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THE THEORY OF
THE LEISURE CLASS

BOOKS BY THORSTEIN VEBLEN

THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS

THE THEORY OF BUSINESS ENTERPRISE

THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP

IMPERIAL GERMANY

AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

THE NATURE OF PEACE

AND THE TERMS OF ITS PERPETUATION

THE HIGHER LEARNING IN AMERICA

THE VESTED INTERESTS AND THE
STATE OF THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS

THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN MODERN
CIVILISATION

THE ENGINEERS AND THE PRICE SYSTEM

^ THE THEORY OF
THE LEISURE CLASS

An Economic Study of Institutions

BY

THORSTEIN VEBLEN

NEW YORK

B. W. HUEBSCH

MCMXXII

w X Sn. w""- ../

COPYRIGHT 1899. 1912

By the Macmillan Company.

^// rig-his reserved.

Published February, 1899. Reprinted May. 1902 ;

October. 1905 ; August. 1908; December, 1911. New

edition February, 1912.

New edition published by B. W. Huebsch. July. 1918.

Reprinted September, 1919
Reprinted October. 1922

^1^4,

PREFACE

It is the purpose of this inquiry to discuss the place
and value of the leisure class as an economic factor
ill modern life, but it has been found impracticable
to confine the discussion strictly within the limits so
marked out. Some attention is perforce given to the
origin and the line of derivation of the institution, as
well as to features of social life that are not commonly
classed as economic.

At some points the discussion proceeds on grounds of
economic theory or ethnological generalisation that may
be in some degree unfamiliar. The introductory chap-
ter indicates the nature of these theoretical premises
sufficiently, it is hoped, to avoid obscurity. A more
explicit statement of the theoretical position involved
is made in a series of papers published in Volume IV
of the American Journal of Sociology, on "The Instinct
of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labour," "The
Beginnings of Ownership," and "The Barbarian Status
of Women." But the argument does not rest on these
— in part novel — generalisations in such a way that
it would altogether lose its possible value as a detail
of economic theory in case these novel generalisations
should, in the reader's apprehension, fall away through
being insufficiently backed by authority or data.

vi Preface

Partly for reasons of convenience, and partly because
there is less chance of misapprehending the sense of
phenomena that are familiar to all men, the data
employed to illustrate or enforce the argument have
by preference been drawn from everyday life, by direct
observation or through common notoriety, rather than
from more recondite sources at a farther remove. It is
hoped that no one will find his sense of literary or
scientific fitness offended by this recourse to homely
facts, or by what may at times appear to be a callous
freedom in handling vulgar phenomena or phenomena
whose intimate place in men's life has sometimes
shielded them from the impact of economic discussion.

Such premises and corroborative evidence as are
drawn from remoter sources, as well as whatever articles
of theory or inference are borrowed from ethnological
science, are also of the more familiar and accessible
kind and should be readily traceable to their source by
fairly well-read persons. The usage of citing sources
and authorities has therefore not been observed. Like-
wise the few quotations that have been introduced,
chiefly by way of illustration, are also such as will
commonly be recognised with sufficient facility without
the guidance of citation.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

»AGB

Introductory i

CHAPTER II
Pecuniary Emulation 22

CHAPTER III
Conspicuous Leisure 35

CHAPTER IV
Conspicuous Consumption 68

CHAPTER V
The Pecuniary Standard of Living . • . .102

CHAPTER VI
Pecuniary Canons of Taste . . , . . .115

CHAPTER VII
Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture . 167

CHAPTER VIII

Industrial Exemption and Conservatism . . .188

▼ii

viii Contents

CHAPTER IX

rAGB

The Conservation of Archaic Traits . . . .212

CHAPTER X
Modern Survivals of Prowess 246

CHAPTER XI
The Belief in Luck . . 276

CHAPTER XII
Devout Observances 293

CHAPTER XIII
Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest . . . 332

CHAPTER XIV

The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecun-
iary Culture 363

THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS

CHAPTER I

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 indus-
trial occupations, and are reserved for certain employ-
ments to which a degree of honour attaches. Chief
among the honourable employments in any feudal com-
munity is warfare; and priestly service is commonly
second to warfare. If the barbarian community is not
notably warlike, the priestly office may take the prece-
dence, 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 ex-
pression of their superior rank. Brahmin India affords

B 1

2 The Theory of the Leisure Class

a fair illustration of the industrial exemption of both
these classes. In the communities belonging to the
higher barbarian culture there is a considerable differ-
entiation of sub-classes within what may be compre-
hensively called the leisure class ; and there is a
corresponding differentiation of employments between
these sub-classes. The leisure class as a whole com-
prises 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 be-
tween leisure-class occupations are so minute and intri-
cate. 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, j If there are several

Introductory 3

grades of aristocracy, the women of high rank are com-
monly 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 pre-
scriptive 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 em-
ployments 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 second-
ary 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 circum-
stances out of which the institution of a leisure class

4 The Theory of the 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 differentia-
tion. 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 differ-
ence of function, but the exemption of the superior class
from work has not gone far enough to make the desig-
nation " leisure class " altogether applicable. The
tribes belonging on this economic level have carried the
economic differentiation to the point at v/hich 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 prescrip-
tive custom, held to those employments out of which
the industrial occupations proper develop at the next
advance. The men are exempt from these vulgar em-
ployments 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 occu-
pation 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

Introductory 5

it survives only in empjoyments 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 con-
founded with the latter. There is in all barbarian com-
munities 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 —

6 The Theory of the Leisure Class

among savage groups — the differentiation of employ*
ments 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 those 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 appar-
ently 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
mstance of this phase of culture as may be had is af-
forded 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 com-
munities are less confidently to be included in the same
class. V 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 allowance, but they may serve

Introductory 7

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 communi-
ties, or that their social structure is in all respects the
least differentiated ; nor does the class necessarily in-
clude 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: (i) the com-
mu lity must be of a predatory habit of life (war or the
hurting 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

8 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 a
leisure class is the outgrowth of an early discrimination
between employments, according to which some employ-
ments 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 appre-
ciable 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 gf 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. In-
terest 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 devel-
opment, therefore, the distinction is a substantial one
and rests on sufficiently valid and cogent grounds.

Introductory 1 1

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, lem.mings, sheep, are not
ordinarily apprehended as "animate" except when taken
collectively. As here used the term does not neces-
sarily imply an indwelling soul or spirit. The concept
includes such things as in the apprehension of the ani-
mistic 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 pro-
cesses; 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

12 The Theory of the Leisure Class

on quite a different plane from his dealings with " ani-
mate " things and forces. The line of demarcation may
be vague and shifting, but the broad distinction is suffi-
ciently 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 naXve discrimination be-
tween 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

Introductory 13

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 coin-
cides with a difference between the sexes. The sexes
differ, not only in stature and muscular force, but per-
haps 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 dif-
ference 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

14 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 mem-
bers who are unfit for man's work being for this purpose
classed with the 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 aggres-
sive 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 develop-
ment 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 employ-
ment 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

Introductory I J

themselves refractorily in the environment. So tena-
ciously and with such nicety is this theoretical dis-
tinction 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 be-
tween 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 subservi-
ence or submission, are unworthy, debasing, .ignoble.
The concept of dignity, worth, or honour, as applied
either to persons or conduct, is of first-rate conse-
quence in the development of classes and of class dis-
tinctions, 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 effec-
tive work, and a distaste for futile effort. He has a
sense of the merit of serviceability or efificiency and of
the demerit of futility, waste, or incapacity. This apti-
tude or propensity may be called the instinct of work-
manship. Wherever the circumstances or traditions of

1 6 The Theory of the Leisure Class

life lead to an habitual comparison of one person with
another in point of efficiency, the instinct of workman-
ship works out in an emulative or invidious comparison
of persons. The extent to which this result follows
depends in some considerable degree on the tempera-
ment 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, per-
haps sedentary, and without a developed system of indi-
vidual ownership, the efficiency of the individual can be
shown chiefly and most consistently in some employ-
ment 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 incen-
tive 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 emula-
tion increase greatly in scope and urgency. The ac-
tivity 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 — tro'

Introductory \*j

phies — 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 preeminent 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 conven-
tional 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 by
seizure on the one hand and industrial employment on
the other hand. Labour acquires a character of irk-
someness by virtue of the indignity imputed to it.
' With the primitive barbarian, before the simple con-
tent of the notion has been obscured by its own ramifi-
cations and by a secondary growth of cognate ideas,
"honourable" seems to connote nothing else than asser-
tion 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 natve, archaic habit
of construing all manifestations of force in terms of

1 8 The Theory of the Leisure Class

personality or "will power" greatly fortifies this con-
ventional exaltation of the strong hand. Honorific epi-
thets, in vogue among barbarian tribes as well as among
peoples of a more advanced culture, commonly bear the
stamp of this unsophisticated sense of honour. Epithets
and titles used in addressing chieftains, and in the pro-
pitiation of kings and gods, very commonly impute a
propensity for overbearing violence and an irresistible
devastating force to the person who is to be propi-
tiated. This holds true to an extent also in the more
civilised communities of the present day. The predi-
lection shown in heraldic devices for the more rapa-
cious 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 formi-
dable competitors, whether brute or human — is honour-
able 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

tntrodtict&ry 19

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, occa-
sional or sporadic, or even more or less frequent and
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 appre-
ciation with a view to combat.

20 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 develop-
ment 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 con-
trolled 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;

Introductory 2 1

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 tradi-
tions 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 II

Pecuniary Emulation

In the sequence of cultural evolution the emergence
of a leisure class coincides with the beginning of owner-
ship. This is necessarily the case, for these two institu-
tions 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 inter-
est 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 con-
cerned 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 divi-
sion 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-

22

Pecuniary Emulation . 23

bodied men of the community. The facts may be ex-
pressed 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 barba-
rian 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 out-
come of emulation under the circumstances of a preda-
tory life, therefore, has been on the one hand a form
of marriage resting on coercion, and on the other hand

24 The Theory of the Leisiwe Class

the custom of ownership. The two institutions are
not distinguishable in the initial phase of their develop-
ment ; 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 con-
cept 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 con-
sumption 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 eco-
nomic theory, and especially among those economists
who adhere with least faltering to the body of moder-
nised 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
eariier 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 liveli-
hood to the community in return for strenuous and
unremitting application to the business of getting the

Pecuniary Emulation 25

means of subsistence. But in all progressing commu-
nities an advance is presently made beyond this early
stage of technological development. Industrial effi-
ciency 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 conven-
tionally held to be the consumption of the goods accu-
mulated— 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 rojot
of ownership is. emulation; and the same motive of
emulation continues active in the further development

26 The Theory of the Leisure Class

of the institution to which it has given rise and in the
development of all those features of the social struct-
ure 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 in-
centive to the accumulation of wealth.

It is of course not to be overlooked that in a com-
munity 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 com-
munity. 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 impecuni-
ous 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 subsist-
ence or of physical comfort never plays a considerable
part. Ownership began and grew into a human insti-
tution on grounds unrelated to the subsistence minimum.
The dominant incentive was from the outset the invidi-
ous distinction attaching to wealth, and, save tempora-
rily and by exception, no other motive has usurped the
primacy at any later stage of the development.

Pecuniary Emulation 27

Property set out with being booty held as trophies
of the successful raid. So long as the group had de-
parted but little from the primitive communal organic
sation, and so long as it still stood in close contact
with other hostile groups, the utility of things or per-
sons 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 pri-
marily 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 so 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 na'fve seizure
and conversion, begins to pass into the subsequent stage
of an incipient organisation of industry on the basis
of private property (in slaves); the horde develops
into a more or less self-sufficing industrial community ;

28 " 77^^ Theory of the Leisure Class

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 displaces
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 pos-
session of wealth gains in relative importance and effec-
tiveness 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 suc-
cessful 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 by the quasi-peaceable methods
of nomadic industry, increase in scope and availability.
And it is even more to the point that property now

Pecuniary Emulation 29

becomes the most easily recognised evidence of a repu-
table degree of success as distinguished from heroic or
signal achievement. It therefore becomes the conven- ^^
tional basis of esteem. Its possession in some amount
becomes necessary in order to any reputable standing
in the community. It becomes indispensable to accu- ^
mulate, to acquire property, in order to retain one's
good name. When accumulated goods have in this v^^ay
once become the accepted badge of efficiency, the pos-
session of wealth presently assumes the character of an
independent and definitive basis of esteem. The pos-
session of goods, whether acquired aggressively by one's
own exertion or passively by transmission through in-
heritance 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 refine-
ment, v/ealth 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

3© The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 neces-
sary 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 ac-
corded 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.

Pecuniary Emulation 31

So soon as the possession of property becomes the
basis of popular esteem, therefore, it becomes also a
requisite to that 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 acqui-
sitions, 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 dissatis-
faction will give place to a restless straining to place
a wider and ever-widening pecuniary interval between
himself and this average standard The invidious com-
parison can never become so favourable to the individual
making it that he would not gladly rate himself still

32 The Theory of the Leisure Class

higKer relatively to his competitors in the struggle for
p;e'cuniary reputability.

In the nature of the case, the desire for wealth can
scarcely be satiated in any individual instance, and evi-
dently 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
Hncrease of the community's wealth can make any ap-
' proach 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 sub-
sistence 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 com-
munity ; 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 expendi-
ture for personal comfort and decent livelihood.

Besides this, the power conferred by wealth also

Pecuniary Emulation 33

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 per-
vasive trait that shapes his scheme of life. The pro-
pensity for achievement and the repugnance to futility
remain the underlying economic motive. The pro-
pensity 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 pro-
pensity for achievement — the instinct of workman-
ship— tends more and more to shape itself into a
straining to excel others in pecuniary achievement.
Relative success, tested by an invidious pecuniary com-
parison with other men, becomes the conventional end
of action. The currently accepted legitimate end of
effort becomes the achievement of a favourable com-
parison 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 dis-

D

<>'

34 Th^ Theory of the Leisure Class

approval all shortcoming and all evidence of short-
coming 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, there-
fore, continues to belong to this motive of pecuniary
emulation.

In making use of the term " invidious," it may per-
haps 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 defin-
ing 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 III

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 property, 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

35

36 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 circum-
scribe and modify emulation in these directions among
the pecuniarily 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 weak-
ness and subjection to a master. It is therefore a mark
of inferiority, and therefore comes to be accounted un-
worthy 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

Conspicuous Leisure 37

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 stand-
ard 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 to-day. So much
so that there are few of the better class who are not
possessed of an instinctive repugnance for the vulgar u
forms of labour. We have a realising sense of ceremo-
nial 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 insep-
arable from certain offices that are conventionally re-
quired of servants. Vulgar surroundings, mean (that
is to say, inexpensive) habitations, and vulgarly pro-
ductive occupations are unhesitatingly condemned and
avoided. They are incompatible with life on a satis-
factory 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 every-

38 The Theory of the Leisure Class

day purposes of human life has ever been recognised by
thoughtful men as a prerequisite to a worthy or beauti-
ful, or even a blameless, human life. In itself and in its
consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and enno-
bling 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 con-
ventional evidence of inferior force ; therefore it comes
itself, by a mental short-cut, to be regarded as intrin-
sically base.

During the predatory stage proper, and especially
duringlRe earlier stages of the quasi-peaceable develop-
ment of industry that follows the predatory stage, a
life of leisure is the readiest and most conclusive evi-
dence 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 accru-
ing 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,

Conspicuous Leisure 39

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 dishonoura-
ble, as being an evidence of poverty, even if it were not
already accounted indecorous under the ancient tradi-
tion handed down from an earlier cultural stage. The
ancient tradition of the predatory culture is that pro-
ductive 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 employ-
ment, it would in any case have come in as one of the
early consequences of ownership. And it is to be re-
marked 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 ap'
prehension, menial drudgery ; but their activity in fact
contributes appreciably to the sustenance of the group.

40 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 com-
munity 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 character-
istic feature of leisure-class life is a conspicuous exemp-
tion 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 theo-
retical 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 pro-
ductive, employment. Something similar may be said
of the chase, but with a difference. As the community
passes out of the hunting stage proper, hunting gradu-
ally becomes differentiated into two distinct employ-
ments. On the one hand it is a trade, carried on chiefly
for gain ; and from this the element of exploit is virtu

Conspicuous Leisure 41

ally absent, or it is at any rate not present in a suffi-
cient 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 conventional 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. N'ota •
7iotcB est nota rei ipsius. Acrnrdin^ to vyen-p<;fahh\hpH^ 7\
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 sub-
stantially 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

42 The Theory of the Leisure Class

increases in density and the predatory group grows into
a settled industrial community, the constituted authori-
ties and the customs governing ownership gain in scope
and consistency. It then presently becomes impracti-
cable 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 there-
fore emerge a secondary, and in a sense spurious, leisure
class -^abjectly poor and living 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 phe-
nomena even now. This pervading sense of the indig-
nity of the slightest manual labour is familiar to all
civilised peoples, as well as to peoples of a less advanced
pecuniary culture. In persons of 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 in-
stance, 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 chiefs person. The tabu would
have been communicated by the contact of his hands,
and so would have made anything touched by him unfit

Conspicuous Leisii7'e 43

for human food. But the tabu is itself a derivative ot
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 un-
complaining 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 con-
tamination.

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-productiydxXlXfl^^^^ "3._^^nse 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

44 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 tangi-
ble, 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 mate-
rial 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 or 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 ex-
ploit 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 sys-
tem of rank, titles, degrees and insignia, typical ex-
amples 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,

Conspicuous Leisure 45

as distinct from exploit and from any ostensibly produc-
tive employment of effort on objects which are of no
intrinsic use, does not commonly leave a material prod-
"uct. 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 proprieties 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 accomplish-
ments 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 cere

46 The Theory of the Leisure Class

monial observances generally. This class of facts are
even more immediately and obtrusively presented to
the observation, and they are 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 dur-
ing 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 bar-
barian of the quasi-peaceable stage of industry is notori-
ously 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 vul-
garisation 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 sensi-
bilities. The decay which the code has suffered at the
hands of a busy people testifies — all deprecation apart
— to the fact that decorum is a product and an ex-
ponent of leisure-class life and thrives in full measure
only under a regime of status.

The origin, or better the derivation, of manners is.

Conspicuous Leisure 4^

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 cere-
monial 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 repre-
senting former acts of dominance or of personal service
or of personal contact. In large part they are an ex-
pression of the relation of status, — a symbolic panto-
mime of mastery on the one hand and of subservience
on the other. Wherever at the present time the pred-
atory 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.

48 The Theory of the Leisure Class

Decorum set out with being symbol and pantomime
and with having utility only as an exponent of the
facts and qualities symboHsed ; but it presently suffered
the transmutation which commonly passes over symboli-
cal facts in human intercourse. Manners presently came,
in popular apprehension, to be possessed of a substantial
utility in themselves ; they acquired a sacramental char-
acter, 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 revul-
sion as a breach of decorum ; and so far have we pro-
gressed 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 with-
out which good manners are not acquired. The know-
ledge and habit of good form come only by long-con-
tinued use. Refined tastes, manners, and habits of life

Conspicuous Leisure 49

are a useful evidence of gentility, because good breeding
requires time, application, and expense, and can there-
fore 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, visi-
ble result that can be put in evidence and can be meas-
ured 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 sug-
gestions of a cumulative life of leisure, and all the prori^
ciency in decorum that comes by the way of passive

50 The Theory of the Leisure Class

habituation, may be further improved upon by taking
thought and assiduously acquiring the marks of honour-
able 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 proprieties. Con-
versely, the greater the degree of proficiency and the
more patent the evidence of a high degree of habitua-
tion to observances which serve no lucrative or other
directly useful purpose, the greater the consumption of
time and substance impliedly involved in their acquisi-
tion, and the greater the resultant good repute. Hence,
under the competitive struggle for proficiency in good
manners, it comes about that much pains is taken with
the cultivation of habits of decorum ; and hence the
details of decorum develop into a comprehensive dis-
cipline, 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 discrimina-
tion 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 pos-
sibility of producing pathological and other idiosyn-
crasies 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 vul-

Conspicnojis Leisure 5 1

garly 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 proprieties.

There are, moreover, measureable degrees of con-
formity 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 progres-
sive 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 under-
going 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 considera-
ble range of variation in detail within the scope of this

■]

52 T/te Theory of the Leisure Class

principle, but they are variations of form and expres-
sion, 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 proprieties. 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 pecuniarily dependent inferiors is
the bearing of the superior member in a relation of
status, though its manifestation is often greatly modi-
fied 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. Wit-
ness the masterful presence of the high-minded gentle-
man 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 definitive formulation which serves as a
canon of conduct for the classes beneath. And here
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

Conspiaious Leisure 53

complaisance, as of one habituated to require subser-
vience 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 at-
tribute 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 ap-
parently been: (i) a propensity for dominance and coer-
cion ; (2) the utiHty of these persons as evidence of the
prowess of their owner; (3) the utility of their services.

Personal service holds a peculiar place in the eco-
nomic 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 domi-
nant motive to the acquisition of property in persons.
Servants are valued for their services. But the domi-
nance of this motive is not due to a dechne in the abso-
lute importance of the other two utilities possessed by
servants. It is rather that the, altered circumstances 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 accu-
mulating 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

54 The Theory of the LeisM^e Class

its character to the economic life under the quasi-
peaceable culture that the woman 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 pos-
session 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 per-
sonal 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 imme-
diate 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 com-
mon 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

Conspicuous Leisure 55

in which the concept of gentle blood originates, as well
as the place which it occupies in the development of mar-
riage, cannot be discussed in this place. For the pur<
pose in hand it will be sufficient to say that gentle blood
is blood which has been ennobled by protracted con-
tact with accumulated wealth or unbroken prerogative.
The woman with these antecedents is preferred in mar-
riage, 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 hei: husband's
chattel, as she was her father's chattel before her pur
chase, 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 sub-
ject 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 author-
ity it will act to invest her in some measure with that
prerogative of leisure which is the chief mark of gentil-
ity. Furthered by this principle of transmissible gen-
tility 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 be-
comes 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

56 The Theory of the Leisttre Class

course of time from menial domestic employments, wiL
then assert itself as regards the other wives, if such
there are, and also as regards other servants in immedi-
ate 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 special-
ised 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 in-
creasing 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 differ-
entiation and multiplication of domestic and body ser-
vants, along with a concomitant progressive exemption

Conspicuous Leisure 57

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 be-
come nominal only. This is especially true of those ser-
vants 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 man-
ner, men begin to be preferred above women for ser
vices that bring them obtrusively into view. Men,
especially lusty, personable fellows, such as footmen
and other menials should be, are obviously more power-
ful 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

58 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 em-
ployment 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" re-
quired for a comfortable existence by civiUsed 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 physicd 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

Conspiaious Leisure 59

the labour spent in these services is to be classed as lei-
sure ; and when performed by others than the economi-
cally free and self-directing 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 fre-
quently 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 deriva-
tive 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 vicari-
ous 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 avoid-
ance 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

6o The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 car-
riage 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 to-day
it is this aptitude and acquired skill in the formal mani-
festation 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 g(5ud 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

Conspicuojis Leisure 6 1

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, spe-
cifically 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 deprecated,
not so much because it evinces a shortcoming in me-
chanical 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 train-
ing. Special training in personal service costs time and
effort, and where it is obviously present in a high de-
gree, 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 sheep-
herding. 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 instruc-

62 The Theory of the Leisure Class

tion required to fit a trained servant for special service
under an 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 thought as substantially right. But in
order that any specific canon of deportment shall main-
tain 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 consump-
tion 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 vica-
rious 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

„ Conspicuous Leisure 63

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 unproduc-
tively 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 wife, consumes for him in conspicu-
ous 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 has 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

64 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 that 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 eco-
nomic 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

Conspicuous Leisure 65

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 cano^i 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 prop-
erly 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 house-
hold 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 (i)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 :
(i) Under a 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 conspicu-
ous 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

66 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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. Per-
sonal contact with the hired persons whose aid is called
in to fulfil the routine of decency is commonly distaste-
ful 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 conces-
sion 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 be-
hoof 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 osten-
sible equality. As fast as the household for which they
are performed departs from its archaic basis of owner-
ship-marriage, these household duties of course tend to
fall out of the category of vicarious leisure in the origi-
nal sense ; except so far as they are performed by hired
servants. That is to say, since vicarious leisure is pos-
sible only on a basis of status or of hired service, the
disappearance of the relation of status from human in-
tercourse 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 qualifica-
tion, that so long as the household subsists, even with

Conspicuous Leisure 6y

a divided head, this class of non-productive labour per-
formed for the sake of 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 IV
Conspicuous Consumption

In what has been said of the evolution of the vicari-
ous 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 different
servant classes. One portion of the servant class,
chiefly those persons whose occupation is vicarious lei-
sure, 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 ante-
dating the emergence of the lady, specialised consump-
tion 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

68

Conspicuous Consumption 69

suggestion that an incipient differentiation in this re-
spect 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 adaptation to a new
end, by a selective process, of a distinction previously
existing and well estabUshed in men's habits of thought.
In the earlier phases of the predatory culture the
only economic differentiation is a broad distinction be-
tween 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 that time it is the office of the
men to consume what the women produce. Such con-
sumption 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 per-
quisite of human dignity ; secondarily it becomes sub-
stantially honourable in itself, especially the consumption
of the more desirable things. The consumption of
choice articles of food, and frequently also of rare arti-
cles 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

70 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 oi
chattel slavery, the general principle, more or less rigor-
ously applied, is that the base, industrious class should
consume only what may be necessary to their subsist-
ence. In the nature of things, luxuries and the com-
forts 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, practise 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 patri-
archal regime it has been the ofHce 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 patho-
logical consequences of the free use of stimulants there-
fore 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. Infirmi-
ties induced by over-indulgence are among some peoples
freely recognised as manly attributes. It has even hap-

Conspicuous Consumption 71

pened 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
lessen the disapprobation visited upon the men of the
wealthy or noble class for any excessive indulgence.
The same invidious distinction adds force to the cur-
rent 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 to-day. Where the ex-
ample set by the leisure class retains its imperative force
in the regulation of the conventionalities, it is observ-
able 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 reputa-
ble 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 convention-
ality is, in a general way, strongest where the patri-
archal 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

*j2 The Theory of the Leism'e Class

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 con-
sumer 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 de-
pendent 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 appre-
hension of the great conservative middle class of West-
ern civilisation the use of these various stimulants is
obnoxious to at least one, if not both, of these objec-
tions ; 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

Conspicuous Consumption 73

benefit of their masters. The objection of course pre-
sents 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 thi-s exception
is much more obvious than substantial.

