation of subservience, as the dominant fact of the
+devout attitude. The emphasis is thereby throw on an austere and
+discomforting vicarious leisure, to the neglect of conspicuous
+consumption as a means of grace.
+
+A doubt will present itself as to the full legitimacy of this
+characterization of the sacerdotal scheme of life, on the ground
+that a considerable proportion of the modern priesthood departs
+from the scheme in many details. The scheme does not hold good
+for the clergy of those denominations which have in some measure
+diverged from the old established schedule of beliefs or
+observances. These take thought, at least ostensibly or
+permissively, for the temporal welfare of the laity, as well as
+for their own. Their manner of life, not only in the privacy of
+their own household, but often even before the public, does not
+differ in an extreme degree from that of secular-minded persons,
+either in its ostensible austerity or in the archaism of its
+apparatus. This is truest for those denominations that have
+wandered the farthest. To this objection it is to be said that we
+have here to do not with a discrepancy in the theory of
+sacerdotal life, but with an imperfect conformity to the scheme
+on the part of this body of clergy. They are but a partial and
+imperfect representative of the priesthood, and must not be taken
+as exhibiting the sacerdotal scheme of life in an authentic and
+competent manner. The clergy of the sects and denominations might
+be characterized as a half-caste priesthood, or a priesthood in
+process of becoming or of reconstitution. Such a priesthood may
+be expected to show the characteristics of the sacerdotal office
+only as blended and obscured with alien motives and traditions,
+due to the disturbing presence of other factors than those of
+animism and status in the purposes of the organizations to which
+this non-conforming fraction of the priesthood belongs.
+
+Appeal may be taken direct to the taste of any person with a
+discriminating and cultivated sense of the sacerdotal
+proprieties, or to the prevalent sense of what constitutes
+clerical decorum in any community at all accustomed to think or
+to pass criticism on what a clergyman may or may not do without
+blame. Even in the most extremely secularized denominations,
+there is some sense of a distinction that should be observed
+between the sacerdotal and the lay scheme of life. There is no
+person of sensibility but feels that where the members of this
+denominational or sectarian clergy depart from traditional usage,
+in the direction of a less austere or less archaic demeanor and
+apparel, they are departing from the ideal of priestly decorum.
+There is probably no community and no sect within the range of
+the Western culture in which the bounds of permissible indulgence
+are not drawn appreciably closer for the incumbent of the
+priestly office than for the common layman. If the priest's own
+sense of sacerdotal propriety does not effectually impose a
+limit, the prevalent sense of the proprieties on the part of the
+community will commonly assert itself so obtrusively as to lead
+to his conformity or his retirement from office.
+
+Few if any members of any body of clergy, it may be added, would
+avowedly seek an increase of salary for gain's sake; and if such
+avowal were openly made by a clergyman, it would be found
+obnoxious to the sense of propriety among his congregation. It
+may also be noted in this connection that no one but the scoffers
+and the very obtuse are not instinctively grieved inwardly at a
+jest from the pulpit; and that there are none whose respect for
+their pastor does not suffer through any mark of levity on his
+part in any conjuncture of life, except it be levity of a
+palpably histrionic kind -- a constrained unbending of dignity.
+The diction proper to the sanctuary and to the priestly office
+should also carry little if any suggestion of effective everyday
+life, and should not draw upon the vocabulary of modern trade or
+industry. Likewise, one's sense of the proprieties is readily
+offended by too detailed and intimate a handling of industrial
+and other purely human questions at the hands of the clergy.
+There is a certain level of generality below which a cultivated
+sense of the proprieties in homiletical discourse will not permit
+a well-bred clergyman to decline in his discussion of temporal
+interests. These matters that are of human and secular
+consequence simply, should properly be handled with such a degree
+of generality and aloofness as may imply that the speaker
+represents a master whose interest in secular affairs goes only
+so far as to permissively countenance them.
+
+It is further to be noticed that the non-conforming sects and
+variants whose priesthood is here under discussion, vary among
+themselves in the degree of their conformity to the ideal scheme
+of sacerdotal life. In a general way it will be found that the
+divergence in this respect is widest in the case of the
+relatively young denominations, and especially in the case of
+such of the newer denominations as have chiefly a lower
+middle-class constituency. They commonly show a large admixture
+of humanitarian, philanthropic, or other motives which can not be
+classed as expressions of the devotional attitude; such as the
+desire of learning or of conviviality, which enter largely into
+the effective interest shown by members of these organizations.
+The non-conforming or sectarian movements have commonly proceeded
+from a mixture of motives, some of which are at variance with
+that sense of status on which the priestly office rests.
+Sometimes, indeed, the motive has been in good part a revulsion
+against a system of status. Where this is the case the
+institution of the priesthood has broken down in the transition,
+at least partially. The spokesman of such an organization is at
+the outset a servant and representative of the organization,
+rather than a member of a special priestly class and the
+spokesman of a divine master. And it is only by a process of
+gradual specialization that, in succeeding generations, this
+spokesman regains the position of priest, with a full investiture
+of sacerdotal authority, and with its accompanying austere,
+archaic and vicarious manner of life. The like is true of the
+breakdown and redintegration of devout ritual after such a
+revulsion. The priestly office, the scheme of sacerdotal life,
+and the schedule of devout observances are rehabilitated only
+gradually, insensibly, and with more or less variation in
+details, as a persistent human sense of devout propriety
+reasserts its primacy in questions touching the interest in the
+preternatural -- and it may be added, as the organization
+increases in wealth, and so acquires more of the point of view
+and the habits of thought of a leisure class.
+
+Beyond the priestly class, and ranged in an ascending
+hierarchy,ordinarily comes a superhuman vicarious leisure class
+of saints, angels, etc. -- or their equivalents in the ethnic
+cults. These rise in grade, one above another, according to
+elaborate system of status. The principle of status runs through
+the entire hierarchical system, both visible and invisible. The
+good fame of these several orders of the supernatural hierarchy
+also commonly requires a certain tribute of vicarious consumption
+and vicarious leisure. In many cases they accordingly have
+devoted to their service sub-orders of attendants or dependents
+who perform a vicarious leisure for them, after much the same
+fashion as was found in an earlier chapter to be true of the
+dependent leisure class under the patriarchal system.
+
+It may not appear without reflection how these devout observances
+and the peculiarity of temperament which they imply, or the
+consumption of goods and services which is comprised in the cult,
+stand related to the leisure class of a modern community, or to
+the economic motives of which that class is the exponent in the
+modern scheme of life to this end a summary review of certain
+facts bearing on this relation will be useful. It appears from an
+earlier passage in this discussion that for the purpose of the
+collective life of today, especially so far as concerns the
+industrial efficiency of the modern community, the characteristic
+traits of the devout temperament are a hindrance rather than a
+help. It should accordingly be found that the modern industrial
+life tends selectively to eliminate these traits of human nature
+from the spiritual constitution of the classes that are
+immediately engaged in the industrial process. It should hold
+true, approximately, that devoutness is declining or tending to
+obsolescence among the members of what may be called the
+effective industrial community. At the same time it should appear
+that this aptitude or habit survives in appreciably greater vigor
+among those classes which do not immediately or primarily enter
+into the community's life process as an industrial factor.
+
+It has already been pointed out that these latter classes, which
+live by, rather than in, the industrial process, are roughly
+comprised under two categories (1) the leisure class proper,
+which is shielded from the stress of the economic situation; and
+(2) the indigent classes, including the lower-class delinquents,
+which are unduly exposed to the stress. In the case of the former
+class an archaic habit of mind persists because no effectual
+economic pressure constrains this class to an adaptation of its
+habits of thought to the changing situation; while in the latter
+the reason for a failure to adjust their habits of thought to the
+altered requirements of industrial efficiency is innutrition,
+absence of such surplus of energy as is needed in order to make
+the adjustment with facility, together with a lack of opportunity
+to acquire and become habituated to the modern point of view. The
+trend of the selective process runs in much the same direction in
+both cases.
+
+From the point of view which the modern industrial life
+inculcates, phenomena are habitually subsumed under the
+quantitative relation of mechanical sequence. The indigent
+classes not only fall short of the modicum of leisure necessary
+in order to appropriate and assimilate the more recent
+generalizations of science which this point of view involves, but
+they also ordinarily stand in such a relation of personal
+dependence or subservience to their pecuniary superiors as
+materially to retard their emancipation from habits of thought
+proper to the regime of status. The result is that these classes
+in some measure retain that general habit of mind the chief
+expression of which is a strong sense of personal status, and of
+which devoutness is one feature.
+
+In the older communities of the European culture, the hereditary
+leisure class, together with the mass of the indigent population,
+are given to devout observances in an appreciably higher degree
+than the average of the industrious middle class, wherever a
+considerable class of the latter character exists. But in some of
+these countries, the two categories of conservative humanity
+named above comprise virtually the whole population. Where these
+two classes greatly preponderate, their bent shapes popular
+sentiment to such an extent as to bear down any possible
+divergent tendency in the inconsiderable middle class, and
+imposes a devout attitude upon the whole community.
+
+This must, of course, not be construed to say that such
+communities or such classes as are exceptionally prone to devout
+observances tend to conform in any exceptional degree to the
+specifications of any code of morals that we may be accustomed to
+associate with this or that confession of faith. A large measure
+of the devout habit of mind need not carry with it a strict
+observance of the injunctions of the Decalogue or of the common
+law. Indeed, it is becoming somewhat of a commonplace with
+observers of criminal life in European communities that the
+criminal and dissolute classes are, if anything, rather more
+devout, and more naively so, than the average of the population.
+It is among those who constitute the pecuniary middle class and
+the body of law-abiding citizens that a relative exemption from
+the devotional attitude is to be looked for. Those who best
+appreciate the merits of the higher creeds and observances would
+object to all this and say that the devoutness of the low-class
+delinquents is a spurious, or at the best a superstitious
+devoutness; and the point is no doubt well taken and goes
+directly and cogently to the purpose intended. But for the
+purpose of the present inquiry these extra-economic,
+extra-psychological distinctions must perforce be neglected,
+however valid and however decisive they may be for the purpose
+for which they are made.
+
+What has actually taken place with regard to class
+emancipation from the habit of devout observance is shown by the
+latter-day complaint of the clergy -- that the churches are
+losing the sympathy of the artisan classes, and are losing their
+hold upon them. At the same time it is currently believed that
+the middle class, commonly so called, is also falling away in the
+cordiality of its support of the church, especially so far as
+regards the adult male portion of that class. These are currently
+recognized phenomena, and it might seem that a simple reference
+to these facts should sufficiently substantiate the general
+position outlined. Such an appeal to the general phenomena of
+popular church attendance and church membership may be
+sufficiently convincing for the proposition here advanced. But it
+will still be to the purpose to trace in some detail the course
+of events and the particular forces which have wrought this
+change in the spiritual attitude of the more advanced industrial
+communities of today. It will serve to illustrate the manner in
+which economic causes work towards a secularization of men's
+habits of thought. In this respect the American community should
+afford an exceptionally convincing illustration, since this
+community has been the least trammelled by external circumstances
+of any equally important industrial aggregate.
+
+After making due allowance for exceptions and sporadic departures
+from the normal, the situation here at the present time may be
+summarized quite briefly. As a general rule the classes that are
+low in economic efficiency, or in intelligence, or both, are
+peculiarly devout -- as, for instance, the Negro population of
+the South, much of the lower-class foreign
+population, much of the rural population, especially in those
+sections which are backward in education, in the stage of
+development of their industry, or in respect of their industrial
+contact with the rest of the community. So also such fragments as
+we possess of a specialized or hereditary indigent class, or of a
+segregated criminal or dissolute class; although among these
+latter the devout habit of mind is apt to take the form of a
+naive animistic belief in luck and in the efficacy of shamanistic
+practices perhaps more frequently than it takes the form of a
+formal adherence to any accredited creed. The artisan class, on
+the other hand, is notoriously falling away from the accredited
+anthropomorphic creeds and from all devout observances. This
+class is in an especial degree exposed to the characteristic
+intellectual and spiritual stress of modern organized industry,
+which requires a constant recognition of the undisguised
+phenomena of impersonal, matter-of-fact sequence and an
+unreserved conformity to the law of cause and effect. This class
+is at the same time not underfed nor over-worked to such an
+extent as to leave no margin of energy for the work of
+adaptation.
+
+The case of the lower or doubtful leisure class in America -- the
+middle class commonly so called -- is somewhat peculiar. It
+differs in respect of its devotional life from its European
+counterpart, but it differs in degree and method rather than in
+substance. The churches still have the pecuniary support of this
+class; although the creeds to which the class adheres with the
+greatest facility are relatively poor in anthropomorphic content.
+At the same time the effective middle-class congregation tends,
+in many cases, more or less remotely perhaps, to become a
+congregation of women and minors. There is an appreciable lack of
+devotional fervor among the adult males of the middle class,
+although to a considerable extent there survives among them a
+certain complacent, reputable assent to the outlines of the
+accredited creed under which they were born. Their everyday life
+is carried on in a more or less close contact with the industrial
+process.
+
+This peculiar sexual differentiation, which tends to
+delegate devout observances to the women and their children, is
+due, at least in part, to the fact that the middle-class women
+are in great measure a (vicarious) leisure class. The same is
+true in a less degree of the women of the lower, artisan classes.
+They live under a regime of status handed down from an earlier
+stage of industrial development, and thereby they preserve a
+frame of mind and habits of thought which incline them to an
+archaic view of things generally. At the same time they stand in
+no such direct organic relation to the industrial process at
+large as would tend strongly to break down those habits of
+thought which, for the modern industrial purpose, are obsolete.
+That is to say, the peculiar devoutness of women is a particular
+expression of that conservatism which the women of civilized
+communities owe, in great measure, to their economic position.
