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Title: The Theory of the Leisure Class

Author: Thorstein Veblen

Release date: March 1, 1997 [eBook #833]
Most recently updated: July 19, 2014

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/833

Credits: Produced by David Reed, and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THEORY
OF THE LEISURE CLASS ***

THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE
CLASS

by Thorstein Veblen

Contents

Chapter One ~~ Introductory
Chapter Two ~~ Pecuniary Emulation
Chapter Three ~~ Conspicuous Leisure
Chapter Four ~~ Conspicuous Consumption
Chapter Five ~~ The Pecuniary Standard of Living
Chapter Six ~~ Pecuniary Canons of Taste
Chapter Seven ~~ Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary
Culture
Chapter Eight ~~ Industrial Exemption and Conservatism
Chapter Nine ~~ The Conservation of Archaic Traits
Chapter Ten ~~ Modern Survivals of Prowess
Chapter Eleven ~~ The Belief in Luck
Chapter Twelve ~~ Devout Observances
Chapter Thirteen ~~ Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interests
Chapter Fourteen ~~ The Higher Learning as an Expression of
the Pecuniary Culture

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 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 not
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 served 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 served 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 even 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. Indirectly, 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 hands 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 mind 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
served 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 consumable
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 we
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 handed
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 withdrawn 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 affiliation 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 thrown oon 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