During the earlier stages of economic development,
consumption of goods without stint, especially con-
sumption 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 owner-
ship 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 re-
gards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes
freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter,
services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutre-
ments, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities. In

74 The Theory of the Leisure Class

the process of gradual amelioration which takes place
in the articles of his consumption, the motive principle
and the 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 con-
sumption. 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 con-
sume in due quantity and quality becomes a mark of
inferiority and demerit.

This growth of punctilious discrimination as to quali-
tative 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 dis-
criminate 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 architect-
ure, in weapons, games, dancers, and the narcotics.
This cultivation of the aesthetic faculty requires time
and application, and the demands made upon the gentle-
man 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

Conspicuous Consumption 75

leisure in a becoming way. Closely related to the re-
quirement 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 man-
ner. His life of leisure must be conducted in due form. "^
Hence arise good manners in the way pointed out in an I
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 V
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 entertain-
ments. Presents and feasts had probably another origin
than that of naive ostentation, but they acquired their
utility for this purpose very early, and they have re-
tained 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 entertain-
ment^, 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 a 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.

'j6 The Theory of the Leisure Class

In the giving of costly entertainments other motives,
of a 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 colourable
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. r^

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 differentia-
tion is furthered by the inheritance of wealth and the
consequent inheritance of gentility. With the inheri-
tance of gentility goes the inheritance of obligatory lei-
sure ; 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 lei-
sure, incidentally referred to already. These half-caste
gentlemen of leisure fall into a system of hierarchical

Conspicuous Consumption yy

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 consumers 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 retainers
and hangers-on of the patron may be classed as vica-
rious consumers 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 consumers in
the persons of their wives and children, their servants,
retainers, etc.

Throughout this graduated scheme of vicarious lei-
sure 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 re-
sulting increment of good repute of right inures. The

fS The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 per-
formed vicariously by henchmen and retainers, imputa-
tion of the resulting repute to the patron is effected by
jtheir 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 considera-
ble 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 like-
wise 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 infre-
quently 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 per-
formed, is traversed by a secondary distinction into

Conspicuous Consumption 79

honorific and humiliating, resting on the rank of the
person for whom the service is performed or whose
livery is worn. So, those ofBces which are by right
the proper employment of the leisure class are noble ;
such are government, fighting, hunting, the care of
arms and accoutrements, and the like, — in short, those
which may be classed as ostensibly predatory employ-
ments. On the other hand, those employments which
properly fall to the industrious class are ignoble ; such
as handicraft or other productive labour, menial services,
and the like. But a base service performed for a per-
son of very high degree may become a very honorific
office ; as for instance the office of a Maid of Honour 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 honour 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 of servility.
Something of a honorific character always attached
to the livery of the armed retainer, but this honorific

8o The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 uncer-
tain 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 gentle-
man 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 de-
pendent who was first delegated for these duties was
the wife, or the chief wife ; and, as would be ex-
pected, 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 re-
quired ; 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 vicari-

Conspicuous Consumption 8 1

ous 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 observation that in this lower middle class
there is no pretence of leisure on the part of the
head of the household. Through force of circum-
stances 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 indus-
trial 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 cir-
cumstances 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 to-day. 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 conven-
tionality which the demands of reputability will not
suffer to be slighted. It is by no means an uncom-
mon spectacle to find a man applying himself to
work with the utmcst assiduity, in order that his
wife may in due fi)rm render for him that degree of
vicarious leisure v/hich the common sense of the
time demands.

The leisure rendered by the wife in such cases is, of

82 The Theory of the Leisure Class

course, not a simple manifestation of idleness or indo-
lence. 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 and need 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 house-
wife 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 colour, 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 some-
times 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 ex-
penditure of time and substance. If beauty or comfort
is achieved, — and it is a more or less fortuitous circum-
stance if they are, — they must be achieved by means

Conspicuous Consumption 83

and methods that commend themselves to the great
economic law of wasted effort. The more reputable,
"presentable" portion of middle-class household para-
phernalia 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
pretence 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 un-
free servant. . -^

This vicarious consumption practised by the house-
hold 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

84 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 ap-
proximation, 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 ex-
tends its coercive influence with but slight hindrance
down through the social structure to the lowest strata.
'T'7The result is that the members of each stratum accept
j as their ideal of decency the scheme of life in vogue in
/ the next higher stratum, and bend their energies to live
I up to that ideal. On pain of forfeiting their good name
\ and their self-respect in case of failure, they must con-
VXprni to the accepted code, at least in appearance.
/ The basis on which good repute in any highly organ-
j ised industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary
i 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,
1 both of these methods are in vogue as far down the
1 scale as it remains possible ; and in the lower strata in
i which the two methods are employed, both offices are
1 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

Conspicuous Consumption 85

household also can do something in this direction, and,
indeed, he commonly does ; but with a still lower de
scent 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 appear-
ances, and the woman remains virtually the sole expo-
nent of the household's pecuniary decency. No class
of society, not even the most abjectly poor, foregoes all
customary conspicuous consumption. The last items
of this category of consumption are not given up ex-
cept under stress of the direst necessity. Very much
of squalor and discomfort will be endured before the
last trinket or the last pretence 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 con-
spicuous 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 demonstrat-
ing the possession of wealth, and the two are conven-
tionally accepted as equivalents. The choice between
them is a question of advertising expediency -simply, ex-
cept 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 develop-

86 . The Theory of the Leisure Class

ment. 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 re-
quired to adapt himself in respect of reputability is com-
prised within his sphere of personal acquaintance and
neighbourhood 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 envi-
ronment, consumption begins to hold over leisure as an

prdinary means of decency. This is especially true dur-

■f 'ing 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 organisation of industry works in the
same direction also by another line. The exigencies of
the modern industrial system frequently place individ-
uals and households in juxtaposition between whom there
is little contact in any other sense than that of jux-
taposition. One's neighbours, mechanically speaking, :
often are socially not one's neighbours, or even acquaint^

Conspicuo2is Consumption ^7

ances ; and still their transient good opinion has a high/
degree of utility. The only practicable means of im-
pressing one's pecuniary ability on th-3se unsympathetic '
observers of one's everyday life is an unremitting dem- /
onstration of ability to pay. In the modern communit-y^^
there is also a more frequent attendance at large gath-
erings of people to whom one's everyday life is un-
known ; in such places as churches, theatres, ballrooms,
hotels, parks, shops, and the like. In order to impress
these transient observers, and to retain one's self-com-
placency 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 con-^
sumption as compared with leisure.

It is also noticeable that the serviceability of con-
sumption 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 popu-
lation is greatest. Conspicuous consumption claims *TT
relatively larger portion of the income of the urban |
than of the rural population, and the claim is also more j
imperative. The result is that, in order to keep up a I
decent appearance, the former habitually live hand-to- 1
mouth to a greater extent than the latter. So it comes, j
for instance, that the American farmer and his wife andj
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

\ 88 T/if Theory of the Leisure Class

that the city population is by nature much more eager
for the peculiar complacency that comes of a conspicu-
ous consumption, nor has the rural population less re-
gard for pecuniary decency. But the provocation to this
line of evidence, as well as its transient effectiveness,
I are 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
I 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
j 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 stand-
ard 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 neighbourhood 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

Conspicuous Consumption 89

living on farms and in the small villages. Among the
latter, everybody's affairs, especially everybody's pecuni-
ary 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 labour-
ing 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 labour-
ers and handicraftsmen of the towns, and among the y
lower middle class of the urban population generally. J''^^
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 com-
monly 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

90 TJie Iheory of the Leisure Class

training is slight. Also, this occupation requires more
than the average of intelligence and general informa-
tion, 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 labour from one
place to another. The inertia due to the home feeling
is consequently alsoyslight. 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 labour employed in printing ; per-
haps greater than in any other equally well-defined and
considerable body of workmen. These men are con-
stantly thrown in contact with new groups of acquaint-
ances, with whom the relations established are transient
or ephemeral, but whose good opinion is valued none
the less for the time being. The human proclivity to
ostentation, reenforced by sentiments of goodfellowship,
leads them to spend freely in those directions which will
best serve these needs. Here as elsewhere prescrip-
tion seizes upon the custom as soon as it gains a vogue,
and incorporates it in the accredited standard of de-
cency. The next step is to make this standard of
decency the point of departure for a new move in ad-
vance 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 every one 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

other,

Conspicuous Consumption 91

acquaintance and human contact in this trade. But the
substantial ground of this high requirement in dissipa-
tion is in the last analysis no other than that same pro-
pensity 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 off-
set to a considerable extent by other features of human
nature, alien to it, any saving should logically be impos-
sible for a population situated as the artisan and labour-
ing classes of the cities are at present, however high
their wages or their income might be.

But there are other standards of repute and o'tl
more or less imperative, canons of conduct, besides wealth
and its manifestation, and some of these come in to ac-
centuate or to qualify the broad, fundamental canon of
conspicuous waste. Under the simple test of effective-
ness 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 some-
\vhat different from this ideal scheme. Leisure held
the first place at the start, and came to hold a rank very

92 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 reputa-
bility is traceable to the archaic distinction between
noble and ignoble employments. Leisure is honourable
and becomes imperative partly because it shows exemp-
tion from ignoble labour. The archaic differentiation
into noble and ignoble classes is based on an invidious
distinction between employments as honorific or de-
basing ; 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 labour, 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 mini-
mum. This extreme inhibition of industry is avoided
because slave labour, working under a compulsion more
rigorous 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

Conspicuous Consumption 93

partly to an increasing relative effectiveness of con-
sumption 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 favour 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 how-
ever wasteful a given expenditure may be in reality, it
must at least have some colourable 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 workman-
ship expresses itself not so much in insistence on sub-
stantial usefulness as in an abiding sense of the odious-
ness 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 labour continues to be performed ex-
clusively or usually by slaves, the baseness of all pro-
ductive effort is too constantly and deterrently present

94 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 labour and cash payment), the in-
stinct comes more effectively into play. It then begins
aggressively to shape men's views of what is meritori-
ous, and asserts itself at least as an auxiliary canon of
self-complacency. All extraneous considerations apart,
those persons (adults) are but a vanishing minority to-
day who harbour 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 reputa-
ble 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

Conspicuous Cotisuntptiott 95

the earlier stage, as was said above, the all-dominating
institution of slavery and status acted resistlessly to dis-
countenance exertion directed to other than nafvely
predatory ends. It v^^as 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 organisation, and when fuller occu-
pation 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 out-
let in some other direction. The ignominy which at-
taches to useful effort also entered upon a less acute
phase with the disappearance of compulsory labour ;
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 otiiim cunt dignitate. But that canon of reputa-
bility which discountenances all employment that is of
the nature of productive effort is still at hand, and will

()6 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 practised 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 organisations 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 in-
extricably into its texture, there is commonly, if not
invariably, a more or less appreciable element of pur-
poseful 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 peace-
able stage applies herself assiduously to household cares.
The salient features of this development of domestic

^jeryice have already been indicated.

! Throughout the entire evolution of conspicuous ex-
penditure, whether of goods or of services or human
life, runs the obvious implication that in order to effect-
ually mend the consumer's good fame it must be an
j expenditure of superfluities. In order to be reputable
It must be wasteful. No merit would accrue from the

\

Conspicuous Consumption 97

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 ex-
penditure 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 vari-
ous directions in the manifestation of moral, physical,
intellectual, or aesthetic force. Comparison in all these
directions is in vogue to-day ; and the comparison made
in these respects is commonly so inextricably bound up
with the pecuniary comparison as to be scarcely distin-
guishable 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 prod-
ucts 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

H

98 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 ques-
tion of its relative utility to him, as compared with
other forms of consumption that would not be depre-
cated 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 waste-
fulness 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 characterised as wasteful. This
common-sense implication is itself an outcropping of
the instinct of workmanship. The popular reproba-
tion 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 eco-
nomic fact must approve itself under the test of imper-
sonal usefulness — usefulness as seen from the point
of view of the generically human. Relative or com-
petitive 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.

Conspicuous Consumption 99

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 recognised as waste in this sense by the per-
son 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 jewellery 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 ques-
tion 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 circum-

lOO The Theory of the Leisure Class

stances of individual habit and social custom, a given
expenditure conduces to the particular consumer's grati-
fication or peace of mind; but virhether, aside from
acquired tastes and from the canons of usage and con-
ventional decency, its result is a net gain in comfort or
in the fulness 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 con-
ceived 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 pre-
dominate 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 scru-

Conspicuous Consumption lOi

tiny. 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 con-
cerned in its value, immediately or remotely.

CHAPTER V

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 consume^. This de-
sire 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 in-
crease. It is much more difficult to recede from a
scale of expenditure once adopted than it is to ex-
tend 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

102

The Pecuniary Standard of Living 103

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 in-
dispensable than much of that expenditure which min-
isters to the 'Mower" 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 ; al-
though 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 v/here 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 explana-
tion, and unworthy motives of miserliness are imputed
to those who fall short in this respect. A prompt re-
sponse 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 com-
parison 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 re-
mark that each class envies and emulates the class next

I04 The Theory of the Leisure Class

above it in the social scale, while it rarely compares
itself with those below or with those who are consider-
ably 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 wa}^, 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 grada-
tions to the usages and habits of thought of the highest
social and pecuniary class — the wealthy leisure clas§^;
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 cer-
tain material limitations. The class cannot at discre-
tion effect a sudden revolution or reversal of the popular
habits of thought with respect to any of these ceremo-
nial requirements. It takes time for any change to per-
meate 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 lei-
sure 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

The Pecuniary Standard of Living 105

which it can effect he within a narrow margin of toler-
ance. Its example and precept carries the force of pre^
scription 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 author-
itative prescription constantly works under the selective
guidance of the canon of conspicuous waste, tempered
in varying degree by the instinct of workmanship. To
these 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 how-
ever true to the fundamental requirements of reputa-
bility 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 trans-
mission to a lower pecuniary class it is found to run
counter to the ultimate ground of decency among civil-
ised 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

Io6 The Theory of the Leisure Class

any time or at any given social altitude will in its turn
have much to say as to the forms which honorific ex-
penditure 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 facil-
ity 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 facihty 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

The Pecuniary Standard of Living 107

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 ex-
penditures 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 arti-
cles or forms of consumption to which the consumer
clings with the greatest tenacity are commonly the
so-called necessaries of life, or the subsistence mini-
mum. 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 progres-
sive 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

Io8 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 par-
ticular 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 de-
ciding 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
idiosyncracies 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 direc*

The Pecuniary Standard of Living 109

tion. Much the same meaning attaches to that pecul«
iar facility of habituation to a specific human environ.
ment 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 con-
spicuous 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 i
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 indi-
vidual 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 guidr
ance 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

no The Theory of the Leisure Class

the individual in a position to unfold his life process in
larger scope and with additional reach, the ancient pro-
pensities of the race will assert themselves in determin-
ing 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 cur-
rent 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 acces-
sion 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 civilised 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

The Pecuniary Standard of Living 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 con-
spicuous 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 pro-
cure the means of livelihood with less labour, the ener-
gies of the industrious members of the community are
bent to the compassing of a higher result in conspicu-
ous expenditure, rather than slackened to a more com-
fortable 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 com-
munity 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 com-
mon 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 practise the

112 The Theory of the Leisure Class

standard of living which is in vogue is both agreeable
and expedient, commonly to the point of being indis-
pensable 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 acqui-
sition 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 exer-
cise does not involve a honorific expenditure of time or
substance tend to fall into abeyance through disuse.

Through this discrimination in favour of visible con-
sumption it has come about that the domestic life of
most classes is relatively shabby, as compared with the
eclat of that overt portion of their life that is carried on
before the eyes of observers. As a secondary conse-
quence of the same discrimination, people habitually
screen their private life from observation. So far as
concerns that portion of their consumption that mJy
without blame be carried on in secret, they withdraw
from all contact with their neighbours. Hence the
exclusiveness of people, as regards their domestic
life, in most of the industrially developed communi-
ties ; 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 classes in all commu-

The Pecuniary Standard of Livi?ig 113

nities. The low birthrate of the classes upon whom
the requirements of reputable expenditure fall with
great urgency is likewise traceable to the exigen-
cies of a standard of living based on conspicuous waste.
The conspicuous consumption, and the consequent in-
creased 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 mainte-
nance, 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 character-
ise 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 cir-
cumstances, their own habitual sense of what is good
a ^.d 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 com-
munity where there is no priestly monopoly of these
occupations, the people of scholarly pursuits are un

114 '^^^^ Theory of the Leisure Class

avoidably thrown into contact with classes that are
pecuniarily their superiors. The high standard of pecu-
niary decency in force among these superior classes is
transfused among the scholarly classes with but little
mitigation of its rigour ; and as a consequence there is
no class of the community that spends a larger propor-
tion of its substance in conspicuous waste than these.

CHAPTER VI

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 unfavour-
able 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 con-
sumption that does not in any appreciable degree be-
come 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

IIS

Ii6 The Theory of the Leisure Class

.. f question, but do not proportionately increase the service.
!\ ability of these articles for the material purposes which
( alone they ostensibly are designed to serve.

Under the selective surveillance of the law of con.
spicuous 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 em-
ployment of time and effort. This growth of prescrip-
tive usage has an immediate effect upon economic life,
but it has also an indirect and remoter effect upon con-
duct 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 sub-
stance 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 forma-
tion of habits of thought as to what is honest and repu-
table in life and in commodities. In so doing, this^rin-
ciple will traverse other norms of conduct which do not
primarily have to do with the code of pecuniary honour,
but which have, directly or incidentally, an economic
significance of some magnitude. So the canon of hon
orific 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.

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 117

It is scarcely necessary to go into a discussion here
of the particular points at which, or the particular man-
ner in which, the canon of honorific expenditure habitu-
ally 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 con-
sumption. Most offences against property, especially
offences of an appreciable magnitude, come under this
head. It is also a matter of common notoriety and by-
word that in offences 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 offence would be visited on the ground of the naifve
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,

Il8 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 offence against
property in the case of a man whose motive is the
worthy one of providing the means of a "decent" man-
ner 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 offence
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 de-
manded 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 farther 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 psycho-
logical 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 con-
sumption.

The bearing of pecuniary decency upon the scientific
spirit or the quest of knowledge will be taken up in

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 119

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 account-
able for a great portion of what may be called devout
consumption ; as, e.g.y the consumption of sacred edifices,
vestments, and other goods of the same class. Even in
those modern cults to whose divinities is imputed a pre-
dilection for temples not built with hands, the sacred
buildings and the other properties of the cult are con-
structed 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 splen-
dour 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 re-
flect 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 re-
proach. This requirement is imperative, whatever lati-
tude may be allowed with regard to these accessories
in point of aesthetic or other serviceability.

I20 The Theory of the Leisure Class

It may also be in place to notice that in all communi
ties, especially in neighbourhoods 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 denomi-
nations 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 com-
pared 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 at least be scrupu-
lously 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 pecuni-
ary reputability of conspicuously wasteful consumption,
backed by the principle that vicarious consumption

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 12 1

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 dif-
ferent 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 con-
ceived to make use of these consumable goods in per-
son. 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 char-
acter suited to goods that are destined for vicarious con-
sumption only.

In the latter case the sanctuary and the sacred ap-
paratus are so contrived as not to enhance the comfort
or fulness 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 fulness
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

122 The Theory of the Leisure Class

priestly servitor of the divinity is not conceived tQ
serve him in the capacity of consort, they are of an aus-
tere, 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 demeanour at its best is aloof, leisurely, perfunc-
tory, 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 observ-
ances and need only be pointed out in order to become
obvious to all beholders. All ritual has a notable ten-
dency to reduce itself to a rehearsal of formulas. This
development of formula is most noticeable in the ma-
turer cults, which have at the same time a more aus-
tere, 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 consist-
ency, and this perfunctoriness of the rehearsal is very
pleasing to the correct devout taste. And with a good

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 123

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 unprofi-
table servants, and there is a 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 foot-
man. It is pleasing to our sense of what is fitting
in these matters, in either case, to recognise 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 reputa-
bility. Through its pervading men's habits of thought,
the principle of conspicuous waste has coloured the wor-
shippers' notions of the divinity and of the relation in
which the human subject stands to him. It is of course
in the more naYve 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 en-
lightenment, are fain to eke out a sensibly scant degree
of authentic information 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 an4 manner of life they habitu-

124 The Theory of the Leisure Class

ally 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 circum-
stances which in popular apprehension are peculiarly
consonant with the divine nature. This popularly
accepted ideal of the bearing and paraphernalia ade-
quate 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 demeanour 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 mis-
leading 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 ap-
pears that the canons of pecuniary reputability do,
directly or indirectly, materially affect our notions of
the attributes of divinit)% 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

Peamiary Canons of Taste 125

of a peculiarly serene and leisurely habit of life. And
whenever his local habitation is pictured in poetic im-
agery, 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 vicari-
ous leisure, their time and efforts being in great meas-
ure 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 supple-
ment 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

126 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 every-
day expensiveness ; that on holidays set apart in honour
of or for communion with the divinity no work that is
of human use should be performed by any one. Even
the remoter, lay dependants 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-

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 127

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 service-
able 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 reflection that the objection is after
all more plausible than conclusive. It appears (i) 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 colour, and with-
out 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 imitation 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

128 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 colour will scarcely add to the
value of the machine-made spoon, nor appreciably en-
hance the gratification of the user's "sense of beauty"
in contemplating it, so long as the cheaper spoon is not
a novelty, and so long as it can be procured at a nomi-
nal cost.

The case of the spoons is typical. The superior grat-
ification derived from the use and contemplation of
costly and supposedly beautiful products is, commonly,
in great measure a gratification of our sense of costli-
ness masquerading under the name of beauty. Our
higher appreciation of the superior article is an appre-
ciation of its superior honorific character, much more
frequently than it is an unsophisticated appreciation of
its beauty. The requirement of conspicuous wasteful-
ness is not commonly present, consciously, in our
canons of taste, but it is none the less present as a con-
straining norm selectively shaping and sustaining our
sense of what is beautiful, and guiding our discrimina-
tion with respect to what may legitimately be approved
as beautiful and what may not.

It is at this point, where the beautiful and the honor-
ific meet and blend, that a discrimination between ser-
viceability and wastefulness is most difficult in any
concrete case. It frequently happens that an article

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 129

which serves the honorific purpose of conspicuous waste
is at the same time a beautiful object ; and the same
application of labour to which it owes its utility for the
former purpose may, and often does, go to give beauty
of form and colour to the article. The question is fur-
ther complicated by the fact that many objects, as, for
instance, the precious stones and 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 beau-
tiful, though often with material quaUfication ; the like
is true of some stuffs used for clothing, of some land-
scapes, and of many other things in less degree. Except
for this intrinsic beauty which they possess, these ob-
jects would scarcely have been coveted as they are, or
have become monopolised objects of pride to their pos-
sessors and users. But the utility of these things to
the possessor is commonly due less to their intrinsic
beauty than to the honour 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 appro-
priated or monopolised ; 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 naYve sense

I30 The Theory of the Leisure Class

of the word, is the occasion rather than the ground of
their monopolisation 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 posses-
sion and use of these beautiful things, except on the
ground of their honorific character as items of conspicu-
ous 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
eclat to the person of their wearer (or owner) by compari-
son 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 generalisation 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 re-
quirements 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 sub-
sume the resultant effect under the head of an apprecia-
tion of beauty simply. The marks of expensiveness
come to be accepted as beautiful features of the expen-
sive articles. They are pleasing as being marks of

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 131

honorific costliness, and the pleasure which they afford
on this score blends with that afforded by the beautiful
form and colour 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 ex-
pensiveness 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, colours, 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, sup-
posedly 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 colour effects, for instance, offend
us at times when the vogue is goods of a high, glossy
finish and neutral colours. A fancy bonnet of this
year's model unquestionably appeals to our sensibilities
to-day 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 appre-
hend, 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

132 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 civilised 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 civilised 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 habitu-
ally 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 conven-
tionally for offensive weeds ; others that can be culti-
vated with relative ease are accepted and admired by
the lower middle class, who can afford no more expen-
sive luxuries of this kind ; but these varieties are re-
jected 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 intrin-
sic 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

Pecuniniy Canons of Taste 133

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 re-
spect to the kinds of things which may, without dero
gation 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 re-
quirements 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

t34 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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
has once been for a long time a pastoral people inhabit-
ing a region with a humid climate. The close-cropped
lawn is beautiful in the eyes of a people whose in-
herited bent it is to readily find pleasure in contem-
plating a well-preserved pasture or grazing land.

For the aesthetic purpose the lawn is a cow pasture ;
and in some cases to-day — where the expensiveness of
the attendant circumstances bars out any imputation
of thrift — the idyl of the dolicho-blond is rehabili-
tated in the introduction of a cow into a lawn or pri-
vate ground. In such cases the cow made use of is
commonly of an expensive breed. The vulgar sugges-
tion 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 luxu-
rious surroundings negative 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, ante-
lopes, or some such exotic beast. These substitutes,
although less beautiful to the pastoral eye of Western
tnan thap tfte cow, are in such cases preferred because

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 135

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 any one 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 inexpen-
sive, therefore it is indecorous.