+For the modern man the patriarchal relation of status is by no
+means the dominant feature of life; but for the women on the
+other hand, and for the upper middle-class women especially,
+confined as they are by prescription and by economic
+circumstances to their "domestic sphere," this relation is the
+most real and most formative factor of life. Hence a habit of
+mind favorable to devout observances and to the interpretation of
+the facts of life generally in terms of personal status. The
+logic, and the logical processes, of her everyday domestic life
+are carried over into the realm of the supernatural, and the
+woman finds herself at home and content in a range of ideas which
+to the man are in great measure alien and imbecile.
+
+Still the men of this class are also not devoid of piety,
+although it is commonly not piety of an aggressive or exuberant
+kind. The men of the upper middle class commonly take a more
+complacent attitude towards devout observances than the men of
+the artisan class. This may perhaps be explained in part by
+saying that what is true of the women of the class is true to a
+less extent also of the men. They are to an appreciable extent a
+sheltered class; and the patriarchal relation of status which
+still persists in their conjugal life and in their habitual use
+of servants, may also act to conserve an archaic habit of mind
+and may exercise a retarding influence upon the process of
+secularization which their habits of thought are undergoing. The
+relations of the American middle-class man to the economic
+community, however, are usually pretty close and exacting;
+although it may be remarked, by the way and in qualification,
+that their economic activity frequently also partakes in some
+degree of the patriarchal or quasi-predatory character. The
+occupations which are in good repute among this class and which
+have most to do with shaping the class habits of thought, are the
+pecuniary occupations which have been spoken of in a similar
+connection in an earlier chapter. There is a good deal of the
+relation of arbitrary command and submission, and not a little of
+shrewd practice, remotely akin to predatory fraud. All this
+belongs on the plane of life of the predatory barbarian, to whom
+a devotional attitude is habitual. And in addition to this, the
+devout observances also commend themselves to this class on the
+ground of reputability. But this latter incentive to piety
+deserves treatment by itself and will be spoken of presently.
+There is no hereditary leisure class of any consequence in the
+American community, except in the South. This Southern leisure
+class is somewhat given to devout observances; more so than any
+class of corresponding pecuniary standing in other parts of the
+country. It is also well known that the creeds of the South are
+of a more old-fashioned cast than their counterparts in the
+North. Corresponding to this more archaic devotional life of the
+South is the lower industrial development of that section. The
+industrial organization of the South is at present, and
+especially it has been until quite recently, of a more primitive
+character than that of the American community taken as a whole.
+It approaches nearer to handicraft, in the paucity and rudeness
+of its mechanical appliances, and there is more of the element of
+mastery and subservience. It may also be noted that, owing to the
+peculiar economic circumstances of this section, the greater
+devoutness of the Southern population, both white and black, is
+correlated with a scheme of life which in many ways recalls the
+barbarian stages of industrial development. Among this population
+offenses of an archaic character also are and have been
+relatively more prevalent and are less deprecated than they are
+elsewhere; as, for example, duels, brawls, feuds, drunkenness,
+horse-racing, cock-fighting, gambling, male sexual incontinence
+(evidenced by the considerable number of mulattoes). There is
+also a livelier sense of honor -- an expression of sportsmanship
+and a derivative of predatory life.
+
+As regards the wealthier class of the North, the American leisure
+class in the best sense of the term, it is, to begin with,
+scarcely possible to speak of an hereditary devotional attitude.
+This class is of too recent growth to be possessed of a
+well-formed transmitted habit in this respect, or even of a
+special home-grown tradition. Still, it may be noted in passing
+that there is a perceptible tendency among this class to give in
+at least a nominal, and apparently something of a real, adherence
+to some one of the accredited creeds. Also, weddings, funerals,
+and the like honorific events among this class are pretty
+uniformly solemnized with some especial degree of religious
+circumstance. It is impossible to say how far this adherence to a
+creed is a bona fide reversion to a devout habit of mind, and how
+far it is to be classed as a case of protective mimicry assumed
+for the purpose of an outward assimilation to canons of
+reputability borrowed from foreign ideals. Something of a
+substantial devotional propensity seems to be present, to judge
+especially by the somewhat peculiar degree of ritualistic
+observance which is in process of development in the upper-class
+cults. There is a tendency perceptible among the upper-class
+worshippers to affiliate themselves with those cults which lay
+relatively great stress on ceremonial and on the spectacular
+accessories of worship; and in the churches in which an
+upper-class membership predominates, there is at the same time a
+tendency to accentuate the ritualistic, at the cost of the
+intellectual features in the service and in the apparatus of the
+devout observances. This holds true even where the church in
+question belongs to a denomination with a relatively slight
+general development of ritual and paraphernalia. This peculiar
+development of the ritualistic element is no doubt due in part to
+a predilection for conspicuously wasteful spectacles, but it
+probably also in part indicates something of the devotional
+attitude of the worshippers. So far as the latter is true, it
+indicates a relatively archaic form of the devotional habit. The
+predominance of spectacular effects in devout observances is
+noticeable in all devout communities at a relatively primitive
+stage of culture and with a slight intellectual development. It
+is especially characteristic of the barbarian culture. Here there
+is pretty uniformly present in the devout observances a direct
+appeal to the emotions through all the avenues of sense. And a
+tendency to return to this naive, sensational method of appeal is
+unmistakable in the upper-class churches of today. It is
+perceptible in a less degree in the cults which claim the
+allegiance of the lower leisure class and of the middle classes.
+There is a reversion to the use of colored lights and brilliant
+spectacles, a freer use of symbols, orchestral music and incense,
+and one may even detect in "processionals" and "recessionals" and
+in richly varied genuflexional evolutions, an incipient reversion
+to so antique an accessory of worship as the sacred dance.
+This reversion to spectacular observances is not confined to the
+upper-class cults, although it finds its best exemplification and
+its highest accentuation in the higher pecuniary and social
+altitudes. The cults of the lower-class devout portion of the
+community, such as the Southern Negroes and the backward foreign
+elements of the population, of course also show a strong
+inclination to ritual, symbolism, and spectacular effects; as
+might be expected from the antecedents and the cultural level of
+those classes. With these classes the prevalence of ritual and
+anthropomorphism are not so much a matter of reversion as of
+continued development out of the past. But the use of ritual and
+related features of devotion are also spreading in other
+directions. In the early days of the American community the
+prevailing denominations started out with a ritual and
+paraphernalia of an austere simplicity; but it is a matter
+familiar to every one that in the course of time these
+denominations have, in a varying degree, adopted much of the
+spectacular elements which they once renounced. In a general way,
+this development has gone hand in hand with the growth of the
+wealth and the ease of life of the worshippers and has reached
+its fullest expression among those classes which grade highest in
+wealth and repute.
+
+The causes to which this pecuniary stratification of
+devoutness is due have already been indicated in a general way in
+speaking of class differences in habits of thought. Class
+differences as regards devoutness are but a special expression of
+a generic fact. The lax allegiance of the lower middle class, or
+what may broadly be called the failure of filial piety among this
+class, is chiefly perceptible among the town populations engaged
+in the mechanical industries. In a general way, one does not, at
+the present time, look for a blameless filial piety among those
+classes whose employment approaches that of the engineer and the
+mechanician. These mechanical employments are in a degree a
+modern fact. The handicraftsmen of earlier times, who served an
+industrial end of a character similar to that now served by the
+mechanician, were not similarly refractory under the discipline
+of devoutness. The habitual activity of the men engaged in these
+branches of industry has greatly changed, as regards its
+intellectual discipline, since the modern industrial processes
+have come into vogue; and the discipline to which the mechanician
+is exposed in his daily employment affects the methods and
+standards of his thinking also on topics which lie outside his
+everyday work. Familiarity with the highly organized and highly
+impersonal industrial processes of the present acts to derange
+the animistic habits of thought. The workman's office is becoming
+more and more exclusively that of discretion and supervision in a
+process of mechanical, dispassionate sequences. So long as the
+individual is the chief and typical prime mover in the process;
+so long as the obtrusive feature of the industrial process is the
+dexterity and force of the individual handicraftsman; so long the
+habit of interpreting phenomena in terms of personal motive and
+propensity suffers no such considerable and consistent
+derangement through facts as to lead to its elimination. But
+under the later developed industrial processes, when the prime
+movers and the contrivances through which they work are of an
+impersonal, non-individual character, the grounds of
+generalization habitually present in the workman's mind and the
+point of view from which he habitually apprehends phenomena is an
+enforced cognizance of matter-of-fact sequence. The result, so
+far as concerts the workman's life of faith, is a proclivity to
+undevout scepticism.
+
+It appears, then, that the devout habit of mind attains its best
+development under a relatively archaic culture; the term "devout"
+being of course here used in its anthropological sense simply,
+and not as implying anything with respect to the
+spiritual attitude so characterized, beyond the fact of a
+proneness to devout observances. It appears also that this devout
+attitude marks a type of human nature which is more in consonance
+with the predatory mode of life than with the later-developed,
+more consistently and organically industrial life process of the
+community. It is in large measure an expression of the archaic
+habitual sense of personal status -- the relation of mastery and
+subservience -- and it therefore fits into the industrial scheme
+of the predatory and the quasi-peaceable culture, but does not
+fit into the industrial scheme of the present. It also appears
+that this habit persists with greatest tenacity among those
+classes in the modern communities whose everyday life is most
+remote from the mechanical processes of industry and which are
+the most conservative also in other respects; while for those
+classes that are habitually in immediate contact with modern
+industrial processes, and whose habits of thought are therefore
+exposed to the constraining force of technological necessities,
+that animistic interpretation of phenomena and that respect of
+persons on which devout observance proceeds are in process of
+obsolescence. And also -- as bearing especially on the present
+discussion -- it appears that the devout habit to some extent
+progressively gains in scope and elaboration among those classes
+in the modern communities to whom wealth and leisure accrue in
+the most pronounced degree. In this as in other relations, the
+institution of a leisure class acts to conserve, and even to
+rehabilitate, that archaic type of human nature and those
+elements of the archaic culture which the industrial evolution of
+society in its later stages acts to eliminate.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirteen
+
+Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interests
+
+In an increasing proportion as time goes on, the
+anthropomorphic cult, with its code of devout observations,
+suffers a progressive disintegration through the stress of
+economic exigencies and the decay of the system of status. As
+this disintegration proceeds, there come to be associated and
+blended with the devout attitude certain other motives and
+impulses that are not always of an anthropomorphic origin, nor
+traceable to the habit of personal subservience. Not all of these
+subsidiary impulses that blend with the habit of devoutness in
+the later devotional life are altogether congruous with the
+devout attitude or with the anthropomorphic apprehension of the
+sequence of phenomena. The origin being not the same, their
+action upon the scheme of devout life is also not in the same
+direction. In many ways they traverse the underlying norm of
+subservience or vicarious life to which the code of devout
+observations and the ecclesiastical and sacerdotal institutions
+are to be traced as their substantial basis. Through the presence
+of these alien motives the social and industrial regime of status
+gradually disintegrates, and the canon of personal subservience
+loses the support derived from an unbroken tradition. Extraneous
+habits and proclivities encroach upon the field of action
+occupied by this canon, and it presently comes about that the
+ecclesiastical and sacerdotal structures are partially converted
+to other uses, in some measure alien to the purposes of the
+scheme of devout life as it stood in the days of the most
+vigorous and characteristic development of the priesthood.
+
+Among these alien motives which affect the devout scheme in its
+later growth, may be mentioned the motives of charity and of
+social good-fellowship, or conviviality; or, in more general
+terms, the various expressions of the sense of human solidarity
+and sympathy. It may be added that these extraneous uses of the
+ecclesiastical structure contribute materially to its survival in
+name and form even among people who may be ready to give up the
+substance of it. A still more characteristic and more pervasive
+alien element in the motives which have gone to formally uphold
+the scheme of devout life is that non-reverent sense of aesthetic
+congruity with the environment, which is left as a residue of the
+latter-day act of worship after elimination of its
+anthropomorphic content. This has done good service for the
+maintenance of the sacerdotal institution through blending with
+the motive of subservience. This sense of impulse of aesthetic
+congruity is not primarily of an economic character, but it has a
+considerable indirect effect in shaping the habit of mind of the
+individual for economic purposes in the later stages of
+industrial development; its most perceptible effect in this
+regard goes in the direction of mitigating the somewhat
+pronounced self-regarding bias that has been transmitted by
+tradition from the earlier, more competent phases of the regime
+of status. The economic bearing of this impulse is therefore seen
+to transverse that of the devout attitude; the former goes to
+qualify, if not eliminate, the self-regarding bias, through
+sublation of the antithesis or antagonism of self and not-self;
+while the latter, being and expression of the sense of personal
+subservience and mastery, goes to accentuate this antithesis and
+to insist upon the divergence between the self-regarding interest
+and the interests of the generically human life process.
+
+This non-invidious residue of the religious life -- the sense of
+communion with the environment, or with the generic life process
+-- as well as the impulse of charity or of sociability, act in a
+pervasive way to shape men's habits of thought for the economic
+purpose. But the action of all this class of proclivities is
+somewhat vague, and their effects are difficult to trace in
+detail. So much seems clear, however, as that the action of this
+entire class of motives or aptitudes tends in a direction
+contrary to the underlying principles of the institution of the
+leisure class as already formulated. The basis of that
+institution, as well as of the anthropomorphic cults associated
+with it in the cultural development, is the habit of invidious
+comparison; and this habit is incongruous with the exercise of
+the aptitudes now in question. The substantial canons of the
+leisure-class scheme of life are a conspicuous waste of time and
+substance and a withdrawal from the industrial process; while the
+particular aptitudes here in question assert themselves, on the
+economic side, in a deprecation of waste and of a futile manner
+of life, and in an impulse to participation in or identification
+with the life process, whether it be on the economic side or in
+any other of its phases or aspects.
+
+It is plain that these aptitudes and habits of life to which they
+give rise where circumstances favor their expression, or where
+they assert themselves in a dominant way, run counter to the
+leisure-class scheme of life; but it is not clear that life under
+the leisure-class scheme, as seen in the later stages of its
+development, tends consistently to the repression of these
+aptitudes or to exemption from the habits of thought in which
+they express themselves. The positive discipline of the
+leisure-class scheme of life goes pretty much all the other way.
+In its positive discipline, by prescription and by selective
+elimination, the leisure-class scheme favors the all-pervading
+and all-dominating primacy of the canons of waste and invidious
+comparison at every conjuncture of life. But in its negative
+effects the tendency of the leisure-class discipline is not so
+unequivocally true to the fundamental canons of the scheme. In
+its regulation of human activity for the purpose of pecuniary
+decency the leisure-class canon insists on withdrawal from the
+industrial process. That is to say, it inhibits activity in the
+directions in which the impecunious members of the community
+habitually put forth their efforts. Especially in the case of
+women, and more particularly as regards the upper-class and
+upper-middle-class women of advanced industrial communities, this
+inhibition goes so far as to insist on withdrawal even from the
+emulative process of accumulation by the quasi-predator methods
+of the pecuniary occupations.
+
+The pecuniary or the leisure-class culture, which set out as an
+emulative variant of the impulse of workmanship, is in its latest
+development beginning to neutralize its own ground, by
+eliminating the habit of invidious comparison in respect of
+efficiency, or even of pecuniary standing. On the other hand, the
+fact that members of the leisure class, both men and women, are
+to some extent exempt from the necessity of finding a livelihood
+in a competitive struggle with their fellows, makes it possible
+for members of this class not only to survive, but even, within
+bounds, to follow their bent in case they are not gifted with the
+aptitudes which make for success in the competitive struggle.
+That is to say, in the latest and fullest development of the
+institution, the livelihood of members of this class does not
+depend on the possession and the unremitting exercise of those
+aptitudes are therefore greater in the higher grades of the
+leisure class than in the general average of a population living
+under the competitive system.
+
+In an earlier chapter, in discussing the conditions of survival
+of archaic traits, it has appeared that the peculiar position of
+the leisure class affords exceptionally favorable chances for the
+survival of traits which characterize the type of human nature
+proper to an earlier and obsolete cultural stage. The class is
+sheltered from the stress of economic exigencies, and is in this
+sense withdrawn from the rude impact of forces which make for
+adaptation to the economic situation. The survival in the leisure
+class, and under the leisure-class scheme of life, of traits and
+types that are reminiscent of the predatory culture has already
+been discussed. These aptitudes and habits have an exceptionally
+favorable chance of survival under the leisure-class regime. Not
+only does the sheltered pecuniary position of the leisure class
+afford a situation favorable to the survival of such individuals
+as are not gifted with the complement of aptitudes required for
+serviceability in the modern industrial process; but the
+leisure-class canons of reputability at the same time enjoin the
+conspicuous exercise of certain predatory aptitudes. The
+employments in which the predatory aptitudes find exercise serve
+as an evidence of wealth, birth, and withdrawal from the
+industrial process. The survival of the predatory traits under
+the leisure-class culture is furthered both negatively, through
+the industrial exemption of the class, and positively, through
+the sanction of the leisure-class canons of decency.
+
+With respect to the survival of traits characteristic of the
+ante-predatory savage culture the case is in some degree
+different. The sheltered position of the leisure class favors the
+survival also of these traits; but the exercise of the aptitudes
+for peace and good-will does not have the affirmative sanction of
+the code of proprieties. Individuals gifted with a temperament
+that is reminiscent of the ante-predatory culture are placed at
+something of an advantage within the leisure class, as compared
+with similarly gifted individuals outside the class, in that they
+are not under a pecuniary necessity to thwart these aptitudes
+that make for a non-competitive life; but such individuals are
+still exposed to something of a moral constraint which urges them
+to disregard these inclinations, in that the code of proprieties
+enjoins upon them habits of life based on the predatory
+aptitudes. So long as the system of status remains intact, and so
+long as the leisure class has other lines of non-industrial
+activity to take to than obvious killing of time in aimless and
+wasteful fatigation, so long no considerable departure from the
+leisure-class scheme of reputable life is to be looked for. The
+occurrence of non-predatory temperament with the class at that
+stage is to be looked upon as a case of sporadic reversion. But
+the reputable non-industrial outlets for the human propensity to
+action presently fail, through the advance of economic
+development, the disappearance of large game, the decline of war,
+the obsolescence of proprietary government, and the decay of the
+priestly office. When this happens, the situation begins to
+change. Human life must seek expression in one direction if it
+may not in another; and if the predatory outlet fails, relief is
+sought elsewhere.
+
+As indicated above, the exemption from pecuniary stress has been
+carried farther in the case of the leisure-class women of the
+advanced industrial communities than in that of any other
+considerable group of persons. The women may therefore be
+expected to show a more pronounced reversion to a non-invidious
+temperament than the men. But there is also among men of the
+leisure class a perceptible increase in the range and scope of
+activities that proceed from aptitudes which are not to be
+classed as self-regarding, and the end of which is not an
+invidious distinction. So, for instance, the greater number of
+men who have to do with industry in the way of pecuniarily
+managing an enterprise take some interest and some pride in
+seeing that the work is well done and is industrially effective,
+and this even apart from the profit which may result from any
+improvement of this kind. The efforts of commercial clubs and
+manufacturers' organizations in this direction of non-invidious
+advancement of industrial efficiency are also well know.
+
+The tendency to some other than an invidious purpose in life has
+worked out in a multitude of organizations, the purpose of which
+is some work of charity or of social amelioration. These
+organizations are often of a quasi-religious or pseudo-religious
+character, and are participated in by both men and women.
+Examples will present themselves in abundance on reflection, but
+for the purpose of indicating the range of the propensities in
+question and of characterizing them, some of the more obvious
+concrete cases may be cited. Such, for instance, are the
+agitation for temperance and similar social reforms, for prison
+reform, for the spread of education, for the suppression of vice,
+and for the avoidance of war by arbitration, disarmament, or
+other means; such are, in some measure, university settlements,
+neighborhood guilds, the various organizations typified by the
+Young Men's Christian Association and Young People's Society for
+Christian Endeavor, sewing-clubs, art clubs, and even commercial
+clubs; such are also, in some slight measure, the pecuniary
+foundations of semi-public establishments for charity, education,
+or amusement, whether they are endowed by wealthy individuals or
+by contributions collected from persons of smaller means -- in so
+far as these establishments are not of a religious character.
+
+It is of course not intended to say that these efforts proceed
+entirely from other motives than those of a self-regarding kind.
+What can be claimed is that other motives are present in the
+common run of cases, and that the perceptibly greater prevalence
+of effort of this kind under the circumstances of the modern
+industrial life than under the unbroken regime of the principle
+of status, indicates the presence in modern life of an effective
+scepticism with respect to the full legitimacy of an emulative
+scheme of life. It is a matter of sufficient notoriety to have
+become a commonplace jest that extraneous motives are commonly
+present among the incentives to this class of work -- motives of
+a self-regarding kind, and especially the motive of an invidious
+distinction. To such an extent is this true, that many ostensible
+works of disinterested public spirit are no doubt initiated and
+carried on with a view primarily to the enhance repute or even to
+the pecuniary gain, of their promoters. In the case of some
+considerable groups of organizations or establishments of this
+kind the invidious motive is apparently the dominant motive both
+with the initiators of the work and with their supporters. This
+last remark would hold true especially with respect to such works
+as lend distinction to their doer through large and conspicuous
+expenditure; as, for example, the foundation of a university or
+of a public library or museum; but it is also, and perhaps
+equally, true of the more commonplace work of participation in
+such organizations. These serve to authenticate the pecuniary
+reputability of their members, as well as gratefully to keep them
+in mind of their superior status by pointing the contrast between
+themselves and the lower-lying humanity in whom the work of
+amelioration is to be wrought; as, for example, the university
+settlement, which now has some vogue. But after all allowances
+and deductions have been made, there is left some remainder of
+motives of a non-emulative kind. The fact itself that distinction
+or a decent good fame is sought by this method is evidence of a
+prevalent sense of the legitimacy, and of the presumptive
+effectual presence, of a non-emulative, non-invidious interest,
+as a consistent factor in the habits of thought of modern
+communities.
+
+In all this latter-day range of leisure-class activities that
+proceed on the basis of a non-invidious and non-religious
+interest, it is to be noted that the women participate more
+actively and more persistently than the men -- except, of course,
+in the case of such works as require a large expenditure of
+means. The dependent pecuniary position of the women disables
+them for work requiring large expenditure. As regards the general
+range of ameliorative work, the members of the priesthood or
+clergy of the less naively devout sects, or the secularized
+denominations, are associated with the class of women. This is as
+the theory would have it. In other economic relations, also, this
+clergy stands in a somewhat equivocal position between the class
+of women and that of the men engaged in economic pursuits. By
+tradition and by the prevalent sense of the proprieties, both the
+clergy and the women of the well-to-do classes are placed in the
+position of a vicarious leisure class; with both classes the
+characteristic relation which goes to form the habits of thought
+of the class is a relation of subservience -- that is to say, an
+economic relation conceived in personal terms; in both classes
+there is consequently perceptible a special proneness to construe
+phenomena in terms of personal relation rather than of causal
+sequence; both classes are so inhibited by the canons of decency
+from the ceremonially unclean processes of the lucrative or
+productive occupations as to make participation in the industrial
+life process of today a moral impossibility for them. The result
+of this ceremonial exclusion from productive effort of the vulgar
+sort is to draft a relatively large share of the energies of the
+modern feminine and priestly classes into the service of other
+interests than the self-regarding one. The code leaves no
+alternative direction in which the impulse to purposeful action
+may find expression. The effect of a consistent inhibition on
+industrially useful activity in the case of the leisure-class
+women shows itself in a restless assertion of the impulse to
+workmanship in other directions than that of business activity.
+As has been noticed already, the everyday life of the
+well-to-do women and the clergy contains a larger element of
+status than that of the average of the men, especially than that
+of the men engaged in the modern industrial occupations proper.
+Hence the devout attitude survives in a better state of
+preservation among these classes than among the common run of men
+in the modern communities. Hence an appreciable share of the
+energy which seeks expression in a non-lucrative employment among
+these members of the vicarious leisure classes may be expected to
+eventuate in devout observances and works of piety. Hence, in
+part, the excess of the devout proclivity in women, spoken of in
+the last chapter. But it is more to the present point to note the
+effect of this proclivity in shaping the action and coloring the
+purposes of the non-lucrative movements and organizations here
+under discussion. Where this devout coloring is present it lowers
+the immediate efficiency of the organizations for any economic
+end to which their efforts may be directed. Many organizations,
+charitable and ameliorative, divide their attention between the
+devotional and the secular well-being of the people whose
+interests they aim to further. It can scarcely be doubted that if
+they were to give an equally serious attention and effort
+undividedly to the secular interests of these people, the
+immediate economic value of their work should be appreciably
+higher than it is. It might of course similarly be said, if this
+were the place to say it, that the immediate efficiency of these
+works of amelioration for the devout might be greater if it were
+not hampered with the secular motives and aims which are usually
+present.
+
+Some deduction is to be made from the economic value of this
+class of non-invidious enterprise, on account of the intrusion of
+the devotional interest. But there are also deductions to be made
+on account of the presence of other alien motives which more or
+less broadly traverse the economic trend of this non-emulative
+expression of the instinct of workmanship. To such an extent is
+this seen to be true on a closer scrutiny, that, when all is
+told, it may even appear that this general class of enterprises
+is of an altogether dubious economic value -- as measured in
+terms of the fullness or facility of life of the individuals or
+classes to whose amelioration the enterprise is directed. For
+instance, many of the efforts now in reputable vogue for the
+amelioration of the indigent population of large cities are of
+the nature, in great part, of a mission of culture. It is by this
+means sought to accelerate the rate of speed at which given
+elements of the upper-class culture find acceptance in the
+everyday scheme of life of the lower classes. The solicitude of
+"settlements," for example, is in part directed to enhance the
+industrial efficiency of the poor and to teach them the more
+adequate utilization of the means at hand; but it is also no less
+consistently directed to the inculcation, by precept and example,
+of certain punctilios of upper-class propriety in manners and
+customs. The economic substance of these proprieties will
+commonly be found on scrutiny to be a conspicuous waste of time
+and goods. Those good people who go out to humanize the poor are
+commonly, and advisedly, extremely scrupulous and silently
+insistent in matters of decorum and the decencies of life. They
+are commonly persons of an exemplary life and gifted with a
+tenacious insistence on ceremonial cleanness in the various items
+of their daily consumption. The cultural or civilizing efficacy
+of this inculcation of correct habits of thought with respect to
+the consumption of time and commodities is scarcely to be
+overrated; nor is its economic value to the individual who
+acquires these higher and more reputable ideals inconsiderable.
+Under the circumstances of the existing pecuniary culture, the
+reputability, and consequently the success, of the individual is
+in great measure dependent on his proficiency in demeanor and
+methods of consumption that argue habitual waste of time and
+goods. But as regards the ulterior economic bearing of this
+training in worthier methods of life, it is to be said that the
+effect wrought is in large part a substitution of costlier or
+less efficient methods of accomplishing the same material
+results, in relations where the material result is the fact of
+substantial economic value. The propaganda of culture is in great
+part an inculcation of new tastes, or rather of a new schedule of
+proprieties, which have been adapted to the upper-class scheme of
+life under the guidance of the leisure-class formulation of the
+principles of status and pecuniary decency. This new schedule of
+proprieties is intruded into the lower-class scheme of life from
+the code elaborated by an element of the population whose life
+lies outside the industrial process; and this intrusive schedule
+can scarcely be expected to fit the exigencies of life for these
+lower classes more adequately than the schedule already in vogue
+among them, and especially not more adequately than the schedule
+which they are themselves working out under the stress of modern
+industrial life.