Of the same general bearing is another feature of
public grounds. There is a studious exhibition of ex-
pensiveness coupled with a make-believe of simplicity
and crude serviceability. Private grounds also show
the same physiognomy wherever they are in the man-
agement 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 child-
hood of the o-eneration that is now passing. Grounds

136 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 differ-
ence 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 frac-
tion 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 t^ste 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 con-
firmation " which nothing but a considerable body of
like-minded people can give. There was, therefore, no
effective upper-class opinion that would overlook evi-
dences 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.

To-day a divergence in ideals is beginning to be appar-
ent. The portion of the leisure class that has been con-
sistently exempt from work and from pecuniary cares
for a generation or more is now large enough to form

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 137

and sustain an 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 exemp-
tion 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 demonstra-
tion of expensiveness and a strict exclusion of the ap-
pearance of thrift. So, a predilection for the rustic and
the "natural" in parks and grounds makes its appear-
ance on these higher social and intellectual levels. This
predilection is in large part an outcropping of the in-
stinct 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 pres-
ent 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 ser-
viceability, — in such contrivances as rustic fences,
bridges, bowers, pavilions, and the like decorative
features. An expression of this affectation of service-
ability, 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.

133 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 acces-
sions to the leisure class proper and of the middle and
lower classes still requires a pecuniary beauty to supple-
ment 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. Per-
haps 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 Exposi-
tion. The evidence goes to show that the requirement
of reputable expensiveness is still present in good vigour
even where all ostensibly lavish display is avoided. The
artistic effects actually wrought in this work of recon-
struction 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 prog-
ress of the work with an unreserved approval which
suggests that there is in this case little if any discre-
pancy 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

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 139

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 beiholder. 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 spoken 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

140 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 ani-
mals 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 spoken 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 dis-
tinctions of worth, honour, and repute, and she does not
lend herself with facility to an invidious comparison
between her owner and his neighbours. 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,

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 141

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 in 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 favour 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 imagina-
tion with the chase — a meritorious employment and an
expression of the honourable 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

142 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 substitu-
tion of words and ideas, they come to be admired and re-
puted 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 be-
stowed 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 some-
what different.

The case of the fast horse is much like that of the
dog. He is on the whole expensive, or wasteful and

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 143

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 con-
vert 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-horsC; 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 neighbour'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
gambhng 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 counte-
nance of the principle of conspicuous waste and the
backing of the predatory aptitude for dominance and
emulation. The horse is, moreover, a beautiful animal,

144 T^^^^ Theory of the Leisure Class

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 de-
velopment 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 apprecia-
tion of varieties of horses and of dogs, such as one
meets with among people of even moderately culti-
vated 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 in-
stance, leisure-class tastes are to some extent shaped
on usages and habits which prevail, or which are ap-
prehended 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

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 145

of this country, and so the exemplar for the lower
grades. This mimicry in the methods of the apper-
ception 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 pre-
dilection 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 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 in-
cludes 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 eques-
trian gait. To show how fortuitous may sometimes
be the circumstances which decide what shall be be-
coming 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 travel-
ling at a more comfortable gait ; so that a person of
decorous tastes in horsemanship to-day 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 —

146 The Theory of the Leisure Class

including domestic animals — that the canons of taste
have been coloured by the canons of pecuniary reputa-
bility. 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 portly
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 itemised 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 fe-
male beauty is a robust, large-limbed woman. The
ground of appreciation is the physique, while the con-
formation of the face is of secondary weight only. A
well-known instance of this ideal of the early preda-
tory culture is that of the maidens of the Homeric
poems.

This ideal suffers a change in the succeeding develop-
ment, 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 de-
scriptions of beautiful women by poets and writers of

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 147

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 roman-
tic 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 imi-
tators 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 por-
tion of the population of modern industrial communi-
ties ; 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 devel-
opment, and which show the most considerable sur-
vivals of status and of predatory institutions. That is
to say, the chivalric ideal is best preserved in those
existing communities which are substantially least mod-
ern. 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
labour. Here the status of women as vicarious con-
sumers is beginning to lose its place in the affections
of the body of the people ; and as a consequence the
ideal of feminine beauty is beginning to change back

148 The Theory of the Leisure Class

again from the infirmly delicate, translucent, and haz-
ardously 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 be-
ginning to shift back again to the woman ; and all in
obedience to the changing conditions of pecuniary emu-
lation. The exigencies of emulation at one time required
lusty slaves ; at another time they required a conspicu-
ous performance of vicarious leisure and consequently
an obvious disability ; but the situation is now begin-
ning 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

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 149

owner. She is useless and expensive, and she is con-
sequently 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 require-
ments 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 there-
fore 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 repu-
tability and the apprehended beauty of objects lies
through the effect which the fact of reputability has

150 The Theory of the Leisure Class

upon the valuer's habits of thought. He is in the habit
of forming judgments of value of various kinds — eco-
nomic, moral, aesthetic, or reputable — concerning the
objects with which he has to do, and his attitude of com-
mendation 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 distin-
guished 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 accom-
panied by the accredited marks of good repute is not
accepted. But the requirements of pecuniary reputa-
bility and those of beauty in the nai've 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

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 151

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 require-
ments 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 per-
haps safely be made broader than this. If abstraction
is made from association, suggestion, and "expression,"
classed as elements of beauty, then beauty in any per-
ceived object means that the mind readily unfolds its
apperceptive activity in the directions which the object
in question affords. But the directions in which activ-
ity 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 ade-
quacy 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

152 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 inex-
pensive in articles appropriated to individual consump-
tion, 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 expen-
diture, 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 labour in excess of what
would give them their fullest efficiency for their osten-
sible economic end.

This may be shown by an illustration taken from out-
side the range of our everyday habits and everyday con-
tact, and so outside the range of our bias. Such are the
remarkable feather mantles of Hawaii, or the well-known
tarved handles of the ceremonial adzes of several Poly-

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 153

nesian islands. These are undeniably beautiful, both
in the sense that they offer a pleasing composition of
form, lines, and colour, 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 w^asted effort works
out so happy a result. The result is quite as often a vir-
tually complete suppression of all elements that would
bear scrutiny as expressions of beauty, or of service-
ability, and the substitution of evidences of misspent
ingenuity and labour, backed by a conspicuous inepti-
tude ; 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 tradi-
tion. 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, espe-
cially of feminine and priestly apparel.

The canon of beauty requires expression of the ge-
neric. The " novelty " due to the demands of conspicu-
ous waste traverses this canon of beauty, in that it
results in making the physiognomy of our objects of
taste a congeries of idiosyncracies ; and the idiosyn-
crasies 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 pecun-

154 The Iheory of the Leisure Class

iary beauty for aesthetic beauty, has been especially
effective in the development of architecture. It would
be extremely difficult to find a modern civilised residence
or public building which can claim anything better than
relative inoffensiveness in the eyes of any one who will
dissociate the elements of beauty from those of hon-
orific 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 dis-
tress and of suggestions of expensive discomfort. Con-
sidered 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 fulness 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 a honorific character to
consumption, and presently also to the goods which best
serve this emulative end of consumption. The con-

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 155

sumption 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 efficiency for the indirect, in-
vidious end to be served by their consumption ; and
conversely, goods are humilific, and therefore unattrac-
tive, if they show too thrifty an adaptation to the me-
chanical end sought and do not include a margin of
expensiveness on which to rest a complacent invidious
comparison. This indirect utihty 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 in-
expensive 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 disapprov-
ing cheap things as being intrinsically dishonourable or
unworthy because they are cheap. As time has gone
on, each succeeding generation has received this tra-
dition 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 in-
expensive things, that we have no longer any misgivings
in formulating the maxim, " Cheap and nasty." So
thbroughly has this habit of approving the expensive
and disapproving the inexpensive been ingrained into

156 The Theory of the Leisure Class

our thinking that we instinctively insist upon at least
some measure of wasteful expensiveness in all our con-
sumption, 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. Candle-light 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 effec-
tive light for any other than a ceremonial illumination.

A political sage still living has summed up the con-
clusion 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 ex-
pensiveness 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

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 157

consumer's appreciation of commodities, and the two ta
gether go to make up the unanalysed aggregate servicea-
bility o-^ the goods. Under the resulting standard of
serviceability, no article will pass muster on the
strength of material sufficiency alone. In order to com-
pleteness 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 to-day 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 supply-
ing his wants directly by his own efforts, he would find
it difficult if not impossible to divest himself of the cur-
rent 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 over-
sight incorporating in his home-made product something
of this honorific, quasi-decorative element of wasted
labour.

It is notorious that in their selection of serviceable
goods in the retail market, purchasers are guided more

158 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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
labour spent in giving them the marks of decent expen-
siveness, in addition to what goes to give them effi-
ciency for the material use which they are to serve.
This habit of making obvious costliness a canon of ser-
viceability 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 ser-
viceability 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 apprehen-
sion 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 evi-
dence 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

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 159

outcome is futile. There is a gratification of the artistic
sense in the contemplation of skilful work. But it is
also to be added that no such evidence of skilful work-
manship, or of ingenious and effective adaptation of
means to end, will, in the long run, enjoy the approba-
tion of the modern civilised 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 con-
sumption to machine products. The point of material
difference between machine-made goods and the hand-
wrought goods which serve the same purposes is, ordi-
narily, 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 depreciation, for they
fall short under the test of honorific waste. Hand labour
is a more wasteful method of production ; hence the
goods turned out by this m.ethod are more serviceable
for the purpose of pecuniary reputability ; hence the
marks of hand labour come to be honorific, and the goods
which exhibit these marks take rank as of higher grade
than the coi-responding machine product. Commonly,
if not invariably, the honorific marks of hand labour 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, there-
fore, 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

l6o The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 crude-
ness 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 re-
spect 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 per-
fection by the vulgar and the underbred who have not
given due thought to the punctilios of elegant consump-
tion. The ceremonial inferiority of machine products
goes to show that the perfection of skill and workman-
ship embodied in any costly innovations in the finish
of goods is not sufficient of itself to secure them accept-
ance and permanent favour. 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 consum-
able 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 consump-
tion is therefore not honorific, since it does not serve
the purpose of a favourable invidious comparison with

Pecuniary Canons of Taste i6l

other consumers. Hence the consumption, or even the
sight of such goods, is inseparable from an odious sug-
gestion 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 deliv-
erances 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 com-
posite 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 common-
ness 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 workman-
ship and greater accuracy in the detail execution of the
design. Hence it comes about that the visible imper-
fections of the hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are

l62 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 characterisation 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
characterisation of the tendency of this teaching in its
effect on consumption and on the production of con-
sumable 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 Kelm-
scott 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
book-maker's industry rest in some measure on the
degree of its approximation to the crudities of the time

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 163

when the work of book-making was a doubtful struggle
with refractory materials carried on by means of insuf-
ficient appliances. These products, since they require
hand labour, are more expensive ; they are also less con-
venient 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 to-day 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 osten-
sibly 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 old-style 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 direc-
tion. Here we have a somewhat cruder type, printed
on hand-laid, deckel-edged paper, with excessive mar-
gins 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

164 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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, na'fve 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, how-
ever, is that the canon of taste under which the de-
signer works is a canon formed under the surveillance
of the law of conspicuous waste, and that this law acts
selectively to ehminate 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

Pecuniary Canons of Taste 165

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 legitima-
tion. 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 signifi-
cance for the distribution and consumption of goods — •
the distinction is not similarly beside the point.

The position of machine products in the civilised
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 con-
sumption. 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 innova-
tion 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

1 66 The Theory of the Leisure Class

The principle in question is, in a certain sense, a nega-
tive rather than a positive law. It is a regulative
rather than a creative principle. It very rarely ini-
tiates or originates any usage or custom directly. Ps
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 things
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 accept-
able. Its office is to prove all things and to hold fast
that which is ^ood for its purpose.

CHAPTER VII

Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary
Culture

It will be 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 af-
fords 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 exempli-
fied in the same contrivances. Other methods of put-
ting 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 univer-
sally practised in the matter of dress than in any other
line of consumption. No one finds difficulty in assent-
ing to the commonplace that the greater part of the
expenditure incurred by all classes for apparel is in-
curred for the sake of a respectable appearance rather

167

1 68 The TJieory of the Leisure Class

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 con-
sumption, that people will undergo a very consider-
able degree of privation in the comforts or the neces-
saries 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 clothing in any modern community is made up to a
much larger extent of the fashionableness, the reputa-
biUty 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 na'fve propensity for display of expenditure.
The law of conspicuous waste guides consumption in
apparel, as in other things, chiefly at the second re-
move, 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 reputa-
bility. It is not only that one must be guided by the
code of proprieties in dress in order to avoid the morti-
fication that comes of unfavourable notice and comment,
though that motive in itself counts for a great deal ;
but besides that, the requirement of expensiveness is so

Dress as a7i Expression of the Pecujtiary Culture i6v)

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 recog-
nised 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 arti-
cle 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 colour, 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

£70 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 possibili-
ties than this crude, first-hand evidence of wasteful con-
sumption only. If, in addition to showing that the
wearer can afford to consume freely and uneconomi-
cally, 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 con-
siderable degree. Our dress, therefore, in order to
serve its purpose effectually, should not only be expen-
sive, but it should also make plain to all observers that
the wearer is not engaged in any kind of productive
labour. In the evolutionary process by which our
system of dress has been elaborated into its present
admirably perfect adaptation to its purpose, this sub-
sidiary line of evidence has received due attention. A
detailed examination of what passes in popular appre-
hension 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 ele-
gant, or even decent, if it shows the effect of manual
labour on the part of the wearer, in the way of soil or
wear. The pleasing effect of neat and spotless gar-
ments 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

Dress as an Expression of the Pcatniary Culture i/l

stainless linen, the lustrous cylindrical hat, and the
walking-stick, which so greatly enhance the native
dignity of a gentleman, comes of their pointedly sug-
o-estingf that the wearer cannot when so attired bear a
hand in any employment that is directly and immedi-
ately of any human use. Elegant dress serves its pur-
pose 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 con-
sumes without producing.

The dress of women goes even farther than that of
men in the way of demonstrating the wearer's absti-
nence from productive employment. It needs no argu-
ment to enforce the generalisation that the more elegant
styles of feminine bonnets go even farther towards mak-
ing 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 pohsh ;
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 character-
ises woman's dress. The substantial reason for our
tenacious attachment to the skirt is just this : it is ex-
pensive 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 exces-
sively long.

But the woman's apparel not only goes beyond that
of the modern man in the degree in which it argues

172 The Theory of the Leisure Class

exemption from labour ; it also adds a peculiar and
highly characteristic feature which differs in kind from
anything habitually practised 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 per-
manently 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 effec-
tive hindrance to useful exertion offered by the gar-
ments 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 labour. Beyond
these two principles there is a third of scarcely less
constraining force, which will occur to any one who re-
flects at all on the subject. Dress must not only be
conspicuously expensive and inconvenient; it must at

Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture 173

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 con-
sistency 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 nega-
tive only. Pretty much all that this consideration war-
rants 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 con-
form to the requirement of wastefulness ; it leaves un-
answered 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

174 ^^^ Theory of the Leisure Class

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 colour 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 innova-
tion can take place is somewhat restricted. The inno-
vation 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 to-day, after all the ingenuity
and effort which have been spent on dress these many
years, the fashions should have achieved a relative per-
fection 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 to-day 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

Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture 175

vogue two thousand years ago are more becoming than
the most elaborate and painstaking constructions of
to-day.

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 com-
petent critics to be more becoming, more artistic, than
the fluctuating styles of modern civilised apparel. At
the same time they are also, at least usually, less ob-
viously 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 locaHsed, 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

176 The Theory of the Leisure Class

large modern civilised cities, whose relatively mobile,
wealthy population to-day 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 communi-
ties 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 rest-
less change in fashion which neither the canon of ex-
pensiveness 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 per-
haps 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 con-
spicuous 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 instant condemnation by showing some osten-
sible purpose, at the same time that the requirement

Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture 177

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 simula-
tion 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 require-
ment of reputable wastefulness and futility. Its futiHty
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 cO 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 favour for a sea-
son, 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 thef warrant of reputability is transferred to a

178 The Theory of the Leisure Class

new and novel structure serving the same general pur-
pose. That the alleged beauty, or ** loveliness," of the
styles in vogue at any given time is transient and spu-
rious 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 un-
sightly. 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 offen-
sive they are to sound taste. The presumption, there-
fore, 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 succes-
sively come into vogue.

There remains at least one point in this theory of

Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture 179

dress yet to be discussed. Most of what has been said
appHes 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 an 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 develop-
ment become the office of the woman to consume vica-
riously for the head of the household ; and her apparel is
contrived with this object in view. It has come about
that obviously productive labour 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

l8o The Theory of the Leisure Class

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
civilised 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 realise 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 con-
sumption 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 re-
dound 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 house-
hold are, the more creditable and more effective for
the purpose of the reputability of the household or its

Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture i8i

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 a sufficient reason. Con-
spicuous waste and conspicuous leisure are reputable
because they are evidence of pecuniary strength ; pe-
cuniary 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 con-
sistently 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 pur-
pose. 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 depend-
ence ; a relation which in the last analysis must, in
economic theory, reduce itself to a relation of servitude.

To apply this generalisation 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 civilised women's apparel, are

1 82 The Theory of the Leisure Class

so many items of evidence to the effect that in the
modern civilised scheme of life the woman is still, in
theory, the economic dependent of the man, — that, per-
haps in a highly idealised 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 differen-
tiation 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 be-
tween 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 recognised as such^ there
is at least one other class of persons whose garb assimi-
lates 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

Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture 183

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 demeanour 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 faultlessly 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 every

184 The Theory of the Leisure Class

one recognises 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 exqui-
sitely 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 appar-
ent 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 labour, the corset was until within
a generation or two nearly indispensable to a socially
blameless standing for all women, including the wealthi-
est 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

Dress as an Expression of the Peciiniary Culture 185

labour 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 there-
fore 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 transi-
tion from a lower to the upper levels of pecuniary cult-
ure. 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

1 86 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 develop-
ment 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 to-day 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 deli-
cate 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 advertise-
ment held its ground so long as the public to which the

Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture 187

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 mortifica-
tion should be sought. The result of all this is a re-
finement of methods, a resort to subtler contrivances,
and a spiritualisation 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 be-
holder. This nicer discrimination between advertising
media is in fact a very large element of the higher
pecuniary culture.

CHAPTER VIII

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 in-
stitutions. 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 commu-
nity 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.

i88

Industrial Exemptio7i and Conservatism 189

The forces which have shaped the development of
human life and of social structure are no doubt ulti-
mately 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 environ-
ment, partly human, partly non-human, and a human sub-
ject 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 favour-
able variations. The selection of favourable 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 favour 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 varia-
tion in the fundamental character of any population by
selection between relatively stable types ; but there is

190 Tfie Theory of the Leisure Class

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 im-
portance 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 develop-
ment 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
jaiade 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
characterised as a prevalent spiritual attitude or a prev-
alent 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 to-day shapes the institutions of to-
morrow 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

Industrial Exemptioji and Cojiscrvatism 191

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. Insti-
tutions 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 exi-
gencies of life which enforce the adaptation and exercise
the selection, change from day to day ; and each succes-
sive 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 to-day — the present ac-
cepted scheme of life — do not entirely fit the situation
of to-day. At the same time, men's present habits of
thought tend to persist indefinitely, except as circum-
stances enforce a change. These institutions which have
so 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, con-
servatism.

192 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 commu-
nity. The evolution of society is substantially a pro-
cess of mental adaptation on the part of individuals under
the stress of circumstances which will no longer toler-
ate 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 pro-
gressive approach to an approximately exact "adjust-
ment 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 situation which has made the accredited views un-
tenable. The readjustment of institutions and habitual
views to an altered environment is made in response to

Industrial Exemption and Conservatism 193

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, there-
fore 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 j
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 transforma-
tion. 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 institu-
tions, especially in the case of a modern industrial com-
munity, 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 com-
munity 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

194 The Theory of the Leisure Class

life according to methods learned in the past and em
bodied in these institutions. But as population in-
creases, 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 distrib-
uted 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 tradi-
tional 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 osten-
sible 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 redistribu-
tion of the conditions of life that comes of the altered
method of dealing with the environment, the outcome

Industrial Exemption and Conservatism 195

is not an equable change in the facility of life through-
out the group. The altered conditions may increase
the facility of life for the group as a whole, but the re-
distribution will usually result in a decrease of facility
or fulness of life for some members of the group. An
advance in technical methods, in population, or in in-
dustrial organisation 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 mak-
ing 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

196 The Theory of the Lei stive Class

more specifically, these forces take the form of pecun
iary pressure. Such a readjustment as is here contem-
plated 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 pecun-
iary exigencies.

Any change in men's views as to what is good and
right in human life makes its way but tardily at the
best. Especially is this true of any change in the di-
rection 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 de-
parture at any step in the social evolution of the com-
munity. 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 civilisation 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 to-day are
to revert to the spiritual attitude of mastery and of
personal subservience which characterises that stage.
It may rather be said to be held in an uncertain abey-
ance by the economic exigencies of to-day, than to have
been definitively supplanted by a habit of mind that is

Industrial Exemption and Conservatism 197

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 the 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 per-
sistence 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 indi-
viduals, or even considerable groups of men, are segre-
gated 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 evi-
dence of reversion toward the spiritual features which
characterise the predatory type ; and it seems probable
that the dolicho-blond type of European man is pos-
sessed of a greater facility for such reversion to bar-
barism 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 colonisation. 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

198 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 organised 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 read-
justment 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 for-
feiture to change their habits of life and their theoreti-
cal 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 com-
munity. 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

Industrial Exemptioit a7td Conservatism 199

nature conservative has been popularly accepted with-
out 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 recognised as a
mark of respectability. Since conservatism is a char-
acteristic of the wealthier and therefore more reputable
portion of the community, it has acquired a certain
honorific or decorative value. It has become prescrip-
tive to such an extent that an adherence to conservative
views is comprised as a matter of course in our notions

2CX) The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 character-
istic, 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 inno-
vators is this sense of the essential vulgarity of the
thing. So that even in cases where one recognises 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. Inno-
vation is bad form.

The fact that the usages, actions, and views of the
well-to-do leisure class acquire the character of a pre-
scriptive 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 reputa-
ble 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 resist-
ance of all other classes against any innovation, and to
fix men's affections upon the good institutions handed
down from an earlier generation.

Industrial Exemption and Conservatism 201

There is a second way in which the influence of the
leisure class acts in the same direction, so far as con-
cerns 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 aver-
sion 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, convention-
alities, and usages in vogue at any given time and
among any given people has more or less of the char-
acter 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 reorganisation all along the line. When a change is
made which immediately touches only a minor point in
the scheme, the consequent derangement of the struc-
ture 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 conven-
tional scheme, it is immediately felt that a serious de-
rangement 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 pain-
ful and tedious, if not a doubtful process.

202 The Theory of the Leisure Class

In order to realise the difficulty which such a radical
change in any one feature of the conventional schenie 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 civilisa-
tion ; 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 admoni-
tion 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, prohibi-
tion of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating bever-
ages, abolition or restriction of inheritance, etc. Any
one of these innovations would, we are told, " shake the
social structure to its base," " reduce society to chaos,"

Industrial Exemption a7td Consefvatism 205

"subvert the foundations of morality," "make life intol-
erable," ''confound the order of nature," etc. These
various locutions are, no doubt, of the nature of hyper-
bole ; but, at the same time, like all overstatement, they
are evidence of a lively sense of the gravity of the con-
sequences 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 sys-
tem 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 innova-
tion calls for a greater expenditure of nervous energy
in making the necessary readjustment than would other-
wise be the case. It is not only that a change in estab-
lished 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 cer-
tain expenditure of energy, and so presumes, for its sue*

204 '^^^^ Theory of the Leisure Class

cessful 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 to-morrow ; just as
the highly prosperous are conservative because they
have small occasion to be discontented with the situa-
tion as it stands to-day.

From this proposition it follows that the institution of
a leisure class acts to make the lower classes conserva-
tive 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 pecuni-
ary scale implies privation at the lower end of the scale.
It is a commonplace that, wherever it occurs, a consid-
erable degree of privation among the body of the people
is a serious obstacle to any innovation.

This direct inhibitory effect of the unequal distribu-
tion of wealth is seconded by an indirect effect tend-
ing 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 con-
spicuous consumption. The prevalence of conspicuous

Industrial Exemption and Co7tservatism 205

consumption as one of the main elements in the stan-
dard of decency among all classes is of course not trace-
able 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 con-
siderable 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 satis-
fied is not infrequently diverted to the purpose of a con-
spicuous decency, rather than to added physical comfort
and fulness of life. Moreover, such surplus energy as
is available is also likely to be expended in the acquisi-
tion of goods for conspicuous consumption or conspicu-
ous hoarding. The result is that the requirements of
pecuniary reputability tend (i) to leave but a scanty
subsistence minimum available for other than conspicu-
ous consumption, and (2) to absorb any surplus energy
which may be available after the bare physical necessi-
ties 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 (i) by
the inertia proper to the class itself, (2) through its
prescriptive example of conspicuous waste and of con-
servatism, 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

206 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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. Whether 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 in-
novation as is offered by the conservative well-to-do
classes, social innovation and experiment would hurry
the community into untenable and intolerable situa-
tions ; the only possible result of which would be dis-
content 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

Industrial Exemption and Cofiservatistn 20^

the environment which is called social advance or de.
velopment. 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 to-day are
wholly wrong for the purposes of the life of to-day,
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 some-
thing more than the interval which separates the pres-
ent situation from that of the past. "Right" and
"wrong" are of course here used without conveying
any reflection as to what ought or ought not to be.
They are applied simply from the (morally colourless)
evolutionary standpoint, and are intended to designate
compatibility or incompatibility with the effective
evolutionary process. The institution of a leisure class,
by force of class interest and instinct, and by precept
and prescriptive example, makes for the perpetuation
of the existing maladjustment of institutions, and even
favours 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 ex-
isting 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 conserva-
tion of the good old ways, it remains true that Lnstitu-

2o8 The Theory of the Leisure Class

tions change and develop. There is a cumulative
growth of customs and habits of thought ; a selective
adaptation of conventions and methods of life. Some-
thing 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 pur-
poses of economic life.