+
+All this of course does not question the fact that the
+proprieties of the substituted schedule are more decorous than
+those which they displace. The doubt which presents itself is
+simply a doubt as to the economic expediency of this work of
+regeneration -- that is to say, the economic expediency in that
+immediate and material bearing in which the effects of the change
+can be ascertained with some degree of confidence, and as viewed
+from the standpoint not of the individual but of the facility of
+life of the collectivity. For an appreciation of the economic
+expediency of these enterprises of amelioration, therefore, their
+effective work is scarcely to be taken at its face value, even
+where the aim of the enterprise is primarily an economic one and
+where the interest on which it proceeds is in no sense
+self-regarding or invidious. The economic reform wrought is
+largely of the nature of a permutation in the methods of
+conspicuous waste.
+
+But something further is to be said with respect to the character
+of the disinterested motives and canons of procedure in all work
+of this class that is affected by the habits of thought
+characteristic of the pecuniary culture; and this further
+consideration may lead to a further qualification of the
+conclusions already reached. As has been seen in an earlier
+chapter, the canons of reputability or decency under the
+pecuniary culture insist on habitual futility of effort as the
+mark of a pecuniarily blameless life. There results not only a
+habit of disesteem of useful occupations, but there results also
+what is of more decisive consequence in guiding the action of any
+organized body of people that lays claim to social good repute.
+There is a tradition which requires that one should not be
+vulgarly familiar with any of the processes or details that have
+to do with the material necessities of life. One may
+meritoriously show a quantitative interest in the well-being of
+the vulgar, through subscriptions or through work on managing
+committees and the like. One may, perhaps even more
+meritoriously, show solicitude in general and in detail for the
+cultural welfare of the vulgar, in the way of contrivances for
+elevating their tastes and affording them opportunities for
+spiritual amelioration. But one should not betray an intimate
+knowledge of the material circumstances of vulgar life, or of the
+habits of thought of the vulgar classes, such as would
+effectually direct the efforts of these organizations to a
+materially useful end. This reluctance to avow an unduly intimate
+knowledge of the lower-class conditions of life in detail of
+course prevails in very different degrees in different
+individuals; but there is commonly enough of it present
+collectively in any organization of the kind in question
+profoundly to influence its course of action. By its cumulative
+action in shaping the usage and precedents of any such body, this
+shrinking from an imputation of unseemly familiarity with vulgar
+life tends gradually to set aside the initial motives of the
+enterprise, in favor of certain guiding principles of good
+repute, ultimately reducible to terms of pecuniary merit. So that
+in an organization of long standing the initial motive of
+furthering the facility of life in these classes comes gradually
+to be an ostensible motive only, and the vulgarly effective work
+of the organization tends to obsolescence.
+
+What is true of the efficiency of organizations for non-invidious
+work in this respect is true also as regards the work of
+individuals proceeding on the same motives; though it perhaps
+holds true with more qualification for individuals than for
+organized enterprises. The habit of gauging merit by the
+leisure-class canons of wasteful expenditure and unfamiliarity
+with vulgar life, whether on the side of production or of
+consumption, is necessarily strong in the individuals who aspire
+to do some work of public utility. And if the individual should
+forget his station and turn his efforts to vulgar effectiveness,
+the common sense of the community-the sense of pecuniary decency
+-- would presently reject his work and set him right. An example
+of this is seen in the administration of bequests made by
+public-spirited men for the single purpose (at least ostensibly)
+of furthering the facility of human life in some particular
+respect. The objects for which bequests of this class are most
+frequently made at present are most frequently made at present
+are schools, libraries, hospitals, and asylums for the infirm or
+unfortunate. The avowed purpose of the donor in these cases is
+the amelioration of human life in the particular respect which is
+named in the bequest; but it will be found an invariable rule
+that in the execution of the work not a little of other motives,
+frequency incompatible with the initial motive, is present and
+determines the particular disposition eventually made of a good
+share of the means which have been set apart by the bequest.
+Certain funds, for instance, may have been set apart as a
+foundation for a foundling asylum or a retreat for invalids. The
+diversion of expenditure to honorific waste in such cases is not
+uncommon enough to cause surprise or even to raise a smile. An
+appreciable share of the funds is spent in the construction of an
+edifice faced with some aesthetically objectionable but expensive
+stone, covered with grotesque and incongruous details, and
+designed, in its battlemented walls and turrets and its massive
+portals and strategic approaches, to suggest certain barbaric
+methods of warfare. The interior of the structure shows the same
+pervasive guidance of the canons of conspicuous waste and
+predatory exploit. The windows, for instance, to go no farther
+into detail, are placed with a view to impress their pecuniary
+excellence upon the chance beholder from the outside, rather than
+with a view to effectiveness for their ostensible end in the
+convenience or comfort of the beneficiaries within; and the
+detail of interior arrangement is required to conform itself as
+best it may to this alien but imperious requirement of pecuniary
+beauty.
+
+In all this, of course, it is not to be presumed that the donor
+would have found fault, or that he would have done
+otherwise if he had taken control in person; it appears that in
+those cases where such a personal direction is exercised -- where
+the enterprise is conducted by direct expenditure and
+superintendence instead of by bequest -- the aims and methods of
+management are not different in this respect. Nor would the
+beneficiaries, or the outside observers whose ease or vanity are
+not immediately touched, be pleased with a different disposition
+of the funds. It would suit no one to have the enterprise
+conducted with a view directly to the most economical and
+effective use of the means at hand for the initial, material end
+of the foundation. All concerned, whether their interest is
+immediate and self-regarding, or contemplative only, agree that
+some considerable share of the expenditure should go to the
+higher or spiritual needs derived from the habit of an invidious
+comparison in predatory exploit and pecuniary waste. But this
+only goes to say that the canons of emulative and pecuniary
+reputability so far pervade the common sense of the community as
+to permit no escape or evasion, even in the case of an enterprise
+which ostensibly proceeds entirely on the basis of a
+non-invidious interest.
+
+It may even be that the enterprise owes its honorific virtue, as
+a means of enhancing the donor's good repute, to the imputed
+presence of this non-invidious motive; but that does not hinder
+the invidious interest from guiding the expenditure. The
+effectual presence of motives of an emulative or invidious origin
+in non-emulative works of this kind might be shown at length and
+with detail, in any one of the classes of enterprise spoken of
+above. Where these honorific details occur, in such cases, they
+commonly masquerade under designations that belong in the field
+of the aesthetic, ethical or economic interest. These special
+motives, derived from the standards and canons of the pecuniary
+culture, act surreptitiously to divert effort of a non-invidious
+kind from effective service, without disturbing the agent's sense
+of good intention or obtruding upon his consciousness the
+substantial futility of his work. Their effect might be traced
+through the entire range of that schedule of non-invidious,
+meliorative enterprise that is so considerable a feature, and
+especially so conspicuous a feature, in the overt scheme of life
+of the well-to-do. But the theoretical bearing is perhaps clear
+enough and may require no further illustration; especially as
+some detailed attention will be given to one of these lines of
+enterprise -- the establishments for the higher learning -- in
+another connection.
+
+Under the circumstances of the sheltered situation in which the
+leisure class is placed there seems, therefore, to be
+something of a reversion to the range of non-invidious impulses
+that characterizes the ante-predatory savage culture. The
+reversion comprises both the sense of workmanship and the
+proclivity to indolence and good-fellowship. But in the modern
+scheme of life canons of conduct based on pecuniary or invidious
+merit stand in the way of a free exercise of these impulses; and
+the dominant presence of these canons of conduct goes far to
+divert such efforts as are made on the basis of the non-invidious
+interest to the service of that invidious interest on which the
+pecuniary culture rests. The canons of pecuniary decency are
+reducible for the present purpose to the principles of waste,
+futility, and ferocity. The requirements of decency are
+imperiously present in meliorative enterprise as in other lines
+of conduct, and exercise a selective surveillance over the
+details of conduct and management in any enterprise. By guiding
+and adapting the method in detail, these canons of decency go far
+to make all non-invidious aspiration or effort nugatory. The
+pervasive, impersonal, un-eager principle of futility is at hand
+from day to day and works obstructively to hinder the effectual
+expression of so much of the surviving ante-predatory aptitudes
+as is to be classed under the instinct of workmanship; but its
+presence does not preclude the transmission of those aptitudes or
+the continued recurrence of an impulse to find expression for
+them.
+
+In the later and farther development of the pecuniary culture,
+the requirement of withdrawal from the industrial process in
+order to avoid social odium is carried so far as to comprise
+abstention from the emulative employments. At this advanced stage
+the pecuniary culture negatively favors the assertion of the
+non-invidious propensities by relaxing the stress laid on the
+merit of emulative, predatory, or pecuniary occupations, as
+compared with those of an industrial or productive kind. As was
+noticed above, the requirement of such withdrawal from all
+employment that is of human use applies more rigorously to the
+upper-class women than to any other class, unless the priesthood
+of certain cults might be cited as an exception, perhaps more
+apparent than real, to this rule. The reason for the more extreme
+insistence on a futile life for this class of women than for the
+men of the same pecuniary and social grade lies in their being
+not only an upper-grade leisure class but also at the same time a
+vicarious leisure class. There is in their case a double ground
+for a consistent withdrawal from useful effort.
+
+It has been well and repeatedly said by popular writers and
+speakers who reflect the common sense of intelligent people on
+questions of social structure and function that the position of
+woman in any community is the most striking index of the level of
+culture attained by the community, and it might be added, by any
+given class in the community. This remark is perhaps truer as
+regards the stage of economic development than as regards
+development in any other respect. At the same time the position
+assigned to the woman in the accepted scheme of life, in any
+community or under any culture, is in a very great degree an
+expression of traditions which have been shaped by the
+circumstances of an earlier phase of development, and which have
+been but partially adapted to the existing economic
+circumstances, or to the existing exigencies of temperament and
+habits of mind by which the women living under this modern
+economic situation are actuated.
+
+The fact has already been remarked upon incidentally in the
+course of the discussion of the growth of economic institutions
+generally, and in particular in speaking of vicarious leisure and
+of dress, that the position of women in the modern economic
+scheme is more widely and more consistently at variance with the
+promptings of the instinct of workmanship than is the position of
+the men of the same classes. It is also apparently true that the
+woman's temperament includes a larger share of this instinct that
+approves peace and disapproves futility. It is therefore not a
+fortuitous circumstance that the women of modern industrial
+communities show a livelier sense of the discrepancy between the
+accepted scheme of life and the exigencies of the economic
+situation.
+
+The several phases of the "woman question" have brought out in
+intelligible form the extent to which the life of women in modern
+society, and in the polite circles especially, is regulated by a
+body of common sense formulated under the economic circumstances
+of an earlier phase of development. It is still felt that woman's
+life, in its civil, economic, and social bearing, is essentially
+and normally a vicarious life, the merit or demerit of which is,
+in the nature of things, to be imputed to some other individual
+who stands in some relation of ownership or tutelage to the
+woman. So, for instance, any action on the part of a woman which
+traverses an injunction of the accepted schedule of proprieties
+is felt to reflect immediately upon the honor of the man whose
+woman she is. There may of course be some sense of incongruity in
+the mind of any one passing an opinion of this kind on the
+woman's frailty or perversity; but the common-sense judgment of
+the community in such matters is, after all, delivered without
+much hesitation, and few men would question the legitimacy of
+their sense of an outraged tutelage in any case that might arise.
+On the other hand, relatively little discredit attaches to a
+woman through the evil deeds of the man with whom her life is
+associated.
+
+The good and beautiful scheme of life, then -- that is to say the
+scheme to which we are habituated -- assigns to the woman a
+"sphere" ancillary to the activity of the man; and it is felt
+that any departure from the traditions of her assigned round of
+duties is unwomanly. If the question is as to civil rights or the
+suffrage, our common sense in the matter -- that is to say the
+logical deliverance of our general scheme of life upon the point
+in question -- says that the woman should be represented in the
+body politic and before the law, not immediately in her own
+person, but through the mediation of the head of the household to
+which she belongs. It is unfeminine in her to aspire to a
+self-directing, self-centered life; and our common sense tells us
+that her direct participation in the affairs of the community,
+civil or industrial, is a menace to that social order which
+expresses our habits of thought as they have been formed under
+the guidance of the traditions of the pecuniary culture. "All
+this fume and froth of 'emancipating woman from the slavery of
+man' and so on, is, to use the chaste and expressive language of
+Elizabeth Cady Stanton inversely, 'utter rot.' The social
+relations of the sexes are fixed by nature. Our entire
+civilization -- that is whatever is good in it -- is based on the
+home." The "home" is the household with a male head. This view,
+but commonly expressed even more chastely, is the prevailing view
+of the woman's status, not only among the common run of the men
+of civilized communities, but among the women as well. Women have
+a very alert sense of what the scheme of proprieties requires,
+and while it is true that many of them are ill at ease under the
+details which the code imposes, there are few who do not
+recognize that the existing moral order, of necessity and by the
+divine right of prescription, places the woman in a position
+ancillary to the man. In the last analysis, according to her own
+sense of what is good and beautiful, the woman's life is, and in
+theory must be, an expression of the man's life at the second
+remove.
+
+But in spite of this pervading sense of what is the good and
+natural place for the woman, there is also perceptible an
+incipient development of sentiment to the effect that this whole
+arrangement of tutelage and vicarious life and imputation of
+merit and demerit is somehow a mistake. Or, at least, that even
+if it may be a natural growth and a good arrangement in its time
+and place, and in spite of its patent aesthetic value, still it
+does not adequately serve the more everyday ends of life in a
+modern industrial community. Even that large and substantial body
+of well-bred, upper and middle-class women to whose
+dispassionate, matronly sense of the traditional proprieties this
+relation of status commends itself as fundamentally and eternally
+right-even these, whose attitude is conservative, commonly find
+some slight discrepancy in detail between things as they are and
+things as they should be in this respect. But that less
+manageable body of modern women who, by force of youth,
+education, or temperament, are in some degree out of touch with
+the traditions of status received from the barbarian culture, and
+in whom there is, perhaps, an undue reversion to the impulse of
+self-expression and workmanship -- these are touched with a sense
+of grievance too vivid to leave them at rest.