To adapt the classical terminology, they are institu-
tions of acquisition or of production ; or to revert to
terms already employed in a different connection in
earlier chapters, they are pecuniary or industrial insti-
tutions ; or in still other term§, they are institutions
serving either the invidious or the non-invidious eco-
nomic 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 recognised 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

Industrial Exemption and Conservatism 209

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 I
relation — a relation of acquisition, not of production;
of exploitation, not of serviceability. Indirectly their
economic office may, of course, be of the utmost impor-
tance 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 pur-
pose 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 to-day, for they have grown up under a past situation
differing somewhat from the present. Even for effec-
tiveness 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 acquisi-
tion of private gain that is compatible with the continu-
ance of the industrial process out of which this gain
arises. Hence there is a more or less consistent trend
p

2IO The Theory of the Leisure Class

in the leisure-class guidance of institutional growth, an.
swering 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 receiver-
ships, limited liability, banking and currency, coalitions
of labourers or employers, trusts and pools. The com-
munity's institutional furniture of this kind is of imme-
diate 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 complica-
tions calling for an exercise of astute discrimination in

Industrial Exemptioii ajid Conservatism 211

everyday affairs acts to make the pecuniary class itself
superfluous. As fast as pecuniary transactions are re-
duced to routine, the captain of industry can be dis-
pensed with. This consummation, it is needless to say,
lies yet in the indefinite future. The ameliorations
wrought in favour 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, there-
fore, the bent given to the growth of economic institu-
tions by the leisure-class influence is of very considerable
industrial consequence.

CHAPTER IX
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 ac-
ceptance 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 ex-
ercise 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 ex-
emption have in this way been erected into canons of
life, and have become coercive factors of some impor-
tance in the situation to which men have to adapt them-
selves.

These two broad principles of conspicuous waste and
industrial exemption affect the cultural development

212

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 213

both by guiding men's habits of thought, and so con-
trolling 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 com-
monplaces.

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 per-
sistent ethnic types or ethnic elements. Men tend to

214 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 conform-
ity to a situation in the past which differed from the
situation of to-day. There are several of these rela-
tively stable ethnic types of mankind comprised in the
populations of the Western culture. These ethnic
types survive in the race inheritance to-day, 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 pro-
cess 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 to-day 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 meagreness and

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 215

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 ethnic
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 varia-
tion ; the peaceable or ante-predatory variant and the
predatory variant. The former of these two character-
istic 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 psy-
chological. This variant is taken to represent the ances-
tors of existing civilised 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 later
emulative culture of the quasi-peaceable stage, or the
pecuniary culture proper.

Under the recognised 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 approxi-
mately as they have stood in the recent past — which
may be called the hereditary present. For the purpose

2i6 The Theory of the Leisure Class

in hand this hereditary present is represented by tB*
later predatory and the quasi-peaceable culture.

It is to the variant of human nature which is charac-
teristic of this recent — hereditarily still existing —
predatory or quasi-predatory culture that the modern
civilised 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 re-
pressed 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 at-
tained a high degree of consistency or stability. That
is to say, the human nature inherited by modern Occi-
dental 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 re-
vert 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 tem-
perament, the ante-predatory variant seems to have a
greater stability and greater symmetry in the distribu-
tion 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 ob-
scured by a similar divergence between the two or three

The Conservatiofi of Archaic Traits 21 y

Plain 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 ante-predatory variants of the types ;
the dolicho-blond type showing more of the character-
istics of the predatory temperament — or at least more
of the violent disposition — than the brachycephahc-
brunette type, and especially more than the Mediter-
ranean. When the growth of institutions or of the
effective sentiment of a given community shows a diver-
gence 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 popula-
tion. Still, although the evidence is not as conclusive
as might be desired, there are indications that the varia-
tions in the effective temperament of modern communi-
ties 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 con-
clusions reached by the use of these concepts of selec-
tive adaptation would remain substantially true if the

2i8 The Theory of the Leisure Class

earlier, Darwinian and Spencerian, terms and concepts
were substituted. Under the circumstances, some lati-
tude may be admissible in the use of terms. The word
** type " is used loosely, to denote variations of tempera-
ment which the ethnologists would perhaps recognise
only as trivial variants of the type rather than as dis-
tinct 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 to-day, then, are variants of the
primitive racial types. They have suffered some altera-
tion, and have attained some degree of fixity in their
altered form, under the discipline of the barbarian cul-
ture. The man of the hereditary present is the bar-
barian variant, servile or aristocratic, of the ethnic
elements that constitute him. But this barbarian vari-
ant 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 to-day, because
the conditions of modern life no longer act consistently
to repress departures from the barbarian normal. The
predatory temperament does not lend itself to all the
purposes of modern life, and more especially not to
modern industry.

Departures from the human nature of the hereditary

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 219

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 characterises
the primitive phase of peaceable savagery. The circum-
stances 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 funda-
mental 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 heredi-
tary 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 con-
ditions of environment and institutions seems to have
been of a peaceful and unaggressive, not to say an
indolent, cast. For the immediate purpose this peace-
able 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 inhi-
bition or futility of life. Through its ubiquitous pres-
ence 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 appre-
ciable constraining force upon his life and upon the

220 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 civilised or in rude com-
munities ; 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 ethnic 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 v/ere by temperament less
fitted to the predatory life were repressed and pushed
into the background.

On the transition to the predatory culture the char-
acter 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 of
the group gradually changed, and brought a different
range of aptitudes and propensities into the position of

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 221

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 nafve, non-invidious
expression.

Under the guidance of the later biological and psy-
chological science, human nature will have to be re-
stated 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 ubiqui-
tous 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

222 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 per-
sisted 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 sub-
jected 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 favours those in-
dividuals and lines of descent which possess the peace-
able savage traits in a relatively slight degree. It
therefore tends to eliminate these traits, and it has
apparently weakened them, in an appreciable degree,

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 223

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 sym-
pathy do not appreciably further the life of the indi-
vidual. 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 suc-
cessful 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
civilised conditions in an enlightened community of the
Western culture, the primitive, ante-predatory savage,

224 "^^^ Theory of the Leisure Class

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 biassed 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 weak-
ness, 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 truthful-
ness, 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 ex-
pression 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 situa-

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 225

tion was characterised by a relative absence of antago-
nism or differentiation of interests, the later situation
by an emulation constantly increasing in intensity and
narrowing in scope. The traits which characterise 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 disingenuous-
ness — 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 favouring 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 purposes of the
life of the collectivity and have never fallen into defini-
tive 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 spirit-
ual 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 comple*
Q

226 The Theory of the Leisure Class

ment 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 characteris-
tics of the brachycephalic-brunette than of the dolicho-
blond. The greater proportion of moderately success-
ful individuals, in a self-seeking way, however, seem,
in physique, to belong to the last-named ethnic ele-
ment.

The temperament induced by the predatory habit of
life makes for the survival and fulness 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 coin-
cides with the emulative interests of the individual.
In their corporate capacity, these advanced industrial
communities are ceasing to be competitors for the

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 227

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 com-
munities are no longer hostile to one another by force
of circumstances, other than the circumstances of tradi-
tion and temperament. Their material interests — apart,
possibly, from the interests of the collective good fame
— are not only no longer incompatible, but the suc-
cess of any one of the communities unquestionably
furthers the fulness 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
centre in industrial efficiency. The individual is ser-
viceable for the ends of the community somewhat in
proportion to his efficiency in the productive employ-
ments, vulgarly so called. This collective interest is
best served by honesty, diligence, peacefulness, good-
will, an absence of self-seeking, and an habitual recog-
nition 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.

228 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 characterised by
their possession. Their presence in some measure is
required in order to a tolerable adjustment to the cir-
cumstances of the modern industrial situation. The
complex, comprehensive, essentially peaceable, and
highly organised mechanism of the modern indus-
trial community works to the best advantage when
these traits, or most of them, are present in the high-
est 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 ineffect-
ual 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 mem-
bers of a modern industrial community are rivals, each
of whom will best attain his individual and immediate
advantage if, through an exceptional exemption from

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 229

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 pecuni-
ary employments; those of the working classes lie in
both classes of employments, but chiefly in the indus-
trial. Entrance to the leisure class lies through the
pecuniary employments.

These two classes of employments 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 eco-
nomic 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

230 The Theory of the Leisure Class

economic life favours 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 that class of persons and that range of duties in
the economic process which have to do with the owner-
ship of enterprises engaged in competitive industry;
especially those fundamental lines of economic man-
agement 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 ** cap-
tain 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 de-
tails of production and of industrial organisation 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

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 231

their tendency in shaping human nature by education
and selection, the common run of non-economic employ-
ments are to be classed with the pecuniary employ-
ments. Such are politics and ecclesiastical and military
employments.

The pecuniary employments have also the sanction
of reputability in a much higher degree than the indus-
trial employments. In this way the leisure-class stand-
ards 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 immedi-
ately 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 oc*
cupied with the details of predatory fraud, either in
achieving or in checkmating chicane, and success in the
profession is therefore accepted as marking a large en-
dowment of that barbarian astuteness which has always
commanded men's respect and fear. Mercantile pur-

232 The Theory of the Leisure Class

suits are only half-way reputable, unless they involve a
large element of ownership and a small element of use-
fulness. They grade high or low somewhat in propor-
tion 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
labour. Manual labour, or even the work of directing
mechanical processes, is of course on a precarious foot-
ing 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 manage-
ment comes to bear less of the character of chicane 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 imme-
diate suggestion of overreaching or exploiting a com-
petitor. 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 manoeuvres 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
utilisation for the purposes of human life. So far as

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 233

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 com-
munity, therefore, is not of a uniform kind throughout
all its manifestations. That range of economic activi-
ties which is concerned immediately with pecuniary
competition has a tendency to conserve certain preda-
tory 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 distinc-
tion 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 preda-
tory 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 tem-
perament. But there is something to be said on the

234 T^^^^ Theory of the Leisure Class

other side. Individuals so placed as to be exempt fror"
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 indus-
trial situation, and should, therefore, afford an exception-
ally great proportion of reversions to the peaceable or
savage temperament. It should be possible for such
aberrant or atavistic individuals to unfold their life activ-
ity 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 amelio-
ration. And much of this philanthropic and reforma-
tory 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 im-
pecunious 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.

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 235

' In further qualification it is to be noted that the
leisure class of to-day is recruited from those who have
been successful in a pecuniary way, and who, therefore,
are presumably endowed with more than an even com-
plement 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 aggres-
sive 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 noiiveaiix arrives are a picked body.

This process of selective admission has, of course,
always been going on ; ever since the fashion of pecuni-
ary emulation set in, — which is much the same as say-
ing, ever since the institution of a leisure class was first

236 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 must be
gifted with clannishness, massiveness, ferocity, unscru-
pulousness, and tenacity of purpose. These were the
qualities that counted toward the accumulation and con-
tinued 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 con-
sequence 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 prow-
ess. 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 practise 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 correla-
tive massiveness, together with a ruthlessly consistent
sense of status, would still count among the most splen-
did traits of the class. These have remained in our
traditions as the typical "aristocratic virtues." But
with these were associated an increasing complement

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 237

of the less obtrusive pecuniary virtues ; such as provi-
dence, prudence, and chicane. 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 pe-
cuniary 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 apti-
tudes 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 characteris-
tically 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 simi-
larly 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-weel 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 pecuni-
ary man is like the ideal delinquent in his unscrupu-
lous 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

238 The Theory of the Leisure Class

in working more consistently and far-sightedly to a re-
moter end. The kinship of the two types of tempera*
ment 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 com-
monly of a superstitious habit of mind ; he is a great
believer in luck, spells, divination and destiny, and in
omens and shamanistic ceremony. Where circum-
stances are favourable, this proclivity is apt to express
itself in a certain servile devotional fervour and a punc-
tilious attention to devout observances ; it may perhaps
be better characterised 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 shift-
less 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

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 23^

in effort. So far as concerns economic theory, the ob«
jective point of the selective process is on the whole
single to this extent ; although there are minor tenden-
cies of considerable importance diverging from this line
of development. But apart from this general trend the
line of development is not single. As concerns eco-
nomic 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
characterised as the personal standpoint, of conation,
qualitative relation, status, or worth ; the latter as the
impersonal standpoint, of sequence, quantitative rela-
tion, mechanical efficiency, or use.

The pecuniary employments call into action chiefTy
the former of these two ranges of aptitudes and pro-
pensities, and act selectively to conserve them in the
population. The industrial employments, on the other
hand, chiefly exercise the latter range, and act to con-
serve 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 single-
ness of the individual, the aptitudes, animus, and inter-
ests comprised in the first-named range belong together
as expressions of a given variant of human nature. The

240 The Theory of the Leisure Class

like is true of the latter range. The two may be con
ceived as alternative directions of human life, in such a
way that a given individual inclines more or less con-
sistently 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 charac-
terises the early barbarian. This substitution of chicane
in place of devastation takes place only in an uncertain
degree. Within the pecuniary employments the selec-
tive 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 bour-

The Conservation of Archaic Traits 241

geois virtues — that is to say the destructive and pecuni-
ary 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 en-
gaged 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 pe-
cuniary 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. Con-
sequently, 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 impossi-
ble, and would, indeed, never have been conceived

R

242 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 favouring the spiritual apti-
tude 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 distinc-
tion in this respect between the leisure-class charac-
ter and the character of the common run of the
population.

The whole question as to a class distinction in re-
spect of 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 prescrip-
tive 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 aristo-
cratic 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

The Conservatio7i of Archaic Traits 243

and example of the leisure class. As one channel, and
an important one, through which this transfusion of
aristocratic views of hfe, 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 con-
tact 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 com-
munity without the loss of time which this dissemi-
nation 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 neces-
saries 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-asser-
tion 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, there-
fore, 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

244 '^^^^ Theory of the 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 pri»
marily 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 ex-
ample 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, (i) 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 collect-
ing 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

The Conservation of Archaic Trait i^ 245

it seems necessary to the completeness of the argument,
even in the meagre outline in which it is here attempted.
A degree of indulgence may therefore fairly be be-
spoken for the succeeding chapters, which offer a frag
mentary recital of this kind.

CHAPTER X

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 apti-
tudes — aptitudes for acquisition rather than for service-
ability. 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 mitiga-
tion. In its turn the scheme of life, of conventions, acts
selectively and by education to shape the human mate-
rial, and its action runs chiefly in the direction of con-
serving 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 characterises man in
the predatory stage is the fighting propensity proper.
In cases where the predatory activity is a collective one,

2.16

Modern Snt-vivah of Proivess 247

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 civil-
ised 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 honourable, 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 lei-
sure 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 honour of an habitual belli-
cose 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 ; in-
deed, it responds a little tardily even to a provocation
which makes for an attitude of defence. In the more
civilised communities, or rather in the communities
which have reached an advanced industrial develop-
ment, the spirit of warlike aggression may be said to be

248 The Theory of the Leisure Class

obsolescent among the common people. This dees not
say that there is not an appreciable number of individu-
als 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
ardour for a time under the stimulus of some special
provocation, such as is seen in operation to-day 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 en-
dowed with an archaic temperament of the predatory
type, together with the similarly endowed body of indi-
viduals among the higher and the lowest classes, the
inertness of the mass of any modern civilised com-
munity 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 pictu-
resque 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 meas-
ure, to correspond with a difference in ethnic derivation.
The class difference is in this respect visibly less in
those countries whose population is relatively homo-
geneous, 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 acces-
sions to the leisure class in the latter countries, in a
general way, show less of the martial spirit than con-

Modern Survivals of Prowess 249

temporary representatives of the aristocracy of the
ancient line. These noiiveaux arrives 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 readi-
ness for combat ; and the duel is a leisure-class institu-
tion. The duel is in substance a more or less deliberate
resort to a fight as a final settlement of a difference of
opinion. In civilised communities it prevails as a normal
phenomenon only where there is an hereditary leisure
class, and almost exclusively among that class. The
exceptions are (i) 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 preda-
tory 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 in-
hibit 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 in-
stinct of self-assertion ; that is to say, he reverts tem-
porarily and without reflection to an archaic habit of
mind.

This institution of the duel as a mode of finally

2 so The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 a 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 tem-
perament 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 an-
tagonism. The transition from this peaceable temper
to the predaceous, and in extreme cases malignant, mis-
chievousness of the boy is a gradual one, and it is ac-
complished 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 aggres-

Modern Survivals of Prowess 251

sive 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 tempera-
ment of the boy proper; though there are also cases
where the predaceous features 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 tran-
sition 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 inter-
val 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" temperanient the average temperament

252 The Theory of the Leisure Class

of those adult individuals in modern industrial life who
have some serviceability for the purposes of the collec-
tive 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 work-
ing-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 generalisation 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 tem-
perament 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

Modern Survivals of Pj-owess 253

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 re-
spect, as in much else, the leisure-class and the delin-
quent-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 devel-
opment 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 man-
hood, the aimless and playful, but more or less syste-
matic and elaborate, disturbances of the peace in vogue
among schoolboys of a slightly higher age. In the com-
mon run of cases, these disturbances are confined to
the period of adolescence. They recur with decreasing

254 "^^^^ Theory of the Leisure Class,

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 individ-
uals who in spiritual development eventually reach
man's estate, therefore, ordinarily pass through a tem-
porary archaic phase corresponding to the permanent
spiritual level of the fighting and sporting men. Dif-
ferent individuals will, of course, achieve spiritual matur-
ity and sobriety in this respect in different degrees ;
and those who fail of the average remain as an undis-
solved residue of crude humanity in the modern indus-
trial community and as a foil for that selective process
of adaptation which makes for a heightened industrial
efficiency and the fulness of life of the collectivity.

This arrested spiritual development may express it-
self not only in a direct participation by adults in youth-
ful 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 move-
ment in the direction of a more peaceable effective tem-
perament 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

Modern Sttii'ivals of Prozvess 25*,

exerts in the direction of conservation and reversion to
prowess may be very considerable. This is the signifi-
cance, for instance, of the fostering care latterly be-
stowed by many clergymen and other pillars of society
upon "boys' brigades" and similar pseudo-military
organisations. 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 de-
liberately 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 pos-
session of the predatory emulative propensity in a
relatively high potency. A strong proclivity to adven-
turesome 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

2 $6 The Theory of the Leisure Class

a boyish temperament. The addiction to sports, there
fore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested develop-
ment of the man's moral nature. This peculiar boy-
ishness 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 sports-
manship 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 accou-
trements in order to impress upon their own imagina-
tion 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 locu-
tions borrowed from the terminology of warfare. Ex-

Modern Survivals of Prowess 257

cept where it is adopted as a necessary means of secret
communication, the use of a special slang in any employ-
ment 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 pecu-
liarity 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 subsidi-
ary 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 favourite pastime. These motives are no doubt
frequently present and make up a part of the attractive-
ness 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 kill-
ing off all living things whose destruction he can
compass.

Still, there is ground for the sportsman's claim that
under the existing conventionalities his need of recre-
ation and of contact with nature can best be satisfied
by the course which he takes. Certain canons of good
s

258 The Theory of the Leisure Class

breeding have been imposed by the prescriptive exam^
pie 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
honourable 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 proxi-
mate 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. Pre-
scriptive 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 gen-

Modern Survivals of Prowess 259

erally. At the same time purposeless physical exer-
tion 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 colourable pretence of purpose, even if the
object assigned be only a make-believe. Sports satisfy
these requirements of substantial futility together with
a colourable 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 generi-
cally human canon of efficiency for some serviceable
objective end. The leisure-class canon demands strict
and comprehensive futility ; the instinct of workman-
ship demands purposeful action. The leisure-class
canon of decorum acts slowly and pervasively, by a
selective elimination of all substantially useful or pur-
poseful modes of action from the accredited scheme of
life ; the instinct of workmanship acts impulsively and
may be satisfied, provisionally, with a proximate pur-
pose. 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 direc«

26o The Theory of the Leisure Class

tion of serviceability to the life process. When it is
attempted to assimilate systematic waste or futility, as
an end Jn life, into this organic complex, there pres-
ently supervenes a revulsion. But this revulsion of the
organism may be avoided if the attention can be con-
fined to the proximate, unreflected purpose of dexterous
or emulative exertion. Sports — hunting, angling, ath-
letic games, and the like — afford an exercise for dex-
terity and for the emulative ferocity and astuteness
characteristic of predatory life. So long as the indi-
vidual 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 nai've impulsive action,
— so long the immediate and unreflected purposeful-
ness 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 pecun-
iarily 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 cir-
cumstances.

But those members of respectable society who advo-
cate athletic games commonly justify their attitude on

Modern Survivals of Prowess 261

this head to themselves and to their neighbours on the
ground that these games serve as an invaluable means
of development. They not only improve the contest-
ant'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 character-
istic of the ferine state, and which tend to obsolescence
under domestication. This does not mean that the re-
sult in either case is an all-around and consistent rehabili-
tation of the ferine or barbarian habit of mind and body.
The result is rather a one-sided return to barbarism or
to the fer(E natura — a rehabilitation and accentuation
of those ferine traits which make for damage and deso-
lation, without a corresponding development of the traits
which would serve the individual's self-preservation and
fulness of life in a ferine environment. The culture

262 The Theory of the Leisure Class

bestowed in football gives a product of exotic ferocity
and cunning. It is a rehabilitation of the early barba-
rian temperament, together with a suppression of those
details of temperament which, as seen from the stand-
point of the social and economic exigencies, are the
redeeming features of the savage character.

The physical vigour 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 con-
duces 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 mod-
ern, peaceable emulation, the possession of these traits
in some measure is almost a necessary of life to the
civilised 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 pres-
ent in the human environment to which he is exposed.

Modern Survivals of Prowess 263

Any individual who enters the competitive struggle
without the due endowment of these traits is at a dis-
advantage, 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 unservice-
ability which they may give. But for the present pur-
pose 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 eco-
nomic grounds.

In popular apprehension there is much that is admi-
rable 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 characterised might be described as trucu-
lence 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 short-
coming, and to make their possession in an exceptional

264 The Theory of the Leistire Class

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 faciUty with which
any new accessions to the leisure class take to sports ;
and hence the rapid growth of sports and of the sport-
ing sentiment 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

Modem Survivals of Prowess 265

modern life, the habit of carrying a walking-stick may
seem at best a trivial detail ; but the usage has a sig-
nificance for the point in question. The classes among
whom the habit most prevails — the classes with whom
the walking-stick is associated in popular apprehen-
sion — 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 primi-
tive a means of offence 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 any-
thing 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

266 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 hin-
drance of a more perfect adjustment of the human col-
lectivity to the environment and to the institutional
structure required by the economic situation of the col-
lectivity 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 over-
looked 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 espe-
cially by the standards ol 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

Modern Survivals of Prowess 267

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 dis-
cussing this class of aptitudes and activities without
implying deprecation or apology. The fact is signifi-
cant as showing the habitual attitude of the dispassion-
ate 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 defence or in laudation of ath-
letic sports, as well as of other activities of a predomi-
nantly 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 distribu-
tion of wealth, together with the resulting class distinc-
tions 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 ob*
servances, especially the exoteric expressions of tho

268 The Theory of the Leisure Class

creed and the naifve apprehension of received observ-
ances. 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 suit-
able 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 pre-
daceous impulses and habits of thought which under-
lie 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 tempera-
ment, and of the disciplinary effects of its overt expres-
sion 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 habit-
uation 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 senti-
ment in favour of diversions and enterprise 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 legitima-

Modem Survivals of Prowess 269

tion is ordinarily sought by showing that although
sports are substantially of a predatory, socially disin-
tegrating effect ; although their proximate effect runs in
the direction of reversion to propensities that are indus-
trially disserviceable ; yet indirectly and remotely — by
some not readily comprehensible process of polar induc-
tion, 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 generalisation 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 vir-
tues 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 per-
suading 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 practices in question is ordinarily shown by his

270 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 sentiment in favour of sports, why is not
that fact a sufficient legitimation ? The protracted dis-
cipline of prowess to which the race has been subjected
under the predatory and quasi-peaceable culture has
transmitted to the men of to-day a temperament that
/inds 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 ulte-
rior 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 devel-
opment of the instinct of workmanship, a variant, rela-
tively 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 primor-
dial 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 sport, 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

Modem Survivals of Prowess 271

stated. From the evidence already recited it appears
that, in sentiment and inclinations, the leisure class is
more favourable 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, through 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 crepuscu-
lar 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 lit-
tle 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 through-

2/2 The Theory of the Leisure Class

out the body of the community as are endowed with a
dominant predaceous trend. Few individuals among the
populations of Western civilised 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 oc-
casional 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 to-day,
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 char-
acteristic 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 re-
gards the character of the results attained by the devel

Modern Survivals of Prowess 273

opment. 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 bear-
ing. They serve to indicate the stage of economic
evolution to which the individual possessed of them is
adapted. They are of importance, therefore, as extra-
neous tests of the degree of adaptation of the character
in which they are comprised to the economic exigencies
of to-day; 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 ex-
pression 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

274 ^^^ Theory of the Leisure Class

tends to develop into finesse and chicane. Chicane,
falsehood, brow-beating, hold a well-secured place in
the method of procedure of any athletic contest and in
games generally. The habitual employment of an um-
pire, 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 legiti-
mation 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 eclat
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 matricu-
lation in any reputable school, of the secondary or the

Modern Survivals of Prowess 275

higher education, as the case may be. And the physi-
ognomy 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 honours. 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 eco-
nomic value to the community — unless it be for the
purpose of sharp practice in dealings with other com-
munities. 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 indi-
vidual 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 XI
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 recognised 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 preda-
tory culture. It is one form of the animistic apprehen-

276

The Belief in Luck 277

sion of things. The belief seems to be a trait carried
over in substance from an earlier phase into the barba-
rian culture, and transmuted and transmitted through
that culture to a later stage of human development
under a specific form imposed by the predatory disci-
pline. 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 mod-
ern 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 mate-
rial weight. But the wager is commonly laid also with
a view, not avowed in words nor even recognised in set
terms in petto, to enhancing the chances of success for
the contestant on which it is laid. It is felt that sub-
stance and solicitude expended to this end can not go
for naught in the issue. There is here a special mani-
festation of the instinct of workmanship, backed by an

278 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 cona-
tive and kinetic urging. This incentive to the wager
expresses itself freely under the form of backing one's
favourite 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 muta-
tions 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 ramifica-
tions 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

The Belief in Luck 279

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 suc-
cessive phases of the same general line of growth of
belief does not hinder their coexisting in the habits
of thought of any givei] individual. The more primi-
tive 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 con-
ceived to be possessed of volition, or rather of propen-
sities, 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 neces-
sity, 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 possi-
bility of propitiating, or of deceiving and cajoling, or
otherwise disturbing the unfolding 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 v^'hich more or less
of efficacy is felt to belong. And the proportion is
not much less of those who instinctively dread the

28o The Theory of the Leisure Class

"hoodooing" of the contestants or the apparatus en.
gaged 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 instinc-
tive sense of an inscrutable teleological propensity in
objects or situations. Objects or events have a pro-
pensity to eventuate in a given end, whether this end or
objective point of the sequence is conceived to be fortui-
tously given or deliberately sought. From this simple
animism the belief shades off by insensible grada-
tions into the second, derivative form or phase above
referred to, which is a more or less articulate belief in
an inscrutable preternatural agency. The preternat-
ural 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 impli-
cation 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 {gcefa, aiidna) which lends so
much of colour to the Icelandic sagas specifically, and
to early Germanic folk-legends generally, is an illustra«

The Belief in Luck 28 1

tion of this sense of an extra-physical propensity in
the course of events.