+
+In this "New-Woman" movement -- as these blind and
+incoherent efforts to rehabilitate the woman's pre-glacial
+standing have been named -- there are at least two elements
+discernible, both of which are of an economic character. These
+two elements or motives are expressed by the double watchword,
+"Emancipation" and "Work." Each of these words is recognized to
+stand for something in the way of a wide-spread sense of
+grievance. The prevalence of the sentiment is recognized even by
+people who do not see that there is any real ground for a
+grievance in the situation as it stands today. It is among the
+women of the well-to-do classes, in the communities which are
+farthest advanced in industrial development, that this sense of a
+grievance to be redressed is most alive and finds most frequent
+expression. That is to say, in other words, there is a demand,
+more or less serious, for emancipation from all relation of
+status, tutelage, or vicarious life; and the revulsion asserts
+itself especially among the class of women upon whom the scheme
+of life handed down from the regime of status imposes with least
+litigation a vicarious life, and in those communities whose
+economic development has departed farthest from the circumstances
+to which this traditional scheme is adapted. The demand comes
+from that portion of womankind which is excluded by the canons of
+good repute from all effectual work, and which is closely
+reserved for a life of leisure and conspicuous consumption.
+
+More than one critic of this new-woman movement has
+misapprehended its motive. The case of the American "new woman"
+has lately been summed up with some warmth by a popular observer
+of social phenomena: "She is petted by her husband, the most
+devoted and hard-working of husbands in the world. ... She is the
+superior of her husband in education, and in almost every
+respect. She is surrounded by the most numerous and delicate
+attentions. Yet she is not satisfied. ... The Anglo-Saxon 'new
+woman' is the most ridiculous production of modern times, and
+destined to be the most ghastly failure of the century." Apart
+from the deprecation -- perhaps well placed -- which is contained
+in this presentment, it adds nothing but obscurity to the woman
+question. The grievance of the new woman is made up of those
+things which this typical characterization of the movement urges
+as reasons why she should be content. She is petted, and is
+permitted, or even required, to consume largely and conspicuously
+-- vicariously for her husband or other natural guardian. She is
+exempted, or debarred, from vulgarly useful employment -- in
+order to perform leisure vicariously for the good repute of her
+natural (pecuniary) guardian. These offices are the conventional
+marks of the un-free, at the same time that they are incompatible
+with the human impulse to purposeful activity. But the woman is
+endowed with her share-which there is reason to believe is more
+than an even share -- of the instinct of workmanship, to which
+futility of life or of expenditure is obnoxious. She must unfold
+her life activity in response to the direct, unmediated stimuli
+of the economic environment with which she is in contact. The
+impulse is perhaps stronger upon the woman than upon the man to
+live her own life in her own way and to enter the industrial
+process of the community at something nearer than the second
+remove.
+
+So long as the woman's place is consistently that of a drudge,
+she is, in the average of cases, fairly contented with her lot.
+She not only has something tangible and purposeful to do, but she
+has also no time or thought to spare for a rebellious assertion
+of such human propensity to self-direction as she has inherited.
+And after the stage of universal female drudgery is passed, and a
+vicarious leisure without strenuous application becomes the
+accredited employment of the women of the well-to-do classes, the
+prescriptive force of the canon of pecuniary decency, which
+requires the observance of ceremonial futility on their part,
+will long preserve high-minded women from any sentimental leaning
+to self-direction and a "sphere of usefulness." This is
+especially true during the earlier phases of the pecuniary
+culture, while the leisure of the leisure class is still in great
+measure a predatory activity, an active assertion of mastery in
+which there is enough of tangible purpose of an invidious kind to
+admit of its being taken seriously as an employment to which one
+may without shame put one's hand. This condition of things has
+obviously lasted well down into the present in some communities.
+It continues to hold to a different extent for different
+individuals, varying with the vividness of the sense of status
+and with the feebleness of the impulse to workmanship with which
+the individual is endowed. But where the economic structure of
+the community has so far outgrown the scheme of life based on
+status that the relation of personal subservience is no longer
+felt to be the sole "natural" human relation; there the ancient
+habit of purposeful activity will begin to assert itself in the
+less conformable individuals against the more recent, relatively
+superficial, relatively ephemeral habits and views which the
+predatory and the pecuniary culture have contributed to our
+scheme of life. These habits and views begin to lose their
+coercive force for the community or the class in question so soon
+as the habit of mind and the views of life due to the predatory
+and the quasi-peaceable discipline cease to be in fairly close
+accord with the later-developed economic situation. This is
+evident in the case of the industrious classes of modern
+communities; for them the leisure-class scheme of life has lost
+much of its binding force, especially as regards the element of
+status. But it is also visibly being verified in the case of the
+upper classes, though not in the same manner.
+
+The habits derived from the predatory and quasi-peaceable culture
+are relatively ephemeral variants of certain underlying
+propensities and mental characteristics of the race; which it
+owes to the protracted discipline of the earlier,
+proto-anthropoid cultural stage of peaceable, relatively
+undifferentiated economic life carried on in contact with a
+relatively simple and invariable material environment. When the
+habits superinduced by the emulative method of life have ceased
+to enjoy the section of existing economic exigencies, a process
+of disintegration sets in whereby the habits of thought of more
+recent growth and of a less generic character to some extent
+yield the ground before the more ancient and more pervading
+spiritual characteristics of the race.
+
+In a sense, then, the new-woman movement marks a reversion to a
+more generic type of human character, or to a less
+differentiated expression of human nature. It is a type of human
+nature which is to be characterized as proto-anthropoid, and, as
+regards the substance if not the form of its dominant traits, it
+belongs to a cultural stage that may be classed as possibly
+sub-human. The particular movement or evolutional feature in
+question of course shares this characterization with the rest of
+the later social development, in so far as this social
+development shows evidence of a reversion to the spiritual
+attitude that characterizes the earlier, undifferentiated stage
+of economic revolution. Such evidence of a general tendency to
+reversion from the dominance of the invidious interest is not
+entirely wanting, although it is neither plentiful nor
+unquestionably convincing. The general decay of the sense of
+status in modern industrial communities goes some way as evidence
+in this direction; and the perceptible return to a disapproval of
+futility in human life, and a disapproval of such activities as
+serve only the individual gain at the cost of the collectivity or
+at the cost of other social groups, is evidence to a like effect.
+There is a perceptible tendency to deprecate the infliction of
+pain, as well as to discredit all marauding enterprises, even
+where these expressions of the invidious interest do not tangibly
+work to the material detriment of the community or of the
+individual who passes an opinion on them. It may even be said
+that in the modern industrial communities the average,
+dispassionate sense of men says that the ideal character is a
+character which makes for peace, good-will, and economic
+efficiency, rather than for a life of self-seeking, force, fraud,
+and mastery.
+
+The influence of the leisure class is not consistently for or
+against the rehabilitation of this proto-anthropoid human nature.
+So far as concerns the chance of survival of individuals endowed
+with an exceptionally large share of the primitive traits, the
+sheltered position of the class favors its members directly by
+withdrawing them from the pecuniary struggle; but indirectly,
+through the leisure-class canons of conspicuous waste of goods
+and effort, the institution of a leisure class lessens the chance
+of survival of such individuals in the entire body of the
+population. The decent requirements of waste absorb the surplus
+energy of the population in an invidious struggle and leave no
+margin for the non-invidious expression of life. The remoter,
+less tangible, spiritual effects of the discipline of decency go
+in the same direction and work perhaps more effectually to the
+same end. The canons of decent life are an elaboration of the
+principle of invidious comparison, and they accordingly act
+consistently to inhibit all non-invidious effort and to inculcate
+the self-regarding attitude.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Fourteen
+
+The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture
+
+To the end that suitable habits of thought on certain heads may
+be conserved in the incoming generation, a scholastic discipline
+is sanctioned by the common sense of the community and
+incorporated into the accredited scheme of life. The habits of
+thought which are so formed under the guidance of teachers and
+scholastic traditions have an economic value -- a value as
+affecting the serviceability of the individual -- no less real
+than the similar economic value of the habits of thought formed
+without such guidance under the discipline of everyday life.
+Whatever characteristics of the accredited scholastic scheme and
+discipline are traceable to the predilections of the leisure
+class or to the guidance of the canons of pecuniary merit are to
+be set down to the account of that institution, and whatever
+economic value these features of the educational scheme possess
+are the expression in detail of the value of that institution. It
+will be in place, therefore, to point out any peculiar features
+of the educational system which are traceable to the
+leisure-class scheme of life, whether as regards the aim and
+method of the discipline, or as regards the compass and character
+of the body of knowledge inculcated. It is in learning proper,
+and more particularly in the higher learning, that the influence
+of leisure-class ideals is most patent; and since the purpose
+here is not to make an exhaustive collation of data showing the
+effect of the pecuniary culture upon education, but rather to
+illustrate the method and trend of the leisure-class influence in
+education, a survey of certain salient features of the higher
+learning, such as may serve this purpose, is all that will be
+attempted.
+
+In point of derivation and early development, learning is
+somewhat closely related to the devotional function of the
+community, particularly to the body of observances in which the
+service rendered the supernatural leisure class expresses itself.
+The service by which it is sought to conciliate supernatural
+agencies in the primitive cults is not an industrially profitable
+employment of the community's time and effort. It is, therefore,
+in great part, to be classed as a vicarious leisure performed for
+the supernatural powers with whom negotiations are carried on and
+whose good-will the service and the professions of subservience
+are conceived to procure. In great part, the early learning
+consisted in an acquisition of knowledge and facility in the
+service of a supernatural agent. It was therefore closely
+analogous in character to the training required for the domestic
+service of a temporal master. To a great extent, the knowledge
+acquired under the priestly teachers of the primitive community
+was knowledge of ritual and ceremonial; that is to say, a
+knowledge of the most proper, most effective, or most acceptable
+manner of approaching and of serving the preternatural agents.
+What was learned was how to make oneself indispensable to these
+powers, and so to put oneself in a position to ask, or even to
+require, their intercession in the course of events or their
+abstention from interference in any given enterprise.
+Propitiation was the end, and this end was sought, in great part,
+by acquiring facility in subservience. It appears to have been
+only gradually that other elements than those of efficient
+service of the master found their way into the stock of priestly
+or shamanistic instruction.
+
+The priestly servitor of the inscrutable powers that move in the
+external world came to stand in the position of a mediator
+between these powers and the common run of unrestricted humanity;
+for he was possessed of a knowledge of the supernatural etiquette
+which would admit him into the presence. And as commonly happens
+with mediators between the vulgar and their masters, whether the
+masters be natural or preternatural, he found it expedient to
+have the means at hand tangibly to impress upon the vulgar the
+fact that these inscrutable powers would do what he might ask of
+them. Hence, presently, a knowledge of certain natural processes
+which could be turned to account for spectacular effect, together
+with some sleight of hand, came to be an integral part of
+priestly lore. Knowledge of this kind passes for knowledge of the
+"unknowable", and it owes its serviceability for the sacerdotal
+purpose to its recondite character. It appears to have been from
+this source that learning, as an institution, arose, and its
+differentiation from this its parent stock of magic ritual and
+shamanistic fraud has been slow and tedious, and is scarcely yet
+complete even in the most advanced of the higher seminaries of
+learning.
+
+The recondite element in learning is still, as it has been in all
+ages, a very attractive and effective element for the purpose of
+impressing, or even imposing upon, the unlearned; and the
+standing of the savant in the mind of the altogether
+unlettered is in great measure rated in terms of intimacy with
+the occult forces. So, for instance, as a typical case, even so
+late as the middle of this century, the Norwegian peasants have
+instinctively formulated their sense of the superior erudition of
+such doctors of divinity as Luther, Malanchthon, Peder Dass, and
+even so late a scholar in divinity as Grundtvig, in terms of the
+Black Art. These, together with a very comprehensive list of
+minor celebrities, both living and dead, have been reputed
+masters in all magical arts; and a high position in the
+ecclesiastical personnel has carried with it, in the apprehension
+of these good people, an implication of profound familiarity with
+magical practice and the occult sciences. There is a parallel
+fact nearer home, similarly going to show the close relationship,
+in popular apprehension, between erudition and the unknowable;
+and it will at the same time serve to illustrate, in somewhat
+coarse outline, the bent which leisure-class life gives to the
+cognitive interest. While the belief is by no means confined to
+the leisure class, that class today comprises a
+disproportionately large number of believers in occult sciences
+of all kinds and shades. By those whose habits of thought are not
+shaped by contact with modern industry, the knowledge of the
+unknowable is still felt to the ultimate if not the only true
+knowledge.
+
+Learning, then, set out by being in some sense a by-product of
+the priestly vicarious leisure class; and, at least until a
+recent date, the higher learning has since remained in some sense
+a by-product or by-occupation of the priestly classes. As the
+body of systematized knowledge increased, there presently arose a
+distinction, traceable very far back in the history of education,
+between esoteric and exoteric knowledge, the former -- so far as
+there is a substantial difference between the two -- comprising
+such knowledge as is primarily of no economic or industrial
+effect, and the latter comprising chiefly knowledge of industrial
+processes and of natural phenomena which were habitually turned
+to account for the material purposes of life. This line of
+demarcation has in time become, at least in popular apprehension,
+the normal line between the higher learning and the lower.
+
+It is significant, not only as an evidence of their close
+affiliation with the priestly craft, but also as indicating that
+their activity to a good extent falls under that category of
+conspicuous leisure known as manners and breeding, that the
+learned class in all primitive communities are great sticklers
+for form, precedent, gradations of rank, ritual, ceremonial
+vestments, and learned paraphernalia generally. This is of course
+to be expected, and it goes to say that the higher learning, in
+its incipient phase, is a leisure-class occupation -- more
+specifically an occupation of the vicarious leisure class
+employed in the service of the supernatural leisure class. But
+this predilection for the paraphernalia of learning goes also to
+indicate a further point of contact or of continuity between the
+priestly office and the office of the savant. In point of
+derivation, learning, as well as the priestly office, is largely
+an outgrowth of sympathetic magic; and this magical apparatus of
+form and ritual therefore finds its place with the learned class
+of the primitive community as a matter of course. The ritual and
+paraphernalia have an occult efficacy for the magical purpose; so
+that their presence as an integral factor in the earlier phases
+of the development of magic and science is a matter of
+expediency, quite as much as of affectionate regard for symbolism
+simply.
+
+This sense of the efficacy of symbolic ritual, and of sympathetic
+effect to be wrought through dexterous rehearsal of the
+traditional accessories of the act or end to be compassed, is of
+course present more obviously and in larger measure in magical
+practice than in the discipline of the sciences, even of the
+occult sciences. But there are, I apprehend, few persons with a
+cultivated sense of scholastic merit to whom the ritualistic
+accessories of science are altogether an idle matter. The very
+great tenacity with which these ritualistic paraphernalia persist
+through the later course of the development is evident to any one
+who will reflect on what has been the history of learning in our
+civilization. Even today there are such things in the usage of
+the learned community as the cap and gown, matriculation,
+initiation, and graduation ceremonies, and the conferring of
+scholastic degrees, dignities, and prerogatives in a way which
+suggests some sort of a scholarly apostolic succession. The usage
+of the priestly orders is no doubt the proximate source of all
+these features of learned ritual, vestments, sacramental
+initiation, the transmission of peculiar dignities and virtues by
+the imposition of hands, and the like; but their derivation is
+traceable back of this point, to the source from which the
+specialized priestly class proper came to be distinguished from
+the sorcerer on the one hand and from the menial servant of a
+temporal master on the other hand. So far as regards both their
+derivation and their psychological content, these usages and the
+conceptions on which they rest belong to a stage in cultural
+development no later than that of the angekok and the rain-maker.
+Their place in the later phases of devout observance, as well as
+in the higher educational system, is that of a survival from a
+very early animistic phase of the development of human nature.
+
+These ritualistic features of the educational system of the
+present and of the recent past, it is quite safe to say, have
+their place primarily in the higher, liberal, and classic
+institutions and grades of learning, rather than in the lower,
+technological, or practical grades, and branches of the system.
+So far as they possess them, the lower and less reputable
+branches of the educational scheme have evidently borrowed these
+things from the higher grades; and their continued persistence
+among the practical schools, without the sanction of the
+continued example of the higher and classic grades, would be
+highly improbable, to say the least. With the lower and practical
+schools and scholars, the adoption and cultivation of these
+usages is a case of mimicry -- due to a desire to conform as far
+as may be to the standards of scholastic reputability maintained
+by the upper grades and classes, who have come by these accessory
+features legitimately, by the right of lineal devolution.
+
+The analysis may even be safely carried a step farther.
+Ritualistic survivals and reversions come out in fullest vigor
+and with the freest air of spontaneity among those seminaries of
+learning which have to do primarily with the education of the
+priestly and leisure classes. Accordingly it should appear, and
+it does pretty plainly appear, on a survey of recent developments
+in college and university life, that wherever schools founded for
+the instruction of the lower classes in the immediately useful
+branches of knowledge grow into institutions of the higher
+learning, the growth of ritualistic ceremonial and paraphernalia
+and of elaborate scholastic "functions" goes hand in hand with
+the transition of the schools in question from the field of
+homely practicality into the higher, classical sphere. The
+initial purpose of these schools, and the work with which they
+have chiefly had to do at the earlier of these two stages of
+their evolution, has been that of fitting the young of the
+industrious classes for work. On the higher, classical plane of
+learning to which they commonly tend, their dominant aim becomes
+the preparation of the youth of the priestly and the leisure
+classes -- or of an incipient leisure class -- for the
+consumption of goods, material and immaterial, according to a
+conventionally accepted, reputable scope and method. This happy
+issue has commonly been the fate of schools founded by "friends
+of the people" for the aid of struggling young men, and where
+this transition is made in good form there is commonly, if not
+invariably, a coincident change to a more ritualistic life in the
+schools.
+
+In the school life of today, learned ritual is in a general way
+best at home in schools whose chief end is the cultivation of the
+"humanities". This correlation is shown, perhaps more neatly than
+anywhere else, in the life-history of the American colleges and
+universities of recent growth. There may be many exceptions from
+the rule, especially among those schools which have been founded
+by the typically reputable and ritualistic churches, and which,
+therefore, started on the conservative and classical plane or
+reached the classical position by a short-cut; but the general
+rule as regards the colleges founded in the newer American
+communities during the present century has been that so long as
+the constituency from which the colleges have drawn their pupils
+has been dominated by habits of industry and thrift, so long the
+reminiscences of the medicine-man have found but a scant and
+precarious acceptance in the scheme of college life. But so soon
+as wealth begins appreciably to accumulate in the community, and
+so soon as a given school begins to lean on a leisure-class
+constituency, there comes also a perceptibly increased insistence
+on scholastic ritual and on conformity to the ancient forms as
+regards vestments and social and scholastic solemnities. So, for
+instance, there has been an approximate coincidence between the
+growth of wealth among the constituency which supports any given
+college of the Middle West and the date of acceptance -- first
+into tolerance and then into imperative vogue -- of evening dress
+for men and of the décolleté for women, as the scholarly
+vestments proper to occasions of learned solemnity or to the
+seasons of social amenity within the college circle. Apart from
+the mechanical difficulty of so large a task, it would scarcely
+be a difficult matter to trace this correlation. The like is true
+of the vogue of the cap and gown.
+
+Cap and gown have been adopted as learned insignia by many
+colleges of this section within the last few years; and it is
+safe to say that this could scarcely have occurred at a much
+earlier date, or until there had grown up a leisure-class
+sentiment of sufficient volume in the community to support a
+strong movement of reversion towards an archaic view as to the
+legitimate end of education. This particular item of learned
+ritual, it may be noted, would not only commend itself to the
+leisure-class sense of the fitness of things, as appealing to the
+archaic propensity for spectacular effect and the predilection
+for antique symbolism; but it at the same time fits into the
+leisure-class scheme of life as involving a notable element of
+conspicuous waste. The precise date at which the reversion to cap
+and gown took place, as well as the fact that it affected so
+large a number of schools at about the same time, seems to have
+been due in some measure to a wave of atavistic sense of
+conformity and reputability that passed over the community at
+that period.
+
+It may not be entirely beside the point to note that in point of
+time this curious reversion seems to coincide with the
+culmination of a certain vogue of atavistic sentiment and
+tradition in other directions also. The wave of reversion seems
+to have received its initial impulse in the psychologically
+disintegrating effects of the Civil War. Habituation to war
+entails a body of predatory habits of thought, whereby
+clannishness in some measure replaces the sense of solidarity,
+and a sense of invidious distinction supplants the impulse to
+equitable, everyday serviceability. As an outcome of the
+cumulative action of these factors, the generation which follows
+a season of war is apt to witness a rehabilitation of the element
+of status, both in its social life and in its scheme of devout
+observances and other symbolic or ceremonial forms. Throughout
+the eighties, and less plainly traceable through the seventies
+also, there was perceptible a gradually advancing wave of
+sentiment favoring quasi-predatory business habits, insistence on
+status, anthropomorphism, and conservatism generally. The more
+direct and unmediated of these expressions of the barbarian
+temperament, such as the recrudescence of outlawry and the
+spectacular quasi-predatory careers of fraud run by certain
+"captains of industry", came to a head earlier and were
+appreciably on the decline by the close of the seventies. The
+recrudescence of anthropomorphic sentiment also seems to have
+passed its most acute stage before the close of the eighties. But
+the learned ritual and paraphernalia here spoken of are a still
+remoter and more recondite expression of the barbarian animistic
+sense; and these, therefore, gained vogue and elaboration more
+slowly and reached their most effective development at a still
+later date. There is reason to believe that the culmination is
+now already past. Except for the new impetus given by a new war
+experience, and except for the support which the growth of a
+wealthy class affords to all ritual, and especially to whatever
+ceremonial is wasteful and pointedly suggests gradations of
+status, it is probable that the late improvements and
+augmentation of scholastic insignia and ceremonial would
+gradually decline. But while it may be true that the cap and
+gown, and the more strenuous observance of scholastic proprieties
+which came with them, were floated in on this post-bellum tidal
+wave of reversion to barbarism, it is also no doubt true that
+such a ritualistic reversion could not have been effected in the
+college scheme of life until the accumulation of wealth in the
+hands of a propertied class had gone far enough to afford the
+requisite pecuniary ground for a movement which should bring the
+colleges of the country up to the leisure-class requirements in
+the higher learning. The adoption of the cap and gown is one of
+the striking atavistic features of modern college life, and at
+the same time it marks the fact that these colleges have
+definitely become leisure-class establishments, either in actual
+achievement or in aspiration.
+
+As further evidence of the close relation between the educational
+system and the cultural standards of the community, it may be
+remarked that there is some tendency latterly to substitute the
+captain of industry in place of the priest, as the head of
+seminaries of the higher learning. The substitution is by no
+means complete or unequivocal. Those heads of institutions are
+best accepted who combine the sacerdotal office with a high
+degree of pecuniary efficiency. There is a similar but less
+pronounced tendency to intrust the work of instruction in the
+higher learning to men of some pecuniary qualification.
+Administrative ability and skill in advertising the enterprise
+count for rather more than they once did, as qualifications for
+the work of teaching. This applies especially in those sciences
+that have most to do with the everyday facts of life, and it is
+particularly true of schools in the economically single-minded
+communities. This partial substitution of pecuniary for
+sacerdotal efficiency is a concomitant of the modern transition
+from conspicuous leisure to conspicuous consumption, as the chief
+means of reputability. The correlation of the two facts is
+probably clear without further elaboration.
+
+The attitude of the schools and of the learned class towards the
+education of women serves to show in what manner and to what
+extent learning has departed from its ancient station of priestly
+and leisure-class prerogatives, and it indicates also what
+approach has been made by the truly learned to the modern,
+economic or industrial, matter-of-fact standpoint. The higher
+schools and the learned professions were until recently tabu to
+the women. These establishments were from the outset, and have in
+great measure continued to be, devoted to the education of the
+priestly and leisure classes.
+
+The women, as has been shown elsewhere, were the original
+subservient class, and to some extent, especially so far as
+regards their nominal or ceremonial position, they have remained
+in that relation down to the present. There has prevailed a
+strong sense that the admission of women to the privileges of the
+higher learning (as to the Eleusianin mysteries) would be
+derogatory to the dignity of the learned craft. It is therefore
+only very recently, and almost solely in the industrially most
+advanced communities, that the higher grades of schools have been
+freely opened to women. And even under the urgent circumstances
+prevailing in the modern industrial communities, the highest and
+most reputable universities show an extreme reluctance in making
+the move. The sense of class worthiness, that is to say of
+status, of a honorific differentiation of the sexes according to
+a distinction between superior and inferior intellectual dignity,
+survives in a vigorous form in these corporations of the
+aristocracy of learning. It is felt that the woman should, in all
+propriety, acquire only such knowledge as may be classed under
+one or the other of two heads: (1) such knowledge as conduces
+immediately to a better performance of domestic service -- the
+domestic sphere; (2) such accomplishments and dexterity,
+quasi-scholarly and quasi-artistic, as plainly come in under the
+head of a performance of vicarious leisure. Knowledge is felt to
+be unfeminine if it is knowledge which expresses the unfolding of
+the learner's own life, the acquisition of which proceeds on the
+learner's own cognitive interest, without prompting from the
+canons of propriety, and without reference back to a master whose
+comfort or good repute is to be enhanced by the employment or the
+exhibition of it. So, also, all knowledge which is useful as
+evidence of leisure, other than vicarious leisure, is scarcely
+feminine.
+
+For an appreciation of the relation which these higher seminaries
+of learning bear to the economic life of the community, the
+phenomena which have been reviewed are of importance rather as
+indications of a general attitude than as being in themselves
+facts of first-rate economic consequence. They go to show what is
+the instinctive attitude and animus of the learned class towards
+the life process of an industrial community. They serve as an
+exponent of the stage of development, for the industrial purpose,
+attained by the higher learning and by the learned class, and so
+they afford an indication as to what may fairly be looked for
+from this class at points where the learning and the life of the
+class bear more immediately upon the economic life and efficiency
+of the community, and upon the adjustment of its scheme of life
+to the requirements of the time. What these ritualistic survivals
+go to indicate is a prevalence of conservatism, if not of
+reactionary sentiment, especially among the higher schools where
+the conventional learning is cultivated.
+
+To these indications of a conservative attitude is to be added
+another characteristic which goes in the same direction, but
+which is a symptom of graver consequence that this playful
+inclination to trivialities of form and ritual. By far the
+greater number of American colleges and universities, for
+instance, are affiliated to some religious denomination and are
+somewhat given to devout observances. Their putative familiarity
+with scientific methods and the scientific point of view should
+presumably exempt the faculties of these schools from animistic
+habits of thought; but there is still a considerable proportion
+of them who profess an attachment to the anthropomorphic beliefs
+and observances of an earlier culture. These professions of
+devotional zeal are, no doubt, to a good extent expedient and
+perfunctory, both on the part of the schools in their corporate
+capacity, and on the part of the individual members of the corps
+of instructors; but it can not be doubted that there is after all
+a very appreciable element of anthropomorphic sentiment present
+in the higher schools. So far as this is the case it must be set
+down as the expression of an archaic, animistic habit of mind.
+This habit of mind must necessarily assert itself to some extent
+in the instruction offered, and to this extent its influence in
+shaping the habits of thought of the student makes for
+conservatism and reversion; it acts to hinder his development in
+the direction of matter-of-fact knowledge, such as best serves
+the ends of industry.