In this expression or form of the belief the pro-
pensity is scarcely personified, although to a varying
extent an individuality is imputed to it ; and this indi-
viduated propensity is sometimes conceived to yield to
circumstances, commonly to circumstances of a spirit-
ual or preternatural character.. A well-known and
striking exemplification of the belief — in a fairly ad-
vanced stage of differentiation and involving an anthro-
pomorphic 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 con-
testants' claims. The like sense of an inscrutable but
spiritually necessary tendency in events is still trace-
able 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 civilised com-
munities of to-day. The modern reminiscence of the
belief in the kamingia^ 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 mo-
ments 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 eth-

282 The Theory of the Leisure Class

nological 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 ques-
tions only to remark that the interest of the present
discussion does not lie in that direction. So far as con-
cerns economic theory, these two elements or phases of
the belief in luck, or in an extra-causal trend or propen-
sity 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 ques-
tion 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 the highest serviceability in the com-
plex industrial processes of to-day, 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 in-
dustrial 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

The Belief in Luck 283

a degree of facility in the apprehension of and adapts
tion 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 useful-
ness. This lowering of efficiency through a penchant
for animistic methods of apprehending facts is especially
apparent when taken in the mass — when a given popu-
lation 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 organised in a com-
prehensive 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, muscu-
lar force, or endurance may, in a very large measure,
offset such a bias in the habits of thought of the work-
men.

Similarly in agricultural industry of the traditional
kind, which closely resembles handicraft in the nature

284 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 pro-
cess left to the fateful swing of a comprehensive me-
chanical 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 handi-
craftsman count for less and less as an offset to scanty
intelligence or a halting acceptance of the sequence of
cause and effect. The industrial organisation 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 unbiassed appreci-
ation 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 vari-
ance with this ready appreciation of matter-of-fact
sequence gains proportionately in importance as a dis-
turbing element acting to lower his industrial useful-
ness. Through its cumulative effect upon the habitual
attitude of the population, even a slight or inconspic-
uous bias towards accounting for everyday facts by

The Belief in Luck 285

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 pro-
pensity imputed to facts. The industrial value of such
a lively animistic sense, or of such recourse to a preter-
natural 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 anthropo-
morphic formula in dealing with the facts of his environ-
ment. 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 nai've form, its scope and range of
application are not defined or limited. It will therefore
palpably affect his thinking at every turn of the per-
son'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

286 The Theory of the Leisure Class

been limited in a somewhat consistent fashion to the
remote and the invisible, it comes about that an increas-
ing- 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 con-
venient 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 pur-
poses, until special provocation or perplexity recalls the
individual to his allegiance. But when special exigen-
cies 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 pre-
ternatural agency as a universal solvent, if he is pos-
sessed of an anthropomorphic belief.

The extra-causal propensity or agent has a very high
utility as a recourse in perplexity, but its utility is alto-
gether of a non-economic kind. It is especially a refuge
and a fund of comfort where it has attained the degree
of consistency and specialisation that belongs to an an-
thropomorphic divinity. It has much to commend it even
on other grounds than that of affording the perplexed
individual a means of escape from the dififtculty of
accounting for phenomena in terms of causal sequence.
It would scarcely be in place here to dwell on the obvi-
ous 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

The Belief in Luck 287

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 service-
ability, rather than extended to include its remoter eco-
nomic 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 intelli-
gence 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 some-
what 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 civilised man. The
industrial disability entailed by a popular adherence to

288 The Theory of the Leisure Class

one of the higher anthropomorphic cults may be rela-
tively slight, but it is not to be overlooked. And even
these high-class cults of the Western culture do not rep-
resent the last dissolving phase of this human sense of
extra-causal propensity. Beyond these the same ani-
mistic 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 mod-
ern representative, the ostensibly post-Darwinian con-
cept 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 sci-
ence 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, (i) It is a fairly reliable in-
dication 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 con-
sequence ; 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 com-
munity's consumption of goods and the prevalent canons
of taste, as already suggested in an earlier chapter, and
(fi) in inducing and conserving a certain habitual recog-
nition 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

The Belief in Luck 289

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 differ-
ent 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 ani-
mistic habit, a well-formed anthropomorphic cult, and a
lively sense of status. On the other hand, anthropo-
morphism and the realising sense of an animistic pro-
pensity in material things 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 peace-
able communities. It is to be remarked that a lively,
but slightly specialised, 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

290 The Theory of the Leisure Class

myth-making, rather than in coercive superstition. The
barbarian culture shows sportsmanship, status, and an-
thropomorphism. There is commonly observable a like
concomitance of variations in the same respects in
the individual temperament of men in the civilised
communities of to-day. 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 pro-
pensity 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 com-
fort in the less anthropomorphic cults, such as the
Unitarian or the Universalist.

Closely bound up with this correlation of anthropo-
morphism and prowess is the fact that anthropomorphic
cults act to conserve, if not to initiate, habits of mind
favourable 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 concomi-
tance of variations in inherited traits begins. In their
finest development, the predatory temperament, the
sense of status, and the anthropomorphic cult all to-
gether 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 aptitudes of individuals

The Belief in L^ick 29 1

and classes to-day goes far to imply a like causal or
organic relation between the same psychological phe-
nomena 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 struct-
ure, 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 con-
cept of a preternatural, inscrutable propensity in mate-
rial 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 characterise 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; {U) 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

292 The Theory of the Leisure Class

the days of its early vigour at least, is an institution the
characteristic element of which is a relation of status
between the human subject as inferior and the personi-
fied preternatural agency as superior. With this in mind,
there should be no difficulty in recognising 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 emu-
lative 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 XII

Devout Observances

A DISCURSIVE rehearsal of certain incidents of modern
life will show the organic relation of the anthropomor-
phic cults to the barbarian culture and temperament.
It will likewise serve to show how the survival and
efficacy of the cults and the prevalence of their sched-
ule of devout observances are related to the institution
of a leisure class and to the springs of action underly-
ing that institution. Without any intention to com-
mend 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 pro-
ceed. 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.

293

294 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 rela-
tion is not altogether one-sided. The economic stand-
ards or canons of valuation are in their turn influenced
by extra-economic standards of value. ijOur 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
bearing 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 appre-
ciation 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 ex-
presses itself, under a variety of forms, in animistic
beliefs and anthropomorphic creeds. So far as con-
cerns those tangible psychological features with which
economic theory has to deal, the gambling spirit which

Devout Observances 295

pervades the sporting element shades off by insensible
gradations into that frame of mind which finds gratifi-
cation 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 anthro-
pomorphic 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 propitia-
tion 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 recognised as
superstitious practice and belief, and so asserts its
claim to kinship with the grosser anthropomorphic cults.
The sporting or gambling temperament, then, com-
prises 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 pur-
pose of the gambling practice the belief in preter-
natural 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 char
acter and his purposes in interfering in events. With

296 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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
endeavours 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 per-
vasive extraphysical and arbitrary force or propensity
in things or situations, which is scarcely recognised
as a personal agent. The betting man is not infre-
quently both a believer in luck, in this nafve 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 concerns the inscru-
table 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, distin-
guishable phases of animism. Indeed, the complete
series of successive phases of animistic belief is to be
found unbroken in the spiritual furniture of any sport-
ing community. Such a chain of animistic conceptions
will comprise the most elementary form of an instinc-
tive 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.

Devout Observances 297

There is a relationship in this respect between the
sporting temperament and the temperament of the de-
linquent classes ; and the two are related to the tempera-
ment which inclines to an anthropomorphic cult. Both
the delinquent and the sporting man are on an 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 notice-
able that unbelieving members of these classes show
more of a proclivity to become proselytes to some ac-
credited faith than the average of unbelievers. This
fact of observation is avowed by the spokesmen of
sports, especially in apologising for the more naively
predatory athletic sports. Indeed, it is somewhat in-
sistently claimed as a meritorious feature of sporting
life that the habitual participants in athletic games
are in some degree peculiarly given to devout prac-
tices. And it is observable that the cult to which
sporting men and the predaceous delinquent classes
adhere, or to which proselytes from these classes com-
monly 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, pred-
atory human nature is not satisfied with abstruse con-
ceptions 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 char-
acter which the habits of mind of the athlete and the
delinquent require, may be cited that branch of the

298 The Theory of the Leisure Class

church miUtant known as the Saivation Army. This
is to some ejttent recruited from the lower-class delin-
quents, 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 con-
tended 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 infrequently that college sport-
ing men devote themselves to the 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 anthro-
pomorphic 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 atten-

Devout Observances 299

tion 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 compla-
cent submission to an inscrutable Providence. It there-
fore by preference seeks affiliation with some one of
those lay religious organisations which occupy them-
selves with the spread of the exoteric forms of the faith,
— as, e.g., the Young Men's Christian Association or the
Young People's Society for Christian Endeavour. These
lay bodies are organised to further ''practical " religion ;
and as if to enforce the argument and firmly establish
the close relationship between the sporting tempera-
ment 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 appar-
ently 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 organisations, 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 alone.

That the exercise of the emulative and lower ani-
mistic proclivities are substantially useful for the

3CX5 The Theory of the Leisure Class

devout purpose seems to be placed beyond question
by the fact that the priesthood of many denominations
is following the lead of the lay organisations in this
respect. Those ecclesiastical organisations especially
which stand nearest the lay organisations in their
insistence on practical religion have gone some way
towards adopting these or analogous practices in con-
nection with the traditional devout observances. So
there are "boys' brigades," and other organisations,
under clerical sanction, acting to develop the emulative
proclivity and the sense of status in the youthful
members of the congregation. These pseudo-military
organisations tend to elaborate and accentuate the pro-
clivity to emulation and invidious comparison, and so
strengthen the native facility for discerning and approv-
ing 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 sub-
stance of the anthropomorphic cults. The other, com-
plementary element of devout life — the animistic habit
of mind — is recruited and conserved by a second
range of practices organised 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 prac-
tices in connection with devout observances proper, it
is to be remarked that these raffles, and the Uke trivial
opportunities for gambling, seem to appeal with more
effect to the common run of the members of religious

Devout Observances 30 1

organisations 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. Con-
versely ; it also appears that habituation to these obser-
vances favours 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. Sub-
stantially the same range of propensities finds expres-
sion 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 com-
munity's scheme of life is the relation of superior and
inferior, noble and base, dominant and subservient per-
sons and classes, master and slave. The anthropo-
morphic cults have come down from that stage of
industrial development and have been shaped by the
same scheme of economic differentiation, — a differen-
tiation into consumer and producer, — and they are
pervaded by the same dominant principle of mastery
and subservience. The cults impute to their divinity

302 The Theory of the Leisure Class

the habits of thought answering to the stage of eco-
nomic differentiation at which the cults took shape.
The anthropomorphic divinity is conceived to be punc-
tilious 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 anthro-
pomorphic 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 pre-
ternatural 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 cul-
ture. 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 pro-
pitiation 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 compari-
son. A loyal attachment to the person of an anthro-
pomorphic 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.

Devout Observances 303

The barbarian conception of the divinity, as a warlike
chieftain inclined to an overbearing manner of govern-
ment, has been greatly softened through the milder
manners and the soberer habits of life that characterise
those cultural phases which lie between the early preda-
tory stage and the present. But even after this chasten
ing 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 tem-
perament a very substantial residue of the barbarian
conception. So it comes about, for instance, that in
characterising the divinity and his relations to the pro-
cess of human life, speakers and writers are still able to
make effective use of similes borrowed from the vocabu-
lary 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 audi-
ences, 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 obsep
vation that sanguinary epithets applied to the divinit)

304 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 to-day. In so far as
the economic organisation fits the exigencies of the
collective life of to-day, 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 eco-
nomic 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 recognises 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 perplex-
ing phenomena, nor depend on an unseen hand to shape
the course of events to human use. To meet the re-

' Devout Observances 305

quirements 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 develop-
ment. 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 com-
munity — 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 charac-
terisation here offered may be turned about. In speak-

306 The Theory of the Leisure Class

ing from the point of view of the devotional interest, ot
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 unfavourable to a free develop-
ment 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 re-
flections may be for their purpose, they would not be in
place in the present inquiry, which is exclusively con-
cerned with the valuation of these phenomena from the
economic point of view.

The grave economic significance of the anthropomor-
phic 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 observ-

Devout Observances 307

ances 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 characterised as items of con-
spicuous 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 pro-
tract the vogue of those habits of thought on which an
anthropomorphic cult rests. That is to say, they fur-
ther the habits of thought characteristic of the regime
of status. They are in so far an obstruction to the
most effective organisation of industry under modern
circumstances ; and are, in the first instance, antagonis-
tic to the development of economic institutions in the
direction required by the situation of to-day. 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 conse-
quences, 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 con-
sumption does not admit of a succinct answer, and it
is a question which can not be taken up here.

3o8 The Theory of the Leisure Class

It will be to the point, however, to note the general
economic character of devout consumption, in compari-
son with consumption for other purposes. An indica-
tion 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 consump-
tion which goes to the service of an anthropomorphic
divinity and that which goes to the service of a gentle-
man of leisure — a 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 prop-
erties 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 conspicu-
ous 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 poten-
tate— 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

Devout Observances 309

into the presence, should be of a more expensive kind
than their everyday apparel. Here, again, the parallel-
ism 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 "clean-
ness " 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 cere-
monial 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 ob-
viously 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 absten-
tion 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 occupa-
tions and from all pursuits that (materially) further
human life is further accentuated by compulsory absti-
nence from such consumption as would conduce to the
comfort or the fulness of life of the consumer.

It may be remarked, parenthetically, that secular
holidays are of the same origin, by slightly remoter de-

3IO The Theory of the Leisure Class

rivation. They shade off by degrees from the gen-
uinely sacred days, through an intermediate class of
semi-sacred birthdays of kings and great men who have
been in some measure canonised, 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 honour, or the good fame of which is felt
to be in need of repair. This remoter refinement in
the employment of vicarious leisure as a means of aug-
menting 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 Labour Day. This observance is designed to
augment the prestige of the fact of labour, by the
archaic, predatory method of a compulsory abstention
from useful effort. To this datum of labour-in-general
!S imputed the good repute attributable to the pecuni-
ary strength put in evidence by abstaining from labour.

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 hono-
rific 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 per-
quisite of all members of the preternatural leisure class
and is indispensable to their good fame. Un saint
quon ne chonie 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 §et apart for a similar service. It is not only

Devout Observances 311

incumbent on the priestly class to abstain from vulgar
labour, especially so far as it is lucrative or is appre-
hended to contribute to the temporal well-being of man-
kind. The tabu in the case of the priestly class goes
farther and adds a refinement in the form of an injunc-
tion 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 diffi-
culty in drawing, between such actions and conduct as
conduce to the fulness of human life and such as con-
duce to the good fame of the anthropomorphic divinity ;
and the activity of the priestly class, in the ideal bar-
barian 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 mediaeval
orders of monks (the members of which actually la-
boured 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

312 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 meas-
ure. 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 fulness 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
organised 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. What-
ever suggests that these servants of an invisible mastei
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 mate-
rial gain, their occupation is vicarious leisure in the full
sense. "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatso
ever ye do, do all to the glory of God."

Devout Obsei-vances 313

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 vica-
rious 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 insti-
tution of the priesthood lapses, or where there is an
exceptionally lively sense of the immediate and master-
ful presence of the divinity in the affairs of life, there
the layman is conceived to stand in an immediate ser-
vile 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 on an austere and dis-
comforting vicarious leisure, to the neglect of conspicu-
ous consumption as a means of grace.

A doubt will present itself as to the full legitimacy
of this characterisation of the sacerdotal scheme of life,
on the ground that a considerable proportion of the
modern priesthood depart 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

314 The TJieory of the Leisure Class

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 osten-
sible austerity or in the archaism of its apparatus.
This is truest for those denominations that have wan-
dered 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 con-
formity 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 characterised as a half-caste priesthood, or a
priesthood in process of becoming or of reconstitution.
Such a priesthood may be expected to show the char-
acteristics 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 ani-
mism and status in the purposes of the organisations to
which this non-conforming fraction of the priesthood
belongs.

Appeal may be taken direct to the taste of any per-
son 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 ac-
customed to think or to pass criticism on what a clergy-
man may or may not do without blame. Even in the
most extremely secularised denominations, there is some
sense of a distinction that should be observed between

Devout Observances 315

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 demeanour 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 pro-
priety 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 in-
wardly 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 con-
juncture of life, except it be levity of a palpably histri-
onic 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

3i6 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 cer-
tain 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 discus-
sion of temporal interests. These matters that are of
human and secular consequence simply, should properly
be handled with such a degree of generality and aloof-
ness 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 dis-
cussion, 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 organisations.
The non-conforming or sectarian movements have com-
monly 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

Devout Observances 317

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 organisation is
at the outset a servant and representative of the organi-
sation, 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 specialisation that, in succeed-
ing generations, this spokesman regains the position of
priest, with a full investiture of sacerdotal authority,
and with its accompanying austere, archaic and vicari-
ous manner of life. The like is true of the breakdown
and redintegration of devout ritual after such a revul-
sion. The priestly office, the scheme of sacerdotal life,
and the schedule of devout observances are rehabili-
tated only gradually, insensibly, and with more or less
variation in details, as the persistent human sense of
devout propriety reasserts its primacy in questions
touching the interest in the preternatural, — and, it
may be added, as the organisation 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 equiva-
lents in the ethnic cults. These rise in grade, one
above another, according to an elaborate system of
status. The principle of status runs through the en-
tire hierarchical system, both visible and invisible.
The good fame of these several orders of the super-
natural hierarchy also commonly requires a certain
tribute of vicarious consumption and vicarious leisure.

«
3i8 The Theory of the Leisure Class

In many cases they accordingly have devoted to their
service sub-orders of attendants or dependents who per-
form 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 v/ithout 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 to-day,
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 indus-
trial life tends selectively to eliminate these traits of hu-
man 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 mem-
bers of what may be called the effective industrial com-
munity. At the same time it should appear that this
aptitude or habit survives in appreciably greater vigour
among those classes which do not immediately or pri-
marily enter into the community's life process as an
industrial factor.

Devout Observances 319

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 :
(i) 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 effect-
ual economic pressure constrains this class to an adap-
tation 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 indus-
trial efficiency is innutrition, absence of such a 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 assimi-
late the more recent generalisations of science which
this point of view involves, but they also ordinarily
stand in such a relation of personal dependence or sub-
servience 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

320 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 in-
considerable 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 nafvely 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

Devout Obseii^ances 321

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-psychologi-
cal 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 cur-
rently recognised phenomena, and it might seem that a
simple reference to these facts should sufficiently sub-
stantiate 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 ad-
vanced industrial communities of to-day. It will serve
to illustrate the manner in which economic causes work
towards a secularisation of men's habits of thought. In

322 The Theory of the Leisure Class

this respect the American community should afford an
exceptionally convincing illustration, since this com-
munity has been the least trammelled by external
circumstances of any equally important industrial
aggregate.

After making due allowance for exceptions and spo-
radic departures from the normal, the situation here at
the present time may be summarised quite briefly. As
a general rule the classes that are low in economic effi-
ciency, 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 frag-
ments as we possess of a specialised or hereditary indi-
gent 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 nai've animistic belief in luck
and in the efficacy of shamanistic practices perhaps
more frequently than it takes the form of a formal adher-
ence 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 ex-
posed to the characteristic intellectual and spiritual
stress of modern organised 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

Devout Observances 323

at the same time not underfed nor overworked 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 devo-
tional 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 re-
motely perhaps, to become a congregation of women
and minors. There is an appreciable lack of devotional
fervour among the adult males of the middle class,
although to a considerable extent there survives among
them a certain complacent, reputable assent to the out-
lines of the accredited creed under which they were
born. Their everyday Ufe 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

324 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 expres-
sion of that conservatism which the women of civilised
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
favourable to devout observances and to the interpreta-
tion 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 aggres-
sive 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 ex-
tent a sheltered class ; and the patriarchal relation of
status, which still persists in their conjugal life and in

Devout Observances 325

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 secularisation 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 arbi-
trary 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 bar-
barian, to whom a devotional attitude is habitual. And
in addition to this, the devout observances also com-
mend themselves to this class on the ground of reputa-
bility. But this latter incentive to piety deserves
treatment by itself and will be spoken of presently.

There is no hereditary leisure class of any conse-^
quence in the American community, except at the I
South. This Southern leisure class is somewhat given ■
to devout observances ; more so than any class of cor-
responding 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 coun-
terparts at the North. Corresponding to this more
archaic devotional life of the South is the lower in-

326 The Theory of the Leisure Class

dustrial development of that section. The industrial
organisation 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 subservi-
ence. 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 develop-
ment. Among this population offences of an archaic
character also are and have been relatively more preva-
lent and are less deprecated than they are elsewhere ;
as, for example, duels, brawls, feuds, drunkenness,
horse-racing, cock-fighting, gambling, male sexual in-
continence (evidenced by the considerable number of
mulattoes). There is also a livelier sense of honour —
an expression of sportsmanship and a derivative of pred-
atory 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 trans-
mitted 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.

Devout Observatices 327

Also, weddings, funerals, and the like honorific events
among this class are pretty uniformly solemnised 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 mimi-
cry 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 wor-
shippers 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 obser-
vances. 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 indi-
cates something of the devotional attitude of the wor-
shippers. So far as the latter is true, it indicates a
relatively archaic form of the devotional habit. The
predominance of spectacular effects in devout obser-
vances is noticeable m all devout communities at a

328 The Theory of the Leisure Class

relatively primitive stage of culture and with a slight
intellectual development. It is especially characteristic
of the barbarian culture. Here there is pretty uni-
formly present in the devout observances a direct ap-
peal to the emotions through all the avenues of sense.
And a tendency to return to this nai've, sensational
method of appeal is unmistakable in the upper-class
churches of to-day. It is perceptible in a less degree in
the cults which claim the allegiance of the lower leis-
ure class and of the middle classes. There is a reversion
to the use of coloured lights and brilliant spectacles, a
freer use of symbols, orchestral music and incense, and
one may even detect, in *' processionals " and " reces-
sionals " and in richly varied genuflexional evolutions,
an incipient reversion to so antique an accessory of wor-
ship as the sacred dance.

This reversion to spectacular observances is not con-
fined 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 develop-
ment out of the past. But the use of ritual and related
features of devotion are also spreading in other direc-
tions. In tne early days of the American community

Devout Observances 3^9

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 em-
ployment 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 devout-
ness. 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

330 The Theory of the Leisure Class

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 organised
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 con-
sistent 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 generalisation
habitually present in the workman's mind and the
point of view from which he habitually apprehends
phenomena is an enforced cognisance of matter-of-fact
sequence. The result, so far as concerns the work-
man'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 characterised, bevond the fact of a proneness to

Devout Observances 33\

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 organi-
cally 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 cul-
ture, 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 obsoles-
cence. 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 rehabiU-
i'tate, 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 XIII

Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest

In an increasing proportion as time goes on, the
anthropomorphic cult, with its code of devout observ-
ances, suffers a progressive disintegration through the
stress of economic exigencies and the decay of the sys-
tem of status. As this disintegration proceeds, there
come to be associated and blended with the devout atti-
tude 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 devout-
ness in the later devotional life are altogether congruous
with the devout attitude or with the anthropomorphic
apprehension of the sequence of phenomena. Their
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 sub-
servience or vicarious life to which the code of devout
observances and the ecclesiastical and sacerdotal insti-
tutions 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 sup-
port derived from an unbroken tradition. Extraneous

332

Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest 333

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 con-
viviality ; or, in more general terms, the various expres-
sions of the sense of human solidarity and sympathy.
It may be added that these extraneous uses of the eccle-
siastical 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 character-
istic 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 con-
gruity 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
or 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 pro-
nounced self-regarding bias that has been transmitted

334 T^^^^ Theory of the Leisure Class

by tradition from the earlier, more competent phases
of the regime of status. The economic bearing of this
impulse is therefore seen to traverse that of the devout
attitude ; the former goes to qualify, if not to elimi-
nate, the self-regarding bias, through sublation of the
antithesis or antagonism of self and not-self ; while the
latter, being an expression of the sense of personal sub-
servience 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 anthropo-
morphic cults associated with it in the cultural develop-
ment, 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

Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest 335

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 the ha.bits of life
to which they give rise where circumstances favour
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 develop-
ment, tends consistently to the repression of these
aptitudes or to exemption from the habits of thought
in which they express themselves. The positive disci-
pline 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 favours 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. Especicilly in the case of women,
and more particularly as regards the upper-class and
upper-middie-class women of advanced industrial com-
munities, this inhibition goes so far as to insist on
withdrawal even from the emulative process of accumu-

336 The Theory of the Leisure Class

lation by the quasi-predatory methods of the pecuniary
occupations.

The pecuniary or the leisure-class culture, which set
out as an emulative variant of the impulse of workman-
ship, is in its latest development beginning to neutralise
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 which characterise the successful predatory
man. The chances of survival for individuals not gifted
with 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 exception-
ally favourable chances for the survival of traits which
characterise the types of human nature proper to an
earlier and obsolete cultural stage. The class is shel-
tered from the stress of economic exigencies, and is in
this sense withdrawn from the rude impact of forces

Survivals of the N'on-Tnvidions Interest 337

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 reminis-
cent of the predatory culture has already been discussed.
These aptitudes and habits have an exceptionally favour-
able chance of survival under the leisure-class regime.
Not only does the sheltered pecuniary position of the
leisure class afford a situation favourable to the sur-
vival 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 con-
spicuous exercise of certain predatory aptitudes. The
employments in which the predatory aptitudes find ex-
ercise serve as an evidence of wealth, birth, and with-
drawal from the industrial process. The survival of the
predatory traits under the leisure-class culture is fur-
thered both negatively, through the industrial exemp-
tion 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 favours 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 pro-
prieties. 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

33^ The Theory of the Leisure Class

to thwart these aptitudes that make for a non-com'
petitive 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 pro-
prieties 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 fatiga-
tion, so long no considerable departure from the lei-
sure-class scheme of reputable life is to be looked
for. The occurrence of a non-predatory temperament
within 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 devel-
opment, 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 com-
munities 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 apti-

Survivals of tJic Non-Invidious Interest 339

tudes 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' organi-
sations in this direction of non-invidious advancement
of industrial efficiency are also well known.

The tendency to some other than an invidious pur-
pose in life has worked out in a multitude of organisa-
tions, the purpose of which is some work of charity
or of social amelioration. These organisations 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 propensi-
ties in question and of characterising them, some of
the more obvious concrete cases may be cited. Such,
for instance, are the agitation for temperance and simi-
lar 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 settle-
ments, neighbourhood guilds, the various organisations
typified by the Young Men's Christian Association
and the Young People's Society for Christian Endeav-
our, sewing-circles, social clubs, art clubs, and even com-
mercial clubs ; such are also, in some slight measure,

340 The Theory of the Leisure Class

the pecuniary foundations of semi-public establishments
for charity, education, or amusement, whether they are
endowed by wealthy individuals or by contributions
collected from persons of smaller means — in so far as
these estabUshments are not of a religious character.
It is of course not intended to say that these efforts
proceed entirely from other motives than those of a
self-regarding kind. What can be claimed is that other
motives are present in the common run of cases, and
that the perceptibly greater prevalence of effort of this
kind under the circumstances of the modern industrial
life than under the unbroken regime of the principle
of status, indicates the presence in modern life of an
effective scepticism with respect to the full legitimacy
of an emulative scheme of life. It is a matter of suffi-
cient notoriety to have become a commonplace jest
that extraneous motives are commonly present among
the incentives to this class of work — motives of a self-
regarding kind, and especially the motive of an in-
vidious distinction. To such an extent is this true,
that many ostensible works of disinterested public spirit
are no doubt initiated and carried on with a view pri-
marily to the enhanced repute, or even to the pecuniary
gain, of their promoters. In the case of some consid-
erable groups of organisations or establishments of this
kind the invidious motive is apparently the dominant
motive both with the initiators of the work and with
their supporters. This last remark would hold true
especially with respect to such works as lend distinction
to their doer .through large and conspicuous expendi-
ture ; as, for example, the foundation of a university or

Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest 341

of a public library or museum ; but it is also, and per-
haps equally, true of the more commonplace work of
participation in such organisations and movements as
are distinctively upper-class organisations. These serve
to authenticate the pecuniary reputability of their mem-
bers, as well as gratefully to keep them in mind of
their superior status by pointing the contrast between
themselves and the lower-lying humanity in whom the
work of amelioration is to be wrought ; as, for example,
the university settlement, which now has some vogue.
But after all allowances and deductions have been
made, there is left some remainder of motives of a non-
emulative kind. The fact itself that distinction or a
decent good fame is sought by this method is evidence
of a prevalent sense of the legitimacy, and of the pre-
sumptive effectual presence, of a non-emulative, non-
invidious interest, as a constituent factor in the habits
of thought of modern communities.

In all this latter-day range of leisure-class activities
that proceed on the basis of a non-invidious and non-
religious interest, it is to be noted that the women
participate more actively and more persistently than \
the men — except, of course, in the case of such works
as require a large expenditure of means. The dependent
pecuniary position of the women disables them for
work requiring large expenditure. As regards the
general range of ameliorative work, the members of the
priesthood or clergy of the less naively devout sects, or
the secularised denominations, are associated with the
class of the women. This is as the theory would have
it. In other economic relations, also, this clergy stands

342 The Theory of the Leisure Class

in a somewhat equivocal position between the class of
women and that of the men engaged in economic pur-
suits. By tradition and by the prevalent sense of the
proprieties, both the clergy and the women of the well-
to-do classes are placed in the position of a vicarious
leisure class ; with both classes the characteristic rela-
tion which goes to form the habits of thought of the
class is a relation of subservience — that is to say, an
economic relation conceived in personal terms ; in both
classes there is consequently perceptible a special
proneness to construe phenomena in terms of personal
relation rather than of causal sequence ; both classes
are so inhibited by the canons of decency from the
ceremonially unclean processes of the lucrative or pro-
ductive occupations as to make participation in the
industrial life process of to-day a moral impossibility
for them. The result of this ceremonial exclusion from
productive effort of the vulgar sort is to draft a rela-
tively large share of the energies of the modern femi-
nine and priestly classes into the service of other
interests than the self-regarding one. The code leaves
no alternative direction in which the impulse to pur-
poseful action may find expression. The effect of
a consistent inhibition on industrially useful activity
in the case of the leisure-class women shows itself in
a restless assertion of the impulse to workmanship in
other directions than that of business activity.

As has been noticed already, the everyday life of
the well-to-do women and the clergy contains a larger
element of status than that of the average of the men,
especially than that of the men engaged in the modern

Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest 343

industrial occupations proper. Hence the devout atti-
tude survives in a better state of preservation among
these classes than among the common run of men in
the modern communities. Hence an appreciable share
of the energy which seeks expression in a non-lucrative
employment among these members of the vicarious
leisure classes may be expected to eventuate in devout
observances and works of piety. Hence, in part, the
excess of the devout proclivity in women, spoken of in
the last chapter. But it is more to the present point
to note the effect of this proclivity in shaping the
action and colouring the purposes of the non-lucrative
movements and organisations here under discussion.
Where this devout colouring is present it lowers the
immediate efficiency of the organisations for any eco-
nomic end to which their efforts may be directed.
Many organisations, charitable and ameliorative, divide
their attention between the devotional and the secular
well-being of the people whose interests they aim to
further. It can scarcely be doubted that if they were
to give an equally serious attention and effort undi-
videdly to the secular interests of these people, the
immediate economic value of their work should be
appreciably higher than it is. It might of course simi-
larly be said, if this were the place to say it, that the
immediate efficiency of these works of amelioration for
the devout end might be greater if it were not ham-
pered with the secular motives and aims which are
usually present.

Some deduction is to be made from the economic
value of this class of non-invidious enterprise, on

344 ^^^ Theory of the Leisure Class

account of the intrusion of the devotional interest.
But there are also deductions to be made on account
of the presence of other alien motives which more or
less broadly traverse the economic trend of this non-
emulative expression of the instinct of workmanship.
To such an extent is this seen to be true on a closer
scrutiny, that, when all is told, it may even appear
that this general class of enterprises is of an altogether
dubious economic value — as measured in terms of the
fulness or facility of life of the individuals or classes
to whose amelioration the enterprise is directed. For
instance, many of the efforts now in reputable vogue
for the amelioration of the indigent population of large
cities are of the nature, in great part, of a mission of
culture. It is by this means sought to accelerate the
rate of speed at which given elements of the upper-
class culture find acceptance in the everyday scheme
of life of the lower classes. The solicitude of *' settle-
ments," for example, is in part directed to enhance the
industrial efficiency of the poor and to teach them the
more adequate utilisation of the means at hand ; but
it is also no less consistently directed to the incul-
cation, by precept and example, of certain punctilios
of upper-class propriety in manners and customs. The
economic substance of these proprieties will commonly
be found on scrutiny to be a conspicuous waste of time
and goods. ' Those good people who go out to humanise
the poor are commonly, and advisedly, extremely scru-
pulous and silently insistent in matters of decorum and
the decencies of life. They are commonly persons of
an exemplary life and gifted with a tenacious insistence

Survivals of the Non- Invidious Interest 345

on ceremonial cleanness in the various items of their
daily consumption. The cultural or civdlising efficacy
of this inculcation of correct habits of thought with
respect to the consumption of time and commodities
is scarcely to be overrated ; nor is its economic value
to the individual who acquires these higher and more
reputable ideals inconsiderable. Under the circum-
stances of the existing pecuniary culture, the reputa-
bility, and consequently the success, of the individual
is in great measure dependent on his proficiency in
demeanour and methods of consumption that argue
habitual waste of time and goods. But as regards the
ulterior economic bearing of this training in worthier
methods of life, it is to be said that the effect wrought
is in large part a substitution of costlier or less efficient
methods of accomplishing the same material results,
in relations where the material result is the fact of
substantial economic value. The propaganda of cul-
ture is in great part an inculcation of new tastes, or
rather of a new schedule of proprieties, which have
been adapted to the upper-class scheme of life under
the guidance of the leisure-class formulation of the
principles of status and pecuniary decency. This new
schedule of proprieties is intruded into the lower-class
scheme of life from the code elaborated by an ele-
ment of the population whose life lies outside the
industrial process ; and this intrusive schedule can
scarcely be expected to fit the exigencies of life for
these lower classes more adequately than the schedule
already in vogue among them, and especially not more
adequately than the schedule which they are them*

346 The Theory of the Leisure Class

selves working out under the stress of modern indus«
trial life.

All this of course does not question the fact that the
proprieties of the substituted schedule are more deco-
rous than those which they displace. The doubt which
presents itself is simply a doubt as to the economic
expediency of this work of regeneration — that is to
say, the economic expediency in that immediate and
material bearing in which the effects of the change can
be ascertained with some degree of confidence, and as
viewed from the standpoint not of the individual but of
the facility of life of the collectivity. For an apprecia-
tion of the economic expediency of these enterprises of
amehoration, therefore, their effective work is scarcely
to be taken at its face value, even where the aim of the
enterprise is primarily an economic one and where the
interest on which it proceeds is in no sense self-regard-
ing or invidious. The economic reform wrought is
largely of the nature of a permutation in the methods of
conspicuous waste.

But something further is to be said with respect
to the character of the disinterested motives and
canons of procedure in all work of this class that
is affected by the habits of thought characteristic of
the pecuniary culture ; and this further considera-
tion may lead to a further qualification of the con-
clusions already reached. As has been seen in an
earlier chapter, the canons of reputability or decency
under the pecuniary culture insist on habitual futility of
effort as the mark of a pecuniarily blameless life.
There results not only a habit of disesteem of useful

Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest 34;^

occupations, but there results also what is of more deci-
sive consequence in guiding the action of any organised
body of people that lays claim to social good repute.
There is a tradition which requires that one should not
be vulgarly familiar with any of the processes or details
that have to do with the material necessities of life.
One may meritoriously show a quantitative interest in
the well-being of the vulgar, through subscriptions or
through work on managing committees and the like.
One may, perhaps even more meritoriously, show solici-
tude in general and in detail for the cultural welfare of
the vulgar, in the way of contrivances for elevating their
tastes and affording them opportunities for spiritual
amelioration. But one should not betray an intimate
knowledge of the material circumstances of vulgar life,
or of the habits of thought of the vulgar classes, such
as would effectually direct the efforts of these organisa-
tions to a materially useful end. This reluctance to
avow an unduly intimate knowledge of the lower-class
conditions of life in detail of course prevails in very
different degrees in different individuals ; but there is
commonly enough of it present collectively in any or-
ganisation of the kind in question profoundly to influ-
ence its course of action. By its cumulative action in
shaping the usage and precedents of any such body,
this shrinking from an imputation of unseemly famili-
arity with vulgar life tends gradually to set aside the
initial motives of the enterprise, in favour of certain
guiding principles of good repute, ultimately reducible
to terms of pecuniary merit. So that in an organisa-
tion of long standing the initial motive of furthering

348 The Theory of the Leisure Class

the facility of life in these classes comes gradually to be
an ostensible motive only, and the vulgarly effective
work of the organisation tends to obsolescence.

What is true of the efficiency of organisations for
non-invidious work in this respect is true also as regards
the work of individuals proceeding on the same motives;
though it perhaps holds true with more qualification for
individuals than for organised enterprises. The habit
of gauging merit by the leisure-class canons of wasteful
expenditure and unfamiliarity with vulgar life, whether
on the side of production or of consumption, is necessa-
rily strong in the individuals who aspire to do some
work of public utility. And if the individual should
forget his station and turn his efforts to vulgar effec-
tiveness, the common sense of the community — the
sense of pecuniary decency. — would presently reject
his work and set him right. An example of this is
seen in the administration of bequests made by public-
spirited men for the single purpose (at least ostensibly)
of furthering the facility of human life in some particu-
lar respect. The objects for which bequests of this
class are most frequently made at present are schools,
libraries, hospitals, and asylums for the infirm or unfor-
tunate. The avowed purpose of the donor in these
cases is the amelioration of human life in the particular
respect which is named in the bequest ; but it will be
found an invariable rule that in the execution of the
work not a little of other motives, frequently incompati-
ble with the initial motive, is present and determines
the particular disposition eventually made of a good
share of the means which have been set apart by the

Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest 349

bequest. Certain funds, for instance, may have been
set apart as a foundation for a foundling asylum or a
retreat for invalids. The diversion of expenditure to
honorific waste in such cases is not uncommon enough to
cause surprise or even to raise a smile. An apprecia-
ble share of the funds is spent in the construction of an
edifice faced with some aesthetically objectionable but
expensive stone, covered with grotesque and incongru-
ous details, and designed, in its battlemented walls and ]
turrets and its massive portals and strategic approaches, /;
to suggest certain barbaric methods of warfare. The \
interior of the structure shows the same pervasive ■
guidance of the canons of conspicuous waste and pred-
atory exploit. The windows, for instance, to go no
farther into detail, are placed with a view to impress
their pecuniary excellence upon the chance beholder
from the outside, rather than with a view to effective-
ness for their ostensible end in the convenience or com-
fort of the beneficiaries within ; and the detail of interior
arrangement is required to conform itself as best it may
to this alien but imperious requirement of pecuniary
beauty.

In all this, of course, it is not to be presumed that
the donor would have found fault, or that he would have
done otherwise if he had taken control in person ; it
appears that in those cases where such a personal direc-
tion is exercised — where the enterprise is conducted by
direct expenditure and superintendence instead of by
bequest — the aims and methods of management are
not different in this respect. Nor would the benefici-
aries, or the outside observers whose ease or vanity are

350 The Theory of the Leisure Class

not immediately touched, be pleased with a different dis-
position of the funds. It would suit no one to have the
enterprise conducted with a view directly to the most
economical and effective use of the means at hand
for the initial, material end of the foundation. All
concerned, whether their interest is immediate and
self-regarding, or contemplative only, agree that some
considerable share of the expenditure should go to
the higher or spiritual needs derived from the habit
of an invidious comparison in predatory exploit and
pecuniary waste. But this only goes to say that the
canons of emulative and pecuniary reputability so far
pervade the common sense of the community as to
permit no escape or evasion, even in the case of an
enterprise which ostensibly proceeds entirely on the
basis of a non-invidious interest.

It may even be that the enterprise owes its honorific
virtue, as a means of enhancing the donor's good repute,
to the imputed presence of this non-invidious motive ;
but that does not hinder the invidious interest from
guiding the expenditure. The effectual presence of
motives of an emulative or invidious origin in non-emu-
lative works of this kind might be shown at length and
with detail, in any one of the classes of enterprise
spoken of above. Where these honorific details occur,
in such cases, they commonly masquerade under desig-
nations that belong in the field of the aesthetic, ethical,
or economic interest. These special motives, derived
from the standards and canons of the pecuniary culture,
act surreptitiously to divert effort of a non-invidious
kind from effective service, without disturbing the

Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest 351

agent's sense of good intention or obtruding upon his
consciousness the substantial futility of his work. Their
effect might be traced through the entire range of that
schedule of non-invidious, meliorative enterprise that is
so considerable a feature, and especially so conspicuous
a feature, in the overt scheme of life of the well-to-do.
But the theoretical bearing is perhaps clear enough and
may require no further illustration ; especially as some
detailed attention will be given to one of these lines of
enterprise — the establishments for the higher learning
— in another connection.

Under the circumstances of the sheltered situation
in which the leisure class is placed there seems, there-
fore, to be something of a reversion to the range of
non-invidious impulses that characterise the ante-preda-
tory savage culture. The reversion comprises both the
sense of workmanship and the proclivity to indolence
and good-fellowship. But in the modern scheme of life
canons of conduct based on pecuniary or invidious
merit stand in the way of a free exercise of these
impulses ; and the dominant presence of these canons
of conduct goes far to divert such efforts as are made
on the basis of the non-invidious interest to the service
of that invidious interest on which the pecuniary culture
rests. The canons of pecuniary decency are reducible
for the present purpose to the principles of waste, futil-
ity, and ferocity. The requirements of decency are
imperiously present in meliorative enterprise as in
other lines of conduct, and exercise a selective surveil-
lance over the details of conduct and management in
any enterprise. By guiding and adapting the method

352 The Theory of the Leisure Class

in detail, these canons of decency go far to make al\
non-invidious aspiration or effort nugatory. The per-
vasive, impersonal, un-eager principle of futility is at
hand from day to day and works obstructively to hinder
the effectual expression of so much of the surviving
ante-predatory aptitudes as is to be classed under the
instinct of workmanship ; but its presence does not
preclude the transmission of those aptitudes or the con-
tinued recurrence of an impulse to find expression for
them.

In the later and farther development of the pecuniary
culture, the requirement of withdrawal from the indus-
trial process in order to avoid social odium is carried so
far as to comprise abstention from the emulative em-
ployments. At this advanced stage the pecuniary cul-
ture negatively favours the assertion of the non-invidious
propensities by relaxing the stress laid on the merit of
emulative, predatory, or pecuniary occupations, as com-
pared with those of an industrial or productive kind.
As was noticed above, the requirement of such with-
drawal from all employment that is of human use applies
more rigorously to the upper-class women than to any
other class, unless the priesthood of certain cults might
be cited as an exception, perhaps more apparent than
real, to this rule. The reason for the more extreme in-
sistence on a futile life for this class of women than for
the men of the same pecuniary and social grade lies in
their being not only an upper-grade leisure class but
also at the same time a vicarious leisure class. There
is in their case a double ground for a consistent with-
drawal from useful effort.

Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest 353

It has been well and repeatedly said by popular
writers and speakers who reflect the common sense of
intelligent people on questions of social structure and
function that the position of woman in any community
is the most striking index of the level of culture attained
by the community, and it might be added, by any given
class in the community. This remark is perhaps truer
as regards the stage of economic development than as
regards development in any other respect. At the same
time the position assigned to the woman in the accepted
scheme of life, in any community or under any culture, is
in a very great degree an expression of traditions which
have been shaped by the circumstances of an earlier
phase of development, and which have been but par-
tially adapted to the existing economic circumstances,
or to the existing exigencies of temperament and habits
of mind by which the women living under this modern
economic situation are actuated.

The fact has already been remarked upon incidentally
in the course of the discussion of the growth of economic
institutions generally, and in particular in speaking of
vicarious leisure and of dress, that the position of
women in the modern economic scheme is more widely
and more consistently at variance with the promptings
of the instinct of workmanship than is the position of
the men of the same classes. It is also apparently true
that the woman's temperament includes a larger share
of this instinct that approves peace and disapproves
futility. It is therefore not a fortuitous circumstance
that the women of modern industrial communities show
a livelier sense of the discrepancy between the accepted

2A

354 ^^^^ Theory of the Leisure Class

scheme of life and the exigencies of the economic
situation.

The several phases of the '* woman question " have
brought out in intelligible form the extent to which the
life of women in modern society, and in the polite
circles especially, is regulated by a body of common
sense formulated under the economic circumstances of
an earlier phase of development. It is still felt that
woman's life, in its civil, economic, and social bearing, is
essentially and normally a vicarious life, the merit or
demerit of which is, in the nature of things, to be im-
puted to some other individual who stands in some
relation of ownership or tutelage to the woman. So,
for instance, any action on the part of a woman which
traverses an injunction of the accepted schedule of pro-
prieties is felt to reflect immediately upon the honour
of the man whose woman she is. There may of course
be some sense of incongruity in the mind of any one
passing an opinion of this kind on the woman's frailty
or perversity; but the common-sense judgment of the
community in such matters is, after all, delivered with-
out much hesitation, and few men would question the
legitimacy of their sense of an outraged tutelage in
any case that might arise. On the other hand, rela-
tively little discredit attaches to a woman through the
evil deeds of the man with whom her life is associated.

The good and beautiful scheme of life, then — that is
to say the scheme to which we are habituated — assigns
to the woman a ** sphere " ancillary to the activity of the
man ; and it is felt that any departure from the tradi-
tions of her assigned round of duties is unwomanly. If

Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest 355

the question is as to civil rights or the suffrage, our
common sense in the matter — that is to say the logical
deliverance of our general scheme of life upon the point
in question — says that the woman should be repre-
sented in the body politic and before the law, not im-
mediately in her own person, but through the mediation
of the head of the household to which she belongs. It
is unfeminine in her to aspire to a self-directing, self-
centred life; and our common sense tells us that her
direct participation in the affairs of the community,
civil or industrial, is a menace to that social order
which expresses our habits of thought as they have
been formed under the guidance of the traditions of
the pecuniary culture. "All this fume and froth of
' emancipating woman from the slavery of man ' and so
on, is, to use the chaste and expressive language of
Elizabeth Cady Stanton inversely, 'utter rot.' The
social relations of the sexes are fixed by nature. Our
entire civiHsation — that is whatever is good in it — is
based on the home." The "home" is the household
with a male head. This view, but commonly expressed
even more chastely, is the prevailing view of the woman's
status, not only among the common run of the men of
civilised communities, but among the women as well.
Women have a very alert sense of what the scheme of
proprieties requires, and while it is true that many of
them are ill at ease under the details which the code
imposes, there are few who do not recognise that the
existing moral order, of necessity and by the divine
right of prescription, places the woman in a position
ancillary to the man. In the last analysis, according

35^ The Theory of the Leisure Class

to her own sense of what is good and beautiful, the
woman's life is, and in theory must be, an expression of
the man's life at the second remove.

But in spite of this pervading sense of what is the
good and natural place for the woman, there is also per-
ceptible an incipient development of sentiment to the
effect that this whole arrangement of tutelage and
vicarious life and imputation of merit and demerit is
somehow a mistake. Or, at least, that even if it may
be a natural growth and a good arrangement in its time
and place, and in spite of its patent aesthetic value, still
it does not adequately serve the more everyday ends of
life in a modern industrial community. Even that large
and substantial body of well-bred, upper and middle-class
women to whose dispassionate, matronly sense of the
traditional proprieties this relation of status commends
itself as fundamentally and eternally right — even these,
whose attitude is conservative, commonly find some
slight discrepancy in detail between things as they are
and as they should be in this respect. But that less
manageable body of modern women who, by force of
youth, education, or temperament, are in some degree
out of touch with the traditions of status received from
the barbarian culture, and in whom there is, perhaps, an
undue reversion to the impulse of self-expression and
workmanship, — these are touched with a sense of
grievance too vivid to leave them at rest.

In this "New-Woman" movement, — as these blind
and incoherent efforts to rehabilitate the woman's pre-gla-
cial standing have been named, — there are at least two
elements discernible, both of which are of an economic

Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest 357

character. These two elements or motives are ex-
pressed by the double watchword, " Emancipation " and
"Work." Each of these words is recognised to stand
for something in the way of a wide-spread sense of
grievance. The prevalence of the sentiment is recog-
nised even by people who do not see that there is any
real ground for a grievance in the situation as it stands
to-day. It is among the women of the well-to-do classes,
in the communities which are farthest advanced in
industrial development, that this sense of a grievance
to be redressed is most alive and finds most frequent
expression. That is to say, in other words, there is a
demand, more or less serious, for emancipation from all
relation of status, tutelage, or vicarious life ; and the
revulsion asserts itself especially among the class of
women upon whom the scheme of life handed down
from the regime of status imposes with least mitigation
a vicarious life, and in those communities whose eco-
nomic development has departed farthest from the cir-
cumstances to which this traditional scheme is adapted.
The demand comes from that portion of womankind
which is excluded by the canons of good repute from
all effectual work, and which is closely reserved for a
life of leisure and conspicuous consumption.