+
+The college sports, which have so great a vogue in the reputable
+seminaries of learning today, tend in a similar direction; and,
+indeed, sports have much in common with the devout attitude of
+the colleges, both as regards their psychological basis and as
+regards their disciplinary effect. But this expression of the
+barbarian temperament is to be credited primarily to the body of
+students, rather than to the temper of the schools as such;
+except in so far as the colleges or the college officials -- as
+sometimes happens -- actively countenance and foster the growth
+of sports. The like is true of college fraternities as of college
+sports, but with a difference. The latter are chiefly an
+expression of the predatory impulse simply; the former are more
+specifically an expression of that heritage of clannishness which
+is so large a feature in the temperament of the predatory
+barbarian. It is also noticeable that a close relation subsists
+between the fraternities and the sporting activity of the
+schools. After what has already been said in an earlier chapter
+on the sporting and gambling habit, it is scarcely necessary
+further to discuss the economic value of this training in sports
+and in factional organization and activity.
+
+But all these features of the scheme of life of the learned
+class, and of the establishments dedicated to the conservation of
+the higher learning, are in a great measure incidental only. They
+are scarcely to be accounted organic elements of the professed
+work of research and instruction for the ostensible pursuit of
+which the schools exists. But these symptomatic indications go to
+establish a presumption as to the character of the work performed
+-- as seen from the economic point of view -- and as to the bent
+which the serious work carried on under their auspices gives to
+the youth who resort to the schools. The presumption raised by
+the considerations already offered is that in their work also, as
+well as in their ceremonial, the higher schools may be expected
+to take a conservative position; but this presumption must be
+checked by a comparison of the economic character of the work
+actually performed, and by something of a survey of the learning
+whose conservation is intrusted to the higher schools. On this
+head, it is well known that the accredited seminaries of learning
+have, until a recent date, held a conservative position. They
+have taken an attitude of depreciation towards all innovations.
+As a general rule a new point of view or a new formulation of
+knowledge have been countenanced and taken up within the schools
+only after these new things have made their way outside of the
+schools. As exceptions from this rule are chiefly to be mentioned
+innovations of an inconspicuous kind and departures which do not
+bear in any tangible way upon the conventional point of view or
+upon the conventional scheme of life; as, for instance, details
+of fact in the mathematico-physical sciences, and new readings
+and interpretations of the classics, especially such as have a
+philological or literary bearing only. Except within the domain
+of the "humanities", in the narrow sense, and except so far as
+the traditional point of view of the humanities has been left
+intact by the innovators, it has generally held true that the
+accredited learned class and the seminaries of the higher
+learning have looked askance at all innovation. New views, new
+departures in scientific theory, especially in new departures
+which touch the theory of human relations at any point, have
+found a place in the scheme of the university tardily and by a
+reluctant tolerance, rather than by a cordial welcome; and the
+men who have occupied themselves with such efforts to widen the
+scope of human knowledge have not commonly been well received by
+their learned contemporaries. The higher schools have not
+commonly given their countenance to a serious advance in the
+methods or the content of knowledge until the innovations have
+outlived their youth and much of their usefulness -- after they
+have become commonplaces of the intellectual furniture of a new
+generation which has grown up under, and has had its habits of
+thought shaped by, the new, extra-scholastic body of knowledge
+and the new standpoint. This is true of the recent past. How far
+it may be true of the immediate present it would be hazardous to
+say, for it is impossible to see present-day facts in such
+perspective as to get a fair conception of their relative
+proportions.
+
+So far, nothing has been said of the Maecenas function of the
+well-to-do, which is habitually dwelt on at some length by
+writers and speakers who treat of the development of culture and
+of social structure. This leisure-class function is not without
+an important bearing on the higher and on the spread of knowledge
+and culture. The manner and the degree in which the class
+furthers learning through patronage of this kind is sufficiently
+familiar. It has been frequently presented in affectionate and
+effective terms by spokesmen whose familiarity with the topic
+fits them to bring home to their hearers the profound
+significance of this cultural factor. These spokesmen, however,
+have presented the matter from the point of view of the cultural
+interest, or of the interest of reputability, rather than from
+that of the economic interest. As apprehended from the economic
+point of view, and valued for the purpose of industrial
+serviceability, this function of the well-to-do, as well as the
+intellectual attitude of members of the well-to-do class, merits
+some attention and will bear illustration.
+
+By way of characterization of the Maecenas relation, it is to be
+noted that, considered externally, as an economic or industrial
+relation simply, it is a relation of status. The scholar under
+the patronage performs the duties of a learned life vicariously
+for his patron, to whom a certain repute inures after the manner
+of the good repute imputed to a master for whom any form of
+vicarious leisure is performed. It is also to be noted that, in
+point of historical fact, the furtherance of learning or the
+maintenance of scholarly activity through the Maecenas relation
+has most commonly been a furtherance of proficiency in classical
+lore or in the humanities. The knowledge tends to lower rather
+than to heighten the industrial efficiency of the community.
+
+Further, as regards the direct participation of the members of
+the leisure class in the furtherance of knowledge, the canons of
+reputable living act to throw such intellectual interest as seeks
+expression among the class on the side of classical and formal
+erudition, rather than on the side of the sciences that bear some
+relation to the community's industrial life. The most frequent
+excursions into other than classical fields of knowledge on the
+part of members of the leisure class are made into the discipline
+of law and the political, and more especially the administrative,
+sciences. These so-called sciences are substantially bodies of
+maxims of expediency for guidance in the leisure-class office of
+government, as conducted on a proprietary basis. The interest
+with which this discipline is approached is therefore not
+commonly the intellectual or cognitive interest simply. It is
+largely the practical interest of the exigencies of that relation
+of mastery in which the members of the class are placed. In point
+of derivation, the office of government is a predatory function,
+pertaining integrally to the archaic leisure-class scheme of
+life. It is an exercise of control and coercion over the
+population from which the class draws its sustenance. This
+discipline, as well as the incidents of practice which give it
+its content, therefore has some attraction for the class apart
+from all questions of cognition. All this holds true wherever and
+so long as the governmental office continues, in form or in
+substance, to be a proprietary office; and it holds true beyond
+that limit, in so far as the tradition of the more archaic phase
+of governmental evolution has lasted on into the later life of
+those modern communities for whom proprietary government by a
+leisure class is now beginning to pass away.
+
+For that field of learning within which the cognitive or
+intellectual interest is dominant -- the sciences properly so
+called -- the case is somewhat different, not only as regards the
+attitude of the leisure class, but as regards the whole drift of
+the pecuniary culture. Knowledge for its own sake, the exercise
+of the faculty of comprehensive without ulterior purpose, should,
+it might be expected, be sought by men whom no urgent material
+interest diverts from such a quest. The sheltered industrial
+position of the leisure class should give free play to the
+cognitive interest in members of this class, and we should
+consequently have, as many writers confidently find that we do
+have, a very large proportion of scholars, scientists, savants
+derived from this class and deriving their incentive to
+scientific investigation and speculation from the discipline of a
+life of leisure. Some such result is to be looked for, but there
+are features of the leisure-class scheme of life, already
+sufficiently dwelt upon, which go to divert the intellectual
+interest of this class to other subjects than that causal
+sequence in phenomena which makes the content of the sciences.
+The habits of thought which characterize the life of the class
+run on the personal relation of dominance, and on the derivative,
+invidious concepts of honor, worth, merit, character, and the
+like. The casual sequence which makes up the subject matter of
+science is not visible from this point of view. Neither does good
+repute attach to knowledge of facts that are vulgarly useful.
+Hence it should appear probable that the interest of the
+invidious comparison with respect to pecuniary or other honorific
+merit should occupy the attention of the leisure class, to the
+neglect of the cognitive interest. Where this latter interest
+asserts itself it should commonly be diverted to fields of
+speculation or investigation which are reputable and futile,
+rather than to the quest of scientific knowledge. Such indeed has
+been the history of priestly and leisure-class learning so long
+as no considerable body of systematized knowledge had been
+intruded into the scholastic discipline from an extra-scholastic
+source. But since the relation of mastery and subservience is
+ceasing to be the dominant and formative factor in the
+community's life process, other features of the life process and
+other points of view are forcing themselves upon the scholars.
+The true-bred gentleman of leisure should, and does, see the
+world from the point of view of the personal relation; and the
+cognitive interest, so far as it asserts itself in him, should
+seek to systematize phenomena on this basis. Such indeed is the
+case with the gentleman of the old school, in whom the
+leisure-class ideals have suffered no disintegration; and such is
+the attitude of his latter-day descendant, in so far as he has
+fallen heir to the full complement of upper-class virtues. But
+the ways of heredity are devious, and not every gentleman's son
+is to the manor born. Especially is the transmission of the
+habits of thought which characterize the predatory master
+somewhat precarious in the case of a line of descent in which but
+one or two of the latest steps have lain within the leisure-class
+discipline. The chances of occurrence of a strong congenital or
+acquired bent towards the exercise of the cognitive aptitudes are
+apparently best in those members of the leisure class who are of
+lower class or middle class antecedents -- that is to say, those
+who have inherited the complement of aptitudes proper to the
+industrious classes, and who owe their place in the leisure class
+to the possession of qualities which count for more today than
+they did in the times when the leisure-class scheme of life took
+shape. But even outside the range of these later accessions to
+the leisure class there are an appreciable number of individuals
+in whom the invidious interest is not sufficiently dominant to
+shape their theoretical views, and in whom the proclivity to
+theory is sufficiently strong to lead them into the scientific
+quest.
+
+The higher learning owes the intrusion of the sciences in part to
+these aberrant scions of the leisure class, who have come under
+the dominant influence of the latter-day tradition of impersonal
+relation and who have inherited a complement of human aptitudes
+differing in certain salient features from the temperament which
+is characteristic of the regime of status. But it owes the
+presence of this alien body of scientific knowledge also in part,
+and in a higher degree, to members of the industrious classes who
+have been in sufficiently easy circumstances to turn their
+attention to other interests than that of finding daily
+sustenance, and whose inherited aptitudes and anthropomorphic
+point of view does not dominate their intellectual processes. As
+between these two groups, which approximately comprise the
+effective force of scientific progress, it is the latter that has
+contributed the most. And with respect to both it seems to be
+true that they are not so much the source as the vehicle, or at
+the most they are the instrument of commutation, by which the
+habits of thought enforced upon the community, through contact
+with its environment under the exigencies of modern associated
+life and the mechanical industries, are turned to account for
+theoretical knowledge.
+
+Science, in the sense of an articulate recognition of causal
+sequence in phenomena, whether physical or social, has been a
+feature of the Western culture only since the industrial process
+in the Western communities has come to be substantially a process
+of mechanical contrivances in which man's office is that of
+discrimination and valuation of material forces. Science has
+flourished somewhat in the same degree as the industrial life of
+the community has conformed to this pattern, and somewhat in the
+same degree as the industrial interest has dominated the
+community's life. And science, and scientific theory especially,
+has made headway in the several departments of human life and
+knowledge in proportion as each of these several departments has
+successively come into closer contact with the industrial process
+and the economic interest; or perhaps it is truer to say, in
+proportion as each of them has successively escaped from the
+dominance of the conceptions of personal relation or status, and
+of the derivative canons of anthropomorphic fitness and honorific
+worth.
+
+It is only as the exigencies of modern industrial life have
+enforced the recognition of causal sequence in the practical
+contact of mankind with their environment, that men have come to
+systematize the phenomena of this environment and the facts of
+their own contact with it,in terms of causal sequence. So that
+while the higher learning in its best development, as the perfect
+flower of scholasticism and classicism, was a by-product of the
+priestly office and the life of leisure, so modern science may be
+said to be a by-product of the industrial process. Through these
+groups of men, then -- investigators, savants, scientists,
+inventors, speculators -- most of whom have done their most
+telling work outside the shelter of the schools, the habits of
+thought enforced by the modern industrial life have found
+coherent expression and elaboration as a body of theoretical
+science having to do with the causal sequence of phenomena. And
+from this extra-scholastic field of scientific speculation,
+changes of method and purpose have from time to time been
+intruded into the scholastic discipline.
+
+In this connection it is to be remarked that there is a very
+perceptible difference of substance and purpose between the
+instruction offered in the primary and secondary schools, on the
+one hand, and in the higher seminaries of learning, on the other
+hand. The difference in point of immediate practicality of the
+information imparted and of the proficiency acquired may be of
+some consequence and may merit the attention which it has from
+time to time received; but there is more substantial difference
+in the mental and spiritual bent which is favored by the one and
+the other discipline. This divergent trend in discipline between
+the higher and the lower learning is especially noticeable as
+regards the primary education in its latest development in the
+advanced industrial communities. Here the instruction is directed
+chiefly to proficiency or dexterity, intellectual and manual, in
+the apprehension and employment of impersonal facts, in their
+casual rather than in their honorific incidence. It is true,
+under the traditions of the earlier days, when the primary
+education was also predominantly a leisure-class commodity, a
+free use is still made of emulation as a spur to diligence in the
+common run of primary schools; but even this use of emulation as
+an expedient is visibly declining in the primary grades of
+instruction in communities where the lower education is not under
+the guidance of the ecclesiastical or military tradition. All
+this holds true in a peculiar degree, and more especially on the
+spiritual side, of such portions of the educational system as
+have been immediately affected by kindergarten methods and
+ideals.
+
+The peculiarly non-invidious trend of the kindergarten
+discipline, and the similar character of the kindergarten
+influence in primary education beyond the limits of the
+kindergarten proper, should be taken in connection with what has
+already been said of the peculiar spiritual attitude of
+leisure-class womankind under the circumstances of the modern
+economic situation. The kindergarten discipline is at its best --
+or at its farthest remove from ancient patriarchal and
+pedagogical ideals -- in the advanced industrial communities,
+where there is a considerable body of intelligent and idle women,
+and where the system of status has somewhat abated in rigor under
+the disintegrating influence of industrial life and in the
+absence of a consistent body of military and ecclesiastical
+traditions. It is from these women in easy circumstances that it
+gets its moral support. The aims and methods of the kindergarten
+commend themselves with especial effect to this class of women
+who are ill at ease under the pecuniary code of reputable life.
+The kindergarten, and whatever the kindergarten spirit counts for
+in modern education, therefore, is to be set down, along with the
+"new-woman movement," to the account of that revulsion against
+futility and invidious comparison which the leisure-class life
+under modern circumstances induces in the women most immediately
+exposed to its discipline. In this way it appears that, by
+indirection, the institution of a leisure class here again favors
+the growth of a non-invidious attitude, which may, in the long
+run, prove a menace to the stability of the institution itself,
+and even to the institution of individual ownership on which it
+rests.
+
+During the recent past some tangible changes have taken place in
+the scope of college and university teaching. These changes have
+in the main consisted in a partial displacement of the humanities
+-- those branches of learning which are conceived to make for the
+traditional "culture", character, tastes, and ideals -- by those
+more matter-of-fact branches which make for civic and industrial
+efficiency. To put the same thing in other words, those branches
+of knowledge which make for efficiency (ultimately productive
+efficiency) have gradually been gaining ground against those
+branches which make for a heightened consumption or a lowered
+industrial efficiency and for a type of character suited to the
+regime of status. In this adaptation of the scheme of instruction
+the higher schools have commonly been found on the conservative
+side; each step which they have taken in advance has been to some
+extent of the nature of a concession. The sciences have been
+intruded into the scholar's discipline from without, not to say
+from below. It is noticeable that the humanities which have so
+reluctantly yielded ground to the sciences are pretty uniformly
+adapted to shape the character of the student in accordance with
+a traditional self-centred scheme of consumption; a scheme of
+contemplation and enjoyment of the true, the beautiful, and the
+good, according to a conventional standard of propriety and
+excellence, the salient feature of which is leisure -- otium cum
+dignitate. In language veiled by their own habituation to the
+archaic, decorous point of view, the spokesmen of the humanities
+have insisted upon the ideal embodied in the maxim, fruges
+consumere nati. This attitude should occasion no surprise in the
+case of schools which are shaped by and rest upon a leisure-class
+culture.
+
+The professed grounds on which it has been sought, as far as
+might be, to maintain the received standards and methods of
+culture intact are likewise characteristic of the archaic
+temperament and of the leisure-class theory of life. The
+enjoyment and the bent derived from habitual contemplation of the
+life, ideals, speculations, and methods of consuming time and
+goods, in vogue among the leisure class of classical antiquity,
+for instance, is felt to be "higher", "nobler", "worthier", than
+what results in these respects from a like familiarity with the
+everyday life and the knowledge and aspirations of commonplace
+humanity in a modern community, that learning the content of
+which is an unmitigated knowledge of latter-day men and things is
+by comparison "lower", "base", "ignoble" -- one even hears the
+epithet "sub-human" applied to this matter-of-fact knowledge of
+mankind and of everyday life.
+
+This contention of the leisure-class spokesmen of the
+humanities seems to be substantially sound. In point of
+substantial fact, the gratification and the culture, or the
+spiritual attitude or habit of mind, resulting from an habitual
+contemplation of the anthropomorphism, clannishness, and
+leisurely self-complacency of the gentleman of an early day, or
+from a familiarity with the animistic superstitions and the
+exuberant truculence of the Homeric heroes, for instance, is,
+aesthetically considered, more legitimate than the corresponding
+results derived from a matter-of-fact knowledge of things and a
+contemplation of latter-day civic or workmanlike efficiency.
+There can be but little question that the first-named habits have
+the advantage in respect of aesthetic or honorific value, and
+therefore in respect of the "worth" which is made the basis of
+award in the comparison. The content of the canons of taste, and
+more particularly of the canons of honor, is in the nature of
+things a resultant of the past life and circumstances of the
+race, transmitted to the later generation by inheritance or by
+tradition; and the fact that the protracted dominance of a
+predatory, leisure-class scheme of life has profoundly shaped the
+habit of mind and the point of view of the race in the past, is a
+sufficient basis for an aesthetically legitimate dominance of
+such a scheme of life in very much of what concerns matters of
+taste in the present. For the purpose in hand, canons of taste
+are race habits, acquired through a more or less protracted
+habituation to the approval or disapproval of the kind of things
+upon which a favorable or unfavorable judgment of taste is
+passed. Other things being equal, the longer and more unbroken
+the habituation, the more legitimate is the canon of taste in
+question. All this seems to be even truer of judgments regarding
+worth or honor than of judgments of taste generally.
+
+But whatever may be the aesthetic legitimacy of the derogatory
+judgment passed on the newer learning by the spokesmen of the
+humanities, and however substantial may be the merits of the
+contention that the classic lore is worthier and results in a
+more truly human culture and character, it does not concern the
+question in hand. The question in hand is as to how far these
+branches of learning, and the point of view for which they stand
+in the educational system, help or hinder an efficient collective
+life under modern industrial circumstances -- how far they
+further a more facile adaptation to the economic situation of
+today. The question is an economic, not an aesthetic one; and the
+leisure-class standards of learning which find expression in the
+deprecatory attitude of the higher schools towards matter-of-fact
+knowledge are, for the present purpose, to be valued from this
+point of view only. For this purpose the use of such epithets as
+"noble", "base", "higher", "lower", etc., is significant only as
+showing the animus and the point of view of the disputants;
+whether they contend for the worthiness of the new or of the old.
+All these epithets are honorific or humilific terms; that is to
+say, they are terms of invidious comparison, which in the last
+analysis fall under the category of the reputable or the
+disreputable; that is, they belong within the range of ideas that
+characterizes the scheme of life of the regime of status; that
+is, they are in substance an expression of sportsmanship -- of
+the predatory and animistic habit of mind; that is, they indicate
+an archaic point of view and theory of life, which may fit the
+predatory stage of culture and of economic organization from
+which they have sprung, but which are, from the point of view of
+economic efficiency in the broader sense, disserviceable
+anachronisms.
+
+The classics, and their position of prerogative in the scheme of
+education to which the higher seminaries of learning cling with
+such a fond predilection, serve to shape the intellectual
+attitude and lower the economic efficiency of the new learned
+generation. They do this not only by holding up an archaic ideal
+of manhood, but also by the discrimination which they inculcate
+with respect to the reputable and the disreputable in knowledge.
+This result is accomplished in two ways: (1) by inspiring an
+habitual aversion to what is merely useful, as contrasted with
+what is merely honorific in learning, and so shaping the tastes
+of the novice that he comes in good faith to find gratification
+of his tastes solely, or almost solely, in such exercise of the
+intellect as normally results in no industrial or social gain;
+and (2) by consuming the learner's time and effort in acquiring
+knowledge which is of no use,except in so far as this learning
+has by convention become incorporated into the sum of learning
+required of the scholar, and has thereby affected the terminology
+and diction employed in the useful branches of knowledge. Except
+for this terminological difficulty -- which is itself a
+consequence of the vogue of the classics of the past -- a
+knowledge of the ancient languages, for instance, would have no
+practical bearing for any scientist or any scholar not engaged on
+work primarily of a linguistic character. Of course, all this has
+nothing to say as to the cultural value of the classics, nor is
+there any intention to disparage the discipline of the classics
+or the bent which their study gives to the student. That bent
+seems to be of an economically disserviceable kind, but this fact
+-- somewhat notorious indeed -- need disturb no one who has the
+good fortune to find comfort and strength in the classical lore.
+The fact that classical learning acts to derange the learner's
+workmanlike attitudes should fall lightly upon the apprehension
+of those who hold workmanship of small account in comparison with
+the cultivation of decorous ideals:  Iam fides et pax et honos
+pudorque Priscus et neglecta redire virtus Audet.
+
+Owing to the circumstance that this knowledge has become part of
+the elementary requirements in our system of education, the
+ability to use and to understand certain of the dead languages of
+southern Europe is not only gratifying to the person who finds
+occasion to parade his accomplishments in this respect, but the
+evidence of such knowledge serves at the same time to recommend
+any savant to his audience, both lay and learned. It is currently
+expected that a certain number of years shall have been spent in
+acquiring this substantially useless information, and its absence
+creates a presumption of hasty and precarious learning, as well
+as of a vulgar practicality that is equally obnoxious to the
+conventional standards of sound scholarship and intellectual
+force.
+
+The case is analogous to what happens in the purchase of any
+article of consumption by a purchaser who is not an expert judge
+of materials or of workmanship. He makes his estimate of value of
+the article chiefly on the ground of the apparent expensiveness
+of the finish of those decorative parts and features which have
+no immediate relation to the intrinsic usefulness of the article;
+the presumption being that some sort of ill-defined proportion
+subsists between the substantial value of an article and the
+expense of adornment added in order to sell it. The presumption
+that there can ordinarily be no sound scholarship where a
+knowledge of the classics and humanities is wanting leads to a
+conspicuous waste of time and labor on the part of the general
+body of students in acquiring such knowledge. The conventional
+insistence on a modicum of conspicuous waste as an incident of
+all reputable scholarship has affected our canons of taste and of
+serviceability in matters of scholarship in much the same way as
+the same principle has influenced our judgment of the
+serviceability of manufactured goods.
+
+It is true, since conspicuous consumption has gained more and
+more on conspicuous leisure as a means of repute, the
+acquisition of the dead languages is no longer so imperative a
+requirement as it once was, and its talismanic virtue as a
+voucher of scholarship has suffered a concomitant impairment. But
+while this is true, it is also true that the classics have
+scarcely lost in absolute value as a voucher of scholastic
+respectability, since for this purpose it is only necessary that
+the scholar should be able to put in evidence some learning which
+is conventionally recognized as evidence of wasted time; and the
+classics lend themselves with great facility to this use. Indeed,
+there can be little doubt that it is their utility as evidence of
+wasted time and effort, and hence of the pecuniary strength
+necessary in order to afford this waste, that has secured to the
+classics their position of prerogative in the scheme of higher
+learning, and has led to their being esteemed the most honorific
+of all learning. They serve the decorative ends of leisure-class
+learning better than any other body of knowledge, and hence they
+are an effective means of reputability.
+
+In this respect the classics have until lately had scarcely a
+rival. They still have no dangerous rival on the continent of
+Europe, but lately, since college athletics have won their way
+into a recognized standing as an accredited field of scholarly
+accomplishment, this latter branch of learning -- if athletics
+may be freely classed as learning -- has become a rival of the
+classics for the primacy in leisure-class education in American
+and English schools. Athletics have an obvious advantage over the
+classics for the purpose of leisure-class learning, since success
+as an athlete presumes, not only waste of time, but also waste of
+money, as well as the possession of certain highly unindustrial
+archaic traits of character and temperament. In the German
+universities the place of athletics and Greek-letter
+fraternities, as a leisure-class scholarly occupation, has in
+some measure been supplied by a skilled and graded inebriety and
+a perfunctory duelling.
+
+The leisure class and its standard of virtue -- archaism and
+waste -- can scarcely have been concerned in the introduction of
+the classics into the scheme of the higher learning; but the
+tenacious retention of the classics by the higher schools, and
+the high degree of reputability which still attaches to them, are
+no doubt due to their conforming so closely to the requirements
+of archaism and waste.
+
+"Classic" always carries this connotation of wasteful and
+archaic, whether it is used to denote the dead languages or the
+obsolete or obsolescent forms of thought and diction in the
+living language, or to denote other items of scholarly activity
+or apparatus to which it is applied with less aptness. So the
+archaic idiom of the English language is spoken of as "classic"
+English. Its use is imperative in all speaking and writing upon
+serious topics, and a facile use of it lends dignity to even the
+most commonplace and trivial string of talk. The newest form of
+English diction is of course never written; the sense of that
+leisure-class propriety which requires archaism in speech is
+present even in the most illiterate or sensational writers in
+sufficient force to prevent such a lapse. On the other hand, the
+highest and most conventionalized style of archaic diction is --
+quite characteristically -- properly employed only in
+communications between an anthropomorphic divinity and his
+subjects. Midway between these extremes lies the everyday speech
+of leisure-class conversation and literature.
+
+Elegant diction, whether in writing or speaking, is an effective
+means of reputability. It is of moment to know with some
+precision what is the degree of archaism conventionally required
+in speaking on any given topic. Usage differs appreciably from
+the pulpit to the market-place; the latter, as might be expected,
+admits the use of relatively new and effective words and turns of
+expression, even by fastidious persons. A discriminative
+avoidance of neologisms is honorific, not only because it argues
+that time has been wasted in acquiring the obsolescent habit of
+speech, but also as showing that the speaker has from infancy
+habitually associated with persons who have been familiar with
+the obsolescent idiom. It thereby goes to show his leisure-class
+antecedents. Great purity of speech is presumptive evidence of
+several lives spent in other than vulgarly useful occupations;
+although its evidence is by no means entirely conclusive to this
+point.
+
+As felicitous an instance of futile classicism as can well be
+found, outside of the Far East, is the conventional spelling of
+the English language. A breach of the proprieties in spelling is
+extremely annoying and will discredit any writer in the eyes of
+all persons who are possessed of a developed sense of the true
+and beautiful. English orthography satisfies all the requirements
+of the canons of reputability under the law of conspicuous waste.
+It is archaic, cumbrous, and ineffective; its acquisition
+consumes much time and effort; failure to acquire it is easy of
+detection. Therefore it is the first and readiest test of
+reputability in learning, and conformity to its ritual is
+indispensable to a blameless scholastic life.
+
+On this head of purity of speech, as at other points where a
+conventional usage rests on the canons of archaism and waste, the
+spokesmen for the usage instinctively take an apologetic
+attitude. It is contended, in substance, that a punctilious use
+of ancient and accredited locutions will serve to convey thought
+more adequately and more precisely than would be the
+straightforward use of the latest form of spoken English; whereas
+it is notorious that the ideas of today are effectively expressed
+in the slang of today. Classic speech has the honorific virtue of
+dignity; it commands attention and respect as being the
+accredited method of communication under the leisure-class scheme
+of life, because it carries a pointed suggestion of the
+industrial exemption of the speaker. The advantage of the
+accredited locutions lies in their reputability; they are
+reputable because they are cumbrous and out of date, and
+therefore argue waste of time and exemption from the use and the
+need of direct and forcible speech.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of The Theory of the Leisure Class
+
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