More than one critic of this new-woman movement
has misapprehended its motive. The case of the Amer-
ican "new woman" has lately been summed up with
some warmth by a popular observer of social phenom-
ena: "She is petted by her husband, the most devoted
and hard-working of husbands in the world. . . . She
is the superior of her husband in education, and in

358 The Theory of the Leisure Class

almost every respect. She is surrounded by the most
numerous and delicate attentions. Yet she is not satis-
fied. . . . The Anglo-Saxon 'new woman ' is the most
ridiculous production of modern times, and destined to
be the most ghastly failure of the century." Apart
from the deprecation — perhaps well placed — which is
contained in this presentment, it adds nothing but
obscurity to the woman question. The grievance of
the new woman is made up of those things which this
typical characterisation of the movement urges as
reasons why she should be content. She is petted, and
is permitted, or even required, to consume largely and
conspicuously — vicariously for her husband or other
natural guardian. She is exempted, or debarred, from
vulgarly useful employment — in order to perform
leisure vicariously for the good repute of her natural
(pecuniary) guardian. These offices are the conven-
tional marks of the un-free, at the same time that they
are incompatible with the human impulse to purposeful
activity. But the woman is endowed with her share —
which there is reason to believe is more than an even
share — of the instinct of workmanship, to which
futility of life or of expenditure is obnoxious. She
must unfold her life activity in response to the direct,
unmediated stimuli of the economic environment with
which she is in contact. The impulse is perhaps
stronger upon the woman than upon the man to live
her own life in her own way and to enter the industrial
process of the community at something nearer than the
second remove.

So long as the woman's place is consistently that of a

Survivals of the Non-Invidioiis Interest 359

drudge, she is, in the average of cases, fairly contented
with her lot. She not only has something tangible and
purposeful to do, but she has also no time or thought
to spare for a rebellious assertion of such human pro-
pensity to self-direction as she has inherited. And
after the stage of universal female drudgery is passed,
and a vicarious leisure without strenuous application
becomes the accredited employment of the women of
the well-to-do classes, the prescriptive force of the canon
of pecuniary decency, which requires the observance of
ceremonial futility on their part, will long preserve high-
minded women from any sentimental leaning to self-
direction and a "sphere of usefulness." This is espe-
cially true during the earlier phases of the pecuniary
culture, while the leisure of the leisure class is still in
great measure a predatory activity, an active assertion
of mastery in which there is enough of tangible purpose
of an invidious kind to admit of its being taken seri-
ously as an employment to which one may without
shame put one's hand. This condition of things has
obviously lasted well down into the present in some
communities. It continues to hold to a different extent
for different individuals, varying with the vividness of
the sense of status and with the feebleness of the im-
pulse to workmanship with which the individual is
endowed. But where the economic structure of the
community has so far outgrown the scheme of life based
on status that the relation of personal subservience is
no longer felt to be the sole " natural " human relation ;
there the ancient habit of purposeful activity will begin
to assert itself in the less conformable individuals,

360 The Theory of the Leisure Class

against the more recent, relatively superficial, relatively
ephemeral habits and views which the predatory and
the pecuniary culture have contributed to our scheme
of life. These habits and views begin to lose their
coercive force for the community or the class in ques-
tion so soon as the habit of mind and the views of life
due to the predatory and the quasi-peaceable discipline
cease to be in fairly close accord with the later-developed
economic situation. This is evident in the case of the
industrious classes of modern communities; for them
the leisure-class scheme of life has lost much of its
binding force, especially as regards the element of
status. But it is also visibly being verified in the
case of the upper classes, though not in the same
manner.

The habits derived from the predatory and quasi-
peaceable culture are relatively ephemeral variants of
certain underlying propensities and mental character-
istics of the race; which it owes to the protracted dis-
cipline of the earlier, proto-anthropoid cultural stage
of peaceable, relatively undifferentiated economic life
carried on in contact with a relatively simple and inva-
riable material environment. When the habits superin-
duced by the emulative method of life have ceased to
enjoy the sanction of existing economic exigencies, a
process of disintegration sets in whereby the habits
of thought of more recent growth and of a less generic
character to some extent yield the ground before the
more ancient and more pervading spiritual character-
istics of the race.

In a sense, then, the new-woman movemen<- marks

Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest 361

a reversion to a more generic type of human character,
or to a less differentiated expression of human nature.
It is a type of human nature which is to be character-
ised as proto-anthropoid, and, as regards the substance
if not the form of its dominant traits, it belongs to a
cultural stage that may be classed as possibly sub-
human. The particular movement or evolutional feat-
ure in question of course shares this characterisation
with the rest of the later social development, in so far
as this social development shows evidence of a rever-
sion to the spiritual attitude that characterises the
earlier, undifferentiated stage of economic evolution.
Such evidence of a general tendency to reversion from
the dominance of the invidious interest is not entirely
wanting, although it is neither plentiful nor unquestion-
ably convincing. The general decay of the sense of
status in modern industrial communities goes some way
as evidence in this direction; and the perceptible return
to a disapproval of futility in human life, and a disap-
proval of such activities as serve only the individual
gain at the cost of the collectivity or at the cost of
other social groups, is evidence to a like effect. There
is a perceptible tendency to deprecate the infliction of
pain, as well as to discredit all marauding enterprises,
even where these expressions of the invidious interest
do not tangibly work to the material detriment of the
comnnmity or of the individual who passes an opinion
on them. It may even be said that in the modern
industrial communities the average, dispassionate sense
of men says that the ideal human character is a char-
acter which makes for peace, good-will, and economic

362 TJie Theory of the Leistire Class

efficiency, rather than for a life of self-seeking, force,
fraud, and mastery.

The influence of the leisure class is not consistently
for or against the rehabilitation of this proto-anthropoid
human nature. So far as concerns the chance of sur-
vival of individuals endowed with an exceptionally large
share of the primitive traits, the sheltered position of
the class favours its members directly by withdrawing
them from the pecuniary struggle ; but indirectly,
through the leisure-class canons of conspicuous waste
of goods and effort, the institution of a leisure class les-
sens the chance of survival of such individuals in the
entire body of the population. The decent require-
ments of waste absorb the surplus energy of the popu-
lation in an invidious struggle and leave no margin for
the non-invidious expression of life. The remoter, less
tangible, spiritual effects of the discipline of decency go
in the same direction and work perhaps more effectually
to the same end. The canons of decent life are an
elaboration of the principle of invidious comparison,
and they accordingly act consistently to inhibit all non-
invidious effort and to inculcate the self-regarding
attitude.

CHAPTER XIV

The Higher Learning as an Expression of the
Pecuniary Culture

To the end that suitable habits of thought on cer-
tain heads may be conserved in the incoming genera-
tion, a scholastic discipline is sanctioned by the common
sense of the community and incorporated into the ac-
credited scheme of life. The habits of thought which
are so formed under the guidance of teachers and scho-
lastic traditions have an economic value — a value as
affecting the serviceability of the individual — no less
real than the similar economic value of the habits of
thought formed without such guidance under the disci-
pline of everyday life. Whatever characteristics of the
accredited scholastic scheme and discipline are traceable
to the predilections of the leisure class or to the guid-
ance of the canons of pecuniary merit are to be set
down to the account of that institution, and whatever
economic value these features of the educational scheme
possess are the expression in detail of the value of that
institution. It will be in place, therefore, to point out
any peculiar features of the educational system which
are traceable to the leisure-class scheme of life, whether
as regards the aim and method of the discipline, or as
regards the compass and character of the body of

363

364 The Theory of the Leisure Class

knowledge inculcated. It is in learning proper, and
more particularly in the higher learning, that the influ-
ence of leisure-class ideals is most patent ; and since
the purpose here is not to make an exhaustive collation
of data showing the effect of the pecuniary culture upon
education, but rather to illustrate the method and trend
of leisure-class influence in education, a survey of cer-
tain salient features of the higher learning, such as may
serve this purpose, is all that will be attempted.

In point of derivation and early development, learning
is somewhat closely related to the devotional function
of the community, particularly to the body of observ-
ances in which the service rendered the supernatural
leisure class expresses itself. The service by which it
is sought to conciliate supernatural agencies in the
primitive cults is not an industrially profitable employ-
ment of the community's time and effort. It is, there-
fore, in great part, to be classed as a vicarious leisure
performed for the supernatural powers with whom ne-
gotiations are carried on and whose good-will the service
and the professions of subservience are conceived to
procure. In great part, the early learning consisted
in an acquisition of knowledge and facility in the ser-
vice of a supernatural agent. It was therefore closely
analogous in character to the training required for the
domestic service of a temporal master. To a great
extent, the knowledge acquired under the priestly
teachers of the primitive community was a knowledge
of ritual and ceremonial ; that is to say, a knowledge of
the most proper, most effective, or most acceptable
manner of approaching and of serving the preternatural

The Higher Learning 365

agents. What was learned was how to make oneself
indispensable to these powers, and so to put oneself in
a position to ask, or even to require, their intercession
in the course of events or their abstention from inter-
ference in any given enterprise. Propitiation was the
end, and this end was sought, in great part, by acquir-
ing facility in subservience. It appears to have been
only gradually that other elements than those of effi-
cient service of the master found their way into the
stbck of priestly or shamanistic instruction.

The priestly servitor of the inscrutable powers that
move in the external world came to stand in the posi-
tion of a mediator between these powers and the
common run of uninstructed humanity ; for he was
possessed of a knowledge of the supernatural etiquette
which would admit him into the presence. And as
commonly happens with mediators between the vulgar
and their masters, whether the masters be natural or
preternatural, he found it expedient to have the means
at hand tangibly to impress upon the vulgar the fact
that these inscrutable powers would do what he might
ask of them. Hence, presently, a knowledge of certain
natural processes which could be turned to account for
spectacular effect, together with some sleight of hand,
came to be an integral part of priestly lore. Knowledge
of this kind passes for knowledge of the "unknowable,"
and it owes its serviceability for the sacerdotal purpose
to its recondite character. It appears to have been
from this source that learning, as an institution, arose,
and its differentiation from this its parent stock of
magic ritual and shamanistic fraud has been slow and

366 The Theory of the Leisure Class

tedious, and is scarcely yet complete even in the most
advanced of the higher seminaries of learning.

The recondite element in learning is still, as it has
been in all ages, a very attractive and effective element
for the purpose of impressing, or even imposing upon,
the unlearned; and the standing of the savant in the
mind of the altogether unlettered is in great measure
rated in terms of intimacy with the occult forces. So,
for instance, as a typical case, even so late as the
middle of this century, the Norwegian peasants have
instinctively formulated their sense of the superior
erudition of such doctors of divinity as Luther, Melanch-
thon, Peder Dass, and even so late a scholar in divinity
as Grundtvig, in terms of the Black Art. These, to-
gether with a very comprehensive list of minor celeb-
rities, both living and dead, have been reputed masters
in all magical arts ; and a high position in the ecclesi-
astical personnel has carried with it, in the apprehen-
sion of these good people, an implication of profound
familiarity with magical practice and the occult sciences.
There is a parallel fact nearer home, similarly going to
show the close relationship, in popular apprehension,
between erudition and the unknowable ; and it will at
the same time serve to illustrate, in somewhat coarse
outline, the bent which leisure-class life giv6s to the
cognitive interest. While the belief is by no means
confined to the leisure class, that class to-day comprises
a disproportionately large number of believers in occult
sciences of all kinds and shades. By those whose
habits of thought are not shaped by contact with
modern industry, the knowledge of the unknowable

The Higher Learning 367

is still felt to be the ultimate if not the only true
knowledge.

Learning, then, set out with being in some sense a
by-product of the priestly vicarious leisure class ; and,
at least until a recent date, the higher learning has
since remained in some sense a by-product or by-occu-
pation of the priestly classes. As the body of system-
atised knowledge increased, there presently arose a
distinction, traceable very far back in the history of
education, between esoteric and exoteric knowledge ;
the former — so far as there is a substantial difference
between the two — comprising such knowledge as is
primarily of no economic or industrial effect, and the
latter comprising chiefly knowledge of industrial pro-
cesses and of natural phenomena which were habitually
turned to account for the material purposes of life.
This line of demarcation has in time become, at least
in popular apprehension, the normal line between the
higher learning and the lower.

It is significant, not only as an evidence of their close
affiliation with the priestly craft, but also as indicating
that their activity to a good extent falls under that
category of conspicuous leisure known as manners and
breeding, that the learned class in all primitive com-
munities are great sticklers for form, precedent, grada-
tions of rank, ritual, ceremonial vestments, and learned
paraphernalia generally. This is of course to be ex-
pected, and it goes to say that the higher learning, in
its incipient phase, is a leisure-class occupation — more
specifically an occupation of the vicarious leisure class
employed in the service of the supernatural leisure

\

368 The Theory of the Leisure Class

class. But this predilection for the paraphernalia ot
learning goes also to indicate a further point of contact
or of continuity between the priestly office and the
office of the savant. In point of derivation, learning,
as well as the priestly office, is largely an outgrowth of
sympathetic magic ; and this magical apparatus of form
and ritual therefore finds its place with the learned
class of the primitive community as a matter of course.
The ritual and paraphernalia have an occult efficacy for
the magical purpose ; so that their presence as an
integral factor in the earlier phases of the development
of magic and science is a matter of expediency, quite as
much as of affectionate regard for symbolism simply.

This sense of the efficacy of symbolic ritual, and of
sympathetic effect to be wrought through dexterous
rehearsal of the traditional accessories of the act or end
to be compassed, is of course present more obviously
and in larger measure in magical practice than in the
discipline of the sciences, even of the occult sciences.
But there are, I apprehend, few persons with a culti-
vated sense of scholastic merit to whom the ritualistic
accessories of science are altogether an idle matter.
The very great tenacity with which these ritualistic
paraphernalia persist through the later course of the
development is evident to any one who will reflect on
what has been the history of learning in our civilisation.
Even to-day there are such things in the usage of the
learned community as the cap and gown, matriculation,
initiation, and graduation ceremonies, and the confer-
ring of scholastic degrees, dignities, and prerogatives
(n a way which suggests some sort of a scholarly apos-

The Higher Learning 369

tolic succession. The usage of the priestly orders is
no doubt the proximate source of all these features of
learned ritual, vestments, sacramental initiation, the
transmission of peculiar dignities and virtues by the
imposition of hands, and the like ; but their derivation
is traceable back of this point, to the source from which
the specialised priestly class proper received them in
the course of differentiation by which the priest came
to be distinguished from the sorcerer on the one hand
and from the menial servant of a temporal master on
the other hand. So far as regards both their derivation
and their psychological content, these usages and the
conceptions on which they rest belong to a stage in
cultural development no later than that of the angekok
and the rain-maker. Their place in the later phases of
devout observance, as well as in the higher educational
system, is that of a survival from a very early animistic
phase of the development of human nature.

These ritualistic features of the educational system
of the present and of the recent past, it is quite safe to
say, have their place primarily in the higher, Hberal,
and classic institutions and grades of learning, rather
than in the lower, technological, or practical grades and
branches of the system. So far as they possess them,
the lower and less reputable branches of the educa-
tional scheme have evidently borrowed these things
from the higher grades ; and their continued persist-
ence among the practical schools, without the sanction
of the continued example of the higher and classic
grades, would be highly improbable, to say the least.
With the lower and practical schools and scholars, the

2B

370 The Theory of the Leisure Class

adoption and cultivation of these usages is a case of
mimicry — due to a desire to conform as far as may be
to the standards of scholastic reputability maintained
by the upper grades and classes, who have come by
these accessory features legitimately, by the right of
lineal devolution.

The analysis may even be safely carried a step
farther. Ritualistic survivals and reversions come out
in fullest vigour and with the freest air of spontaneity
among those seminaries of learning which have to do
primarily with the education of the priestly and leisure
classes. Accordingly it should appear, and it does
pretty plainly appear, on a survey of recent developments
in college and university life, that wherever schools
founded for the instruction of the lower classes in the
immediately useful branches of knowledge grow into
institutions of the higher learning, the growth of ritual-
istic ceremonial and paraphernalia and of elaborate schol-
astic "functions" goes hand in hand with the transition
of the schools in question from the field of homely prac-
ticality into the higher, classical sphere. The initial
purpose of these schools, and the work with which they
have chiefly had to do at the earlier of these two stages
of their evolution, has been that of fitting the young of
the industrious classes for work. On the higher, classical
plane of learning to which they commonly tend, their
dominant aim becomes the preparation of the youth of
the priestly and the leisure classes — or of an incipient
leisure class — for the consumption of goods, material
and immaterial, according to a conventionally ac-
cepted, reputable scope and method. This happy issue

The Higher Learning 37 ^

has commonly been the fate of schools founded by
"friends of the people " for the aid of struggling young
men, and where this transition is made in good form
there is commonly, if not invariably, a coincident change
to a more ritualistic life in the schools. r \-^j^

In the school life of to-day, learned ritual is in a
general way best at home in schools whose chief end is
the cultivation of the "humanities." This correlation
is shown, perhaps more neatly than anywhere else, in
the life-history of the American colleges and universities
of recent growth. There may be many exceptions from
the rule, especially among those schools which have
been founded by the typically reputable and ritualistic
churches, and which, therefore, started on the conser-
vative and classical plane or reached the classical
position by a short-cut ; but the general rule as regards
the colleges founded in the newer American communi-
ties during the present century has been that so long
as the community has remained poor, and so long as the
constituency from which the colleges have drawn their
pupils has been dominated by habits of industry and
thrift, so long the reminiscences of the medicine-man
have found but a scant and precarious acceptance in
the scheme of college life. But so soon as wealth
begins appreciably to accumulate in the community,
and so soon as a given school begins to lean on a
leisure-class constituency, there comes also a percep-
tibly increased insistence on scholastic ritual and on
conformity to the ancient forms as regards vestments
and social and scholastic solemnities. So, for instance,
there has been an approximate coincidence between

3/2 The Theory of the Leisure Class

the growth of wealth among the constituency which
supports any given college of the Middle West and the
date of acceptance — first into tolerance and then into
imperative vogue — of evening dress for men and of
the decollete for women, as the scholarly vestments
proper to occasions of learned solemnity or to the
seasons of social amenity within the college circle.
Apart from the mechanical difficulty of so large a task,
it would scarcely be a difficult matter to trace this
correlation. The like is true of the vogue of the cap
and gown.

Cap and gown have been adopted as learned insignia
by many colleges of this section within the last few
years ; and it is safe to say that this could scarcely have
occurred at a much earlier date, or until there had grown
up a leisure-class sentiment of sufficient volume in the
community to support a strong movement of reversion
towards an archaic view as to the legitimate end of edu-
cation. This particular item of learned ritual, it may
be noted, would not only commend itself to the leisure-
class sense of the fitness of things, as appealing to the
archaic propensity for spectacular effect and the predi-
lection for antique symbolism ; but it at the same time
fits into the leisure-class scheme of life as involving a
notable element of conspicuous waste. The precise
date at which the reversion to cap and gown took place,
as well as the fact that it affected so large a number of
schools at about the same time, seems to have been
due in some measure to a wave of atavistic sense of
conformity and reputability that passed over the com-
munity at that period.

The Higher Learning • 373

It may not be entirely beside the point to note that
in point of time this curious reversion seems to coincide
with the culmination of a certain vogue of atavistic
sentiment and tradition in other directions also. The
wave of reversion seems to have received its initial
impulse in the psychologically disintegrating effects of
the Civil War. Habituation to war entails a body of
predatory habits of thought, whereby clannishness
in some measure replaces the sense of solidarity, and
a sense of invidious distinction supplants the impulse
to equitable, everyday serviceability. As an outcome
of the cumulative action of these factors, the genera-
tion which follows a season of war is apt to witness a
rehabilitation of the element of status, both in its social
hfe and in its scheme of devout observances and other
symboHc or ceremonial forms. Throughout the eigh-
ties, and less plainly traceable through the seventies
also, there was perceptible a gradually advancing wave
of sentiment favouring quasi-predatory business habits,
insistence on status, anthropomorphism, and conserva-
tism generally. The more direct and unmediated of
these expressions of the barbarian temperament, such
as the recrudescence of outlawry and the spectacular
quasi-predatory careers of fraud run by certain "cap-
tains of industry," came to a head earlier and were
appreciably on the decline by the close of the seventies.
The recrudescence of anthropomorphic sentiment also
seems to have passed its most acute stage before the
close of the eighties. But the learned ritual and para-
phernalia here spoken of are a still remoter and more
recondite expression of the barbarian animistic sense ;

374 ^^^ Theory of the Leisure Class

and these, therefore, gained vogue and elaboration more
slowly and reached their most effective development at
a still later date. There is reason to believe that the
culmination is now already past. Except for the new
impetus given by a new war experience, and except for
the support which the growth of a wealthy class affords to
all ritual, and especially to whatever ceremonial is waste-
ful and pointedly suggests gradations of status, it is
probable that the late improvements and augmentation
of scholastic insignia and ceremonial would gradually
decline. But while it may be true that the cap and
gown, and the more strenuous observance of scholastic
proprieties which came with them, were floated in on
this post-bellum tidal wave of reversion to barbarism, it
is also no doubt true that such a ritualistic reversion
could not have been effected in the college scheme of
life until the accumulation of wealth in the hands of
a propertied class had gone far enough to afford the
requisite pecuniary ground for a movement which should
bring the colleges of the country up to the leisure-class
requirements in the higher learning. The adoption of
the cap and gown is one of the striking atavistic feat-
ures of modern college life, and at the same time it
marks the fact that these colleges have definitively
become leisure-class establishments, either in actual
achievement or in aspiration.

As further evidence of the close relation between
the educational system and the cultural standards of
the community, it may be remarked that there is some
tendency latterly to substitute the captain of industry
in place of the priest, as the head of seminaries of the

The Higher Learning 375

higher learning. The substitution is by no means
complete or unequivocal. Those heads of institutions
are best accepted who combine the sacerdotal office
with a high degree of pecuniary efficiency. There is
a similar but less pronounced tendency to intrust the
work of instruction in the higher learning to men of
some pecuniary qualification. Administrative ability
and skill in advertising the enterprise count for rather
more than they once did, as qualifications for the work
of teaching. This applies especially in those sciences
that have most to do with the everyday facts of life,
and it is particularly true of schools in the economically
single-minded communities. This partial substitution
of pecuniary for sacerdotal efficiency is a concomitant
of the modern transition from conspicuous leisure to
conspicuous consumption, as the chief means of reputa-
bility. The correlation of the two facts is probably
clear without further elaboration.

The attitude of the schools and of the learned class
towards the education of women serves to show in what
manner and to what extent learning has departed from
its ancient station of priestly and leisure-class preroga-
tive, and it indicates also what approach has been made
by the truly learned to the modern, economic or indus-
trial, matter-of-fact standpoint. The higher schools and
the learned professions were until recently tabu to the
women. These establishments were from the outset,
and have in great measure continued to be, devoted to
the education of the priestly and leisure classes.

The women, as has been shown elsewhere, were the
original subservient class, and to some extent, espe-

5/6 TJte Theory of the Leisure Class

daily so far as regards their nominal or ceremonial po.
sition, they have remained in that relation down to the
present. There has prevailed a strong sense that the
admission of women to the privileges of the higher
learning (as to the Eleusinian mysteries) would be
derogatory to the dignity of the learned craft. It is
therefore only very recently, and almost solely in the
industrially most advanced communities, that the higher
grades of schools have been freely opened to women.
And even under the urgent circumstances prevailing in
the modern industrial communities, the highest and
most reputable universities show an extreme reluctance
in making the move. The sense of class worthiness,
that is to say of status, of a honorific differentiation of
the sexes according to a distinction between superior
and inferior intellectual dignity, survives in a vigorous
form in these corporations of the aristocracy of learn-
ing. It is felt that the women should, in all propriety,
acquire only such knowledge as may be classed under
one or the other of two heads : (i) such knowledge as
conduces immediately to a better performance of domes-
tic service — the domestic sphere; (2) such accomplish-
ments and dexterity, quasi-scholarly and quasi-artistic,
as plainly come in under the head of a performance of
vicarious leisure. Knowledge is felt to be unfeminine
if it is knowledge which expresses the unfolding of the
learner's own life, the acquisition of which proceeds on
the learner's own cognitive interest, without prompting
from the canons of propriety, and without reference
back to a master whose comfort or good repute is to
be enhanced by the employment or the exhibition of

Thi Higher Learning 377

it. So, also, all knowledge which is useful as evidence
of leisure, other than vicarious leisure, is scarcely
feminine.

For an appreciation of the relation which these
higher seminaries of learning bear to the economic life
of the community, the phenomena which have been
reviewed are of importance rather as indications of
a general attitude than as being in themselves facts
of first-rate economic consequence. They go to show
what is the instinctive attitude and animus of the
learned class towards the life process of an industrial
community. They serve as an exponent of the stage
of development, for the industrial purpose, attained
by the higher learning and by the learned class, and
so they afford an indication as to what may fairly be
looked for from this class at points where the learning
and the life of the class bear more immediately upon
the economic life and efficiency of the community, and
upon the adjustment of its scheme of life to the require-
ments of the time. What these ritualistic survivals go
to indicate is a prevalence of conservatism, if not of
reactionary sentiment, especially among the higher
schools where the conventional learning is cultivated.

To these indications of a conservative attitude is to
be added another characteristic which goes in the same
direction, but which is a symptom of graver consequence
than this playful inclination to trivialities of form and
ritual. By far the greater number of American colleges
and universities, for instance, are affiliated to some reli-
gious denomination and are somewhat given to devout
observances Their putative familiarity with scientific

3/8 The Theory of the Leisure Class

methods and the scientific point of view should presum*
ably exempt the faculties of these schools from animistic
habits of thought ; but there is still a considerable pro-
portion of them who profess an attachment to the an-
thropomorphic beliefs and observances of an earlier
culture. These professions of devotional zeal are, no
doubt, to a good extent expedient and perfunctory, both
on the part of the schools in their corporate capacity,
and on the part of the individual members of the corps
of instructors ; but it can not be doubted that there is
after all a very appreciable element of anthropomorphic
sentiment present in the higher schools. So far as this
is the case it must be set down as the expression of an
archaic, animistic habit of mind. This habit of mind
must necessarily assert itself to some extent in the
instruction offered, and to this extent its influence in
shaping the habits of thought of the student makes for
conservatism and reversion ; it acts to hinder his devel-
opment in the direction of matter-of-fact knowledge,
such as best serves the ends of industry.

The college sports, which have so great a vogue in
the reputable seminaries of learning to-day, tend in a
similar direction ; and, indeed, sports have much in com-
mon with the devout attitude of the colleges, both as
regards their psychological basis and as regards their
disciplinary effect. But this expression of the barbarian
temperament is to be credited primarily to the body of
students, rather than to the temper of the schools as
such ; except in so far as the colleges or the college
officials — as sometimes happens — actively countenance
and foster the growth of sports. The like is true of col-

The Higher Learning 379

lege fraternities as of college sports, but with a difference.
The latter are chiefly an expression of the predatory
impulse simply ; the former are more specifically an ex-
pression of that heritage of clannishness which is so
large a feature in the temperament of the predatory
barbarian. It is also noticeable that a close relation
subsists between the fraternities and the sporting activ-
ity of the schools. After what has already been said in
an earlier chapter on the sporting and gambling habit,
it is scarcely necessary further to discuss the economic
value of this training in sports and in factional organisa-
tion and activity.

But all these features of the scheme of life of the
learned class, and of the establishments dedicated to the
conservation of the higher learning, are in a great meas-
ure incidental only. They are scarcely to be accounted
organic elements of the professed work of research and
instruction for the ostensible pursuit of which the
schools exist. Biit these symptomatic indications go to
establish a presumption as to the character of the work
performed — as seen from the economic point of view —
and as to the bent which the serious work carried on
under their auspices gives to the youth who resort to the
schools. The presumption raised by the considerations
already offered is that in their work also, as well as in
their ceremonial, the higher schools may be expected to
take a conservative position ; but this presumption must
be checked by a comparison of the economic character
of the work actually performed, and by something of a
survey of the learning whose conservation is intrusted
to the higher schools. On this head, it is well known

380 The Theory of the Leisure Class

that the accredited seminaries of learning have, until a
recent date, held a conservative position. They have
taken an attitude of deprecation towards all innovations.
As a general rule a new point of view or a new formula-
tion of knowledge have been countenanced and taken up
within the schools only after these new things have
made their way outside of the schools. As exceptions
from this rule are chiefly to be mentioned innovations of
an inconspicuous kind and departures which do not bear
in any tangible way upon the conventional point of
view or upon the conventional scheme of life ; as, for
instance, details of fact in the mathematico-physical
sciences, and new readings and interpretations of the
classics, especially such as have a philological or literary
bearing only. Except within the domain of the "hu-
manities," in the narrow sense, and except so far as the
traditional point of view of the humanities has been left
intact by the innovators, it has generally held true that
the accredited learned class and the seminaries of the
higher learning have looked askance at all innovation.
New views, new departures in scientific theory, espe-
cially new departures which touch the theory of human
relations at any point, have found a place in the scheme
of the university tardily and by a reluctant tolerance,
rather than by a cordial welcome ; and the men who
have occupied themselves with such efforts to widen the
scope of human knowledge have not commonly been
well received by their learned contemporaries. The
higher schools have not commonly given their counte-
nance to a serious advance in the methods or the content
of knowledge until the innovations have outlived their

The Higher Learning 381

youth and much of their usefulness — after they have
become commonplaces of the intellectual furniture of a
new generation which has grown up under, and has had
its habits of thought shaped by, the new, extra-scholastic
body of knowledge and the new standpoint. This is
true of the recent past. How far it may be true of the
immediate present it would be hazardous to say, for it
is impossible to see present-day facts in such perspec-
tive as to get a fair conception of their relative pro-
portions.

So far, nothing has been said of the Maecenas func-
tion of the well-to-do, which is habitually dwelt on at
some length by writers and speakers who treat of the
development of culture and of social structure. This
leisure-class function is not without an important bear-
ing on the higher learning and on the spread of know-
ledge and culture. The manner and the degree in
which the class furthers learning through patronage
of this kind is sufficiently familiar. It has been fre-
quently presented in affectionate and effective terms
by spokesmen whose familiarity with the topic fits them
to bring home to their hearers the profound significance
of this cultural factor. These spokesmen, however,
have presented the matter from the point of view of
the cultural interest, or of the interest of reputability,
rather than from that of the economic interest. As
apprehended from the economic point of view, and
valued for the purpose of industrial serviceability, this
function of -the well-to-do, as well as the intellectual
attitude of members of the well-to-do class, merits some
attention and will bear illustration.

382 The Theory of the Leisure Class

By way of characterisation of the Maecenas relation,
it is to be noted that, considered externally, as an eco-
nomic or industrial relation simply, it is a relation of
status. The scholar under patronage performs the
duties of a learned life vicariously for his patron, to
whom a certain repute inures after the manner of the
good repute imputed to a master for whom any form of
vicarious leisure is performed. It is also to be noted
that, in point of historical fact, the furtherance of learn-
ing or the maintenance of scholarly activity through
the Maecenas relation has most commonly been a fur-
therance of proficiency in classical lore or in the hu-
manities. This knowledge tends to lower rather than
to heighten the industrial efficiency of the community.

Further, as regards the direct participation of the
members of the leisure class in the furtherance of know-
ledge. The canons of reputable living act to throw
such intellectual interest as seeks expression among the
class on the side of classical and formal erudition, rather
than on the side of the sciences that bear some relation
to the community's industrial life. The most frequent
excursions into other than classical fields of knowledge
on the part of members of the leisure class are made
into the discipline of law and of the political, and more
especially the administrative, sciences. These so-called
sciences are substantially bodies of maxims of expedi-
ency for guidance in the leisure-class office of govern-
ment, as conducted on a proprietary basis. The interest
with which this discipline is approached is therefore not
commonly the intellectual or cognitive interest simply.
It is largely the practical interest of the exigencies of

The Higher Learning 383

that relation of mastery in which the members of the
class are placed. In point of derivation, the office of
government is a predatory function, pertaining integrally
to the archaic leisure-class scheme of life. It is an
exercise of control and coercion over the population
from which the class draws its sustenance. This dis-
cipline, as well as the incidents of practice which give
it its content, therefore has some attraction for
the class apart from all questions of cognition. All
this holds true wherever and so long as the govern-
mental office continues, in form or in substance, to be
a proprietary office ; and it holds true beyond that limit,
in so far as the tradition of the more archaic phase of
governmental evolution has lasted on into the later
life of those modern communities for whom proprietary
government by a leisure class is now beginning to pass
away.

For that field of learning within which the cognitive
or intellectual interest is dominant — the sciences prop-
erly so called — the case is somewhat different, not
only as regards the attitude of the leisure class, but
as regards the whole drift of the pecuniary culture.
Knowledge for its own sake, the exercise of the faculty
of comprehension without ulterior purpose, should, it
might be expected, be sought by men whom no urgent
material interest diverts from such a quest. The shel-
tered industrial position of the leisure class should give
free play to the cognitive interest in members of this
class, and we should consequently have, as many writ-
ers confidently find that we do have, a very large pro-
portion of scholars, scientists, savants derived from this

384 The Theory of the Leisure Class

class and deriving their incentive to scientific investi-
gation and speculation from the discipline of a life of
leisure. Some such result is to be looked for, but
there are features of the leisure-class scheme of life,
already sufficiently dwelt upon, which go to divert the
intellectual interest of this class to other subjects than
that causal sequence in phenomena which makes the
content of the sciences. The habits of thought which
characterise the life of the class run on the personal
relation of dominance, and on the derivative, invidious
concepts of honour, worth, merit, character, and the like.
The causal sequence which makes up the subject mat-
ter of science is not visible from this point of view.
Neither does good repute attach to knowledge of facts
that are vulgarly useful. Hence it should appear prob-
able that the interest of the invidious comparison with
respect to pecuniary or other honorific merit should
occupy the attention of the leisure class, to the neglect
of the cognitive interest. Where this latter interest
asserts itself it should commonly be diverted to fields
of speculation or investigation which are reputable and
futile, rather than to the quest of scientific knowledge.
Such indeed has been the history of priestly and
leisure-class learning so long as no considerable body
of systematised knowledge had been intruded into the
scholastic discipline from an extra-scholastic source.
But since the relation of mastery and subservience is
ceasing to be the dominant and formative factor in the
community's life process, other features of the life
process and other points of view are forcing themselves
upon the scholars. ^

6^

The Higher Learning 385

The true-bred gentleman of leisure should, and does,
see the world from the point of view of the personal
relation ; and the cognitive interest, so far as it asserts
itself in him, should seek to systematise phenomena
on this basis. Such indeed is the case with the gentleman
of the old school, in whom the leisure-class ideals have
suffered no disintegration ; and such is the attitude of
his latter-day descendant, in so far as he has fallen
heir to the full complement of upper-class virtues. But
the ways of heredity are devious, and not every gentle-
man's son is to the manor born. Especially is the
transmission of the habits of thought which charac-
terise the predatory master somewhat precarious in the
case of a line of descent in which but one or two of
the latest steps have lain within the leisure-class disci-
pline. The chances of occurrence of a strong congenital
or acquired bent towards the exercise of the cognitive
aptitudes are apparently best in those members of the
leisure class who are of lower-class or middle-class
antecedents, — that is to say, those who have inherited
the complement of aptitudes proper to the industrious
classes, and who owe their place in the leisure class to
the possession of qualities which count for more to-day
than they did in the times when the leisure-class
scheme of life took shape. But even outside the range
of these later accessions to the leisure class there are
an appreciable number of individuals in whom the
invidious interest is not sufficiently dominant to shape
their theoretical views, and in whom the proclivity to
theory is sufficiently strong to lead them into the
scientific quest.

386 The Theory of the Leisure Class

The higher learning owes the intrusion of the sci*
ences in part to these aberrant scions of the leisure
class, who have come under the dominant influence of
the latter-day tradition of impersonal relation and who
have inherited a complement of human aptitudes differ-
ing in certain salient features from the temperament
which is characteristic of the regime of status. But it
owes the presence of this alien body of scientific know-
ledge also in part, and in a higher degree, to members
of the industrious classes who have been in sufficiently
easy circumstances to turn their attention to other in-
terests than that of finding daily sustenance, and whose
inherited aptitudes run back of the regime of status in
the respect that the invidious and anthropomorphic
point of view does not dominate their intellectual pro-
cesses. As between these two groups, which approxi-
mately comprise the effective force of scientific progress,
it is the latter that has contributed the most. And with
respect to both it seems to be true that they are not so
much the source as the vehicle, or at the most they are
the instrument of commutation, by which the habits of
thought enforced upon the community, through contact
with its environment under the exigencies of modern
associated life and the mechanical industries, are turned
to account for theoretical knowledge.

Science, in the sense of an articulate recognition of
causal sequence in phenomena, whether physical or
social, has been a feature of the Western culture only
since the industrial process in the Western communities
has come to be substantially a process of mechanical
contrivances in which man's office is that of discrimina-

The Higher Learning 387

tion and valuation of material forces. Science has flour-
ished somewhat in the same degree as the industrial
life of the community has conformed to this pattern,
and somewhat in the same degree as the industrial in-
terest has dominated the community's life. And sci-
ence, and scientific theory especially, has made headway
in the several departments of human life and knowledge
in proportion as each of these several departments has
successively come into closer contact with the indus-
trial process and the economic interest ; or perhaps
it is truer to say, in proportion as each of them has
successively escaped from the dominance of the con-
ceptions of personal relation or status, and of the de-
rivative canons of anthropomorphic fitness and honorific
worth.

It is only as the exigencies of modern industrial life
have enforced the recognition of causal sequence in the
practical contact of mankind with their environment,
that men have come to systematise the phenomena of
this environment, and the facts of their own contact
with it, in terms of causal sequence. So that while the
higher learning in its best development, as the perfect
flower of scholasticism and classicism, was a by-product
of the priestly office and the life of leisure, so modern sci-
ence may be said to be a by-product of the industrial
process. Through these groups of men, then — investi-
gators, savants, scientists, inventors, speculators — most
of whom have done their most telling work outside the
shelter of the schools, the habits of thought enforced
by the modern industrial life have found coherent ex-
pression and elaboration as a body of theoretical science

388 The Theory of the Leisure Class

having to do with the causal sequence of phenomena.
And from this extra-scholastic field of scientific specu-
lation, changes of method and purpose have from time
to time been intruded into the scholastic discipline.

In this connection it is to be remarked that there is
a very perceptible difference of substance and purpose
between the instruction offered in the primary and
secondary schools, on the one hand, and in the higher
seminaries of learning, on the other hand. The differ-
ence in point of immediate practicality of the informa-
tion imparted and of the proficiency acquired may be of
some consequence and may merit the attention which
it has from time to time received ; but there is a more
substantial difference in the mental and spiritual bent
which is favoured by the one and the other discipline.
This divergent trend in discipline between the higher
and the lower learning is especially noticeable as re-
gards the primary education in its latest development
in the advanced industrial communities. Here the in-
struction is directed chiefly to proficiency or dexterity,
intellectual and manual, in the apprehension and em-
ployment of impersonal facts, in their causal rather
than in their honorific incidence. It is true, under the
traditions of the earlier days, when the primary educa-
tion was also predominantly a leisure-class commodity,
a free use is still made of emulation as a spur to dili-
gence in the common run of primary schools ; but even
this use of emulation as an expedient is visibly declin-
ing in the primary grades of instruction in communities
where the lower education is not under the guidance of
the ecclesiastical or military tradition. All this holds

The Higher Learning 389

true in a peculiar degree, and more especially oa the
spiritual side, of such portions of the educational system
as have been immediately affected by kindergarten
methods and ideals.

The peculiarly non-invidious trend of the kindergarten
discipline, and the similar character of the kindergarten
influence in primary education beyond the limits of
the kindergarten proper, should be taken in connection
with what has already been said of the peculiar spir-
itual attitude of leisure-class womankind under the cir-
cumstances of the modern economic situation. The
kindergarten discipline is at its best — or at its farthest
remove from ancient patriarchal and pedagogical ideals
— in the advanced industrial communities, where there
is a considerable body of intelligent and idle women,
and where the system of status has somewhat abated in
rigour under the disintegrating influence of industrial
life and in the absence of a consistent body of military
and ecclesiastical traditions. It is from these women
in easy circumstances that it gets its moral support.
The aims and methods of the kindergarten commend
themselves with especial effect to this class of women
who are ill at ease under the pecuniary code of repu-
table life. The kindergarten, and whatever the kinder-
garten spirit counts for in modern education, therefore,
is to be set down, along with the *' new-woman move-
ment," to the account of that revulsion against futility
and invidious comparison which the leisure-class life
under modern circumstances induces in the women most
immediately exposed to its discipline. In this way it
appears that, by indirection, the institution of a leisure

390 The Theory of the Leisu7'e Class

class here again favours the growth of a non-invidious
attitude, which may, in the long run, prove a menace
to the stability of the institution itself, and even to the
institution of individual ownership on which it rests.

During the recent past some tangible changes have
taken place in the scope of college and university teach-
ing. These changes have in the main consisted in a
partial displacement of the humanities — those branches
of learning which are conceived to make for the tradi-
tional " culture," character, tastes, and ideals — by
those more matter-of-fact branches which make for
civic and industrial efficiency. To put the same thing
in other words, those branches of knowledge which
make for efficiency (ultimately productive efficiency)
have gradually been gaining ground against those
branches which make for a heightened consumption
or a lowered industrial efficiency and for a type of
character suited to the regime of status. In this adap-
tation of the scheme of instruction the higher schools
have commonly been found on the conservative side ;
each step which they have taken in advance has been
to some extent of the nature of a concession. The
sciences have been intruded into the scholar's disci-
pline from without, not to say from below. It is no-
ticeable that the humanities which have so reluctantly
yielded ground to the sciences are pretty uniformly
adapted to shape the character of the student in accord-
ance with a traditional self-centred scheme of con-
sumption ; a scheme of contemplation and enjoyment
of the true, the beautiful, and the good, according to a

The Higher Learning 391

conventional standard of propriety and excellence, the
salient feature of which is leisure — otimn ctun digni-
tate. In- language veiled by their own habituation to
the archaic, decorous point of view, the spokesmen of
the humanities have insisted upon the ideal embodied
in the maxim, friiges constimere naii. This attitude
should occasion no surprise in the case of schools which
are shaped by and rest upon a leisure-class culture.

The professed grounds on which it has been sought,
as far as might be, to maintain the received standards
and methods of culture intact are likewise characteristic
of the archaic temperament and of the leisure-class the-
ory of life. The enjoyment and the bent derived from
habitual contemplation of the Hfe, ideals, speculations,
and methods of consuming time and goods, in vogue
among the leisure class of classical antiquity, for in-
stance, is felt to be ''higher," "nobler," "worthier,"
than what results in these respects from a like famili-
arity with the everyday life and the knowledge and
aspirations of commonplace humanity in a modern
community. That learning the content of which is an
unmitigated knowledge of latter-day men and things is
by comparison "lower," "base," "ignoble," — one even
hears the epithet "sub-human" applied to this matter-
of-fact knowledge of mankind and of everyday life.

This contention of the leisure-class spokesmen of the
humanities seems to be substantially sound. In point
of substantial fact, the gratification and the culture, or
the spiritual attitude or habit of mind, resulting from an
habitual contemplation of the anthropomorphism, clan-
nishness, and leisurely self-complacency of the gentle-

392 The Theory of the Leisure Class

man of an early day, or from a familiarity with the
animistic superstitions and the exuberant truculence of
the Homeric heroes, for instance, is, aesthetically con-
sidered, more legitimate than the corresponding results
derived from a matter-of-fact knowledge of things and
a contemplation of latter-day civic or workmanlike effi-
ciency. There can be but little question that the first-
named habits have the advantage in respect of aesthetic
or honorific value, and therefore in respect of the
" worth " which is made the basis of award in the com-
parison. The content of the canons of taste, and
more particularly of the canons of honour, is in the
nature of things a resultant of the past life and circum-
stances of the race, transmitted to the later generation
by inheritance or by tradition ; and the fact that the
protracted dominance of a predatory, leisure-class
scheme of life has profoundly shaped the habit of mind
and the point of view of the race in the past, is a suffi-
cient basis for an aesthetically legitimate dominance of
such a scheme of life in very much of what concerns
matters of taste in the present. For the purpose in
hand, canons of taste are race habits, acquired through
a more or less protracted habituation to the approval or
disapproval of the kind of things upon which a favoura-
ble or unfavourable judgment of taste is passed. Other
things being equal, the longer and more unbroken the
habituation, the more legitimate is the canon of taste in
question. All this seems to be even truer of judg-
ments regarding worth or honour than of judgments of
taste generally.

But whatever may be the aesthetic legitimacy of the

The Higher Learning 393

derogatory judgment passed on the newer learning by
the spokesmen of the humanities, and however sub-
stantial may be the merits of the contention that the
classic lore is worthier and results in a more truly
human culture and character, it does not concern the
question in hand. The question in hand is as to how
far these branches of learning, and the point of view
for which they stand in the educational system, help or
hinder an efficient collective life under modern industrial
circumstances, — how far they further a more facile
adaptation to the economic situation of to-day. The
question is an economic, not an aesthetic one ; and the
leisure-class standards of learning which find expression
in the deprecatory attitude of the higher schools towards
matter-of-fact knowledge are, for the present purpose,
to be valued from this point of view only. For this
purpose the use of such epithets as "noble," "base,"
"higher," "lower," etc., is significant only as showing
the animus and the point of view of the disputants ;
whether they contend for the worthiness of the new
or of the old. All these epithets are honorific or
humilific terms; that is to say, they are terms of
invidious comparison, which in the last analysis fall
under the category of the reputable or the disrepu-
table; that is, they belong within the range of ideas
that characterises the scheme of life of the regime of
status ; that is, they are in substance an expression of
sportsmanship — of the predatory and animistic habit
of mind ; that is, they indicate an archaic point of view
and theory of life, which may fit the predatory stage of
culture and of economic organisation from which they

394 1^^^ Theory of the Leisure Class

have sprung, but which are, from the point of view of
economic efficiency in the broader sense, disserviceable
anachronisms.

The classics, and their position of prerogative in the
scheme of education to which the higher seminaries of
learning cling with such a fond predilection, serve to
shape the intellectual attitude and lower the economic
efficiency of the new learned generation. They do this
not only by holding up an archaic ideal of manhood, but
also by the discrimination which they inculcate with
respect to the reputable and the disreputable in know-
ledge. This result is accomplished in two ways: (i) by
inspiring an habitual aversion to what is merely useful,
as contrasted with what is merely honorific in learning,
and so shaping the tastes of the novice that he comes
in good faith to find gratification of his tastes solely, or
almost solely, in such exercise of the intellect as nor-
mally results in no industrial or social gain ; and (2) by
consuming the learner's time and effort in acquiring
knowledge which is of no use, except in so far as this
learning has by convention become incorporated into
the sum of learning required of the scholar, and has
thereby affected the terminology and diction employed
in the useful branches of knowledge. Except for this
terminological difficulty — which is itself a consequence
of the vogue of the classics in the past — a knowledge
of the ancient languages, for instance, would have no
practical bearing for any scientist or any scholar not
engaged on work primarily of a linguistic character.
Of course all this has nothing to say as to the cultural
value of the classics, nor is there any intention to dis-

The Higher Learning 395

parage the discipline of the classics or the bent which
their study gives to the student. That bent seems to
be of an economically disserviceable kind, but this fact
— somewhat notorious indeed — need disturb no one
who has the good fortune to find comfort and strength
in the classical lore. The fact that classical learning
acts to derange the learner's workmanlike aptitudes
should fall lightly upon the apprehension of those who
hold workmanship of small account in comparison with
the cultivation of decorous ideals :

lam fides et pax et honos pudorque
Priscus et neglecta redire virtus
Audet.

Owing to the circumstance that this knowledge has
become part of the elementary requirements in our
system of education, the ability to use and to under-
stand certain of the dead languages of southern Europe
is not only gratifying to the person who finds occasion to
parade his accomplishments in this respect, but the evi-
dence of such knowledge serves at the same time to recom-
mend any savant to his audience, both lay and learned.
It is currently expected that a certain number of years
shall have been spent in acquiring this substantially use-
less information, and its absence creates a presumption
of hasty and precarious learning, as well as of a vulgar
practicality that is equally obnoxious to the conventional
standards of sound scholarship and intellectual force.

The case is analogous to what happens in the purchase
of any article of consumption by a purchaser who is not
an expert judge of materials or of workmanship. He
makes his estimate of the value of the article chiefly on

39^ The Theory of the Leisure Class

the ground of the apparent expensiveness of the finish
of those decorative parts and features which have no
immediate relation to the intrinsic usefulness of the
article ; the presumption being that some sort of ill-
defined proportion subsists between the substantial
value of the article and the expense of adornment
added in order to sell it. The presumption that there
can ordinarily be no sound scholarship where a know-
ledge of the classics and humanities is wanting leads to
a conspicuous waste of time and labour on the part of
the general body of students in acquiring such know-
ledge. The conventional insistence on a modicum of
conspicuous waste as an incident of all reputable schol-
arship has affected our canons of taste and of service-
ability in matters of scholarship in much the same way
as the same principle has influenced our judgment of
the serviceability of manufactured goods.

It is true, since conspicuous consumption has gained
more and more on conspicuous leisure as a means of
repute, the acquisition of the dead languages is no
longer so imperative a requirement as it once was, and
its talismanic virtue as a voucher of scholarship has suf-
fered a concomitant impairment. But while this is
true, it is also true that the classics have scarcely lost
in absolute value as a voucher of scholastic respecta-
bility, since for this purpose it is only necessary that
the scholar should be able to put in evidence some
learning which is conventionally recognised as evidence
of wasted time ; and the classics lend themselves with
great facility to this use. Indeed, there can be little
doubt that it is their utility as evidence of wasted time

The Higher Learning 397

and effort, and hence of the pecuniary strength neces-
sary in order to afford this waste, that has secured to
the classics their position of prerogative in the scheme
of the higher learning, and has led to their being es-
teemed the most honorific of all learning. They serve
the decorative ends of leisure-class learning better than
any other body of knowledge, and hence they are an
effective means of reputability.

In this respect the classics have until lately had
scarcely a rival. They still have no dangerous rival
on the continent of Europe, but lately, since college
athletics have won their way into a recognised standing
as an accredited field of scholarly accomplishment, this
latter branch of learning — if athletics may be freely
classed as learning — has become a rival of the classics
for the primacy in leisure-class education in American
and English schools. Athletics have an obvious advan-
tage over the classics for the purpose of leisure-class
learning, since success as an athlete presumes, not
only a waste of time, but also a waste of money, as well
as the possession of certain highly unindustrial archaic
traits of character and temperament. In the German
universities the place of athletics and Greek-letter fra-
ternities, as a leisure-class scholarly occupation, has in
some measure been supplied by a skilled and graded
inebriety and a perfunctory duelling.

The leisure class and its standards of virtue — archa-
ism and waste — can scarcely have been concerned in
the introduction of the classics into the scheme of the
higher learning; but the tenacious retention of the
classics by the higher schools, and the high degree of

39^ The Theory of the Leisure Class

reputability which still attaches to them, are no doubt
due to their conforming so closely to the requirements
of archaism and waste.

" Classic " always carries this connotation of wasteful
and archaic, whether it is used to denote the dead lan-
guages or the obsolete or obsolescent forms of thought
and diction in the living language, or to denote other
items of scholarly activity or apparatus to which it is
applied with less aptness. So the archaic idiom of the
English language is spoken of as *' classic " English.
Its use is imperative in all speaking and writing upon
serious topics, and a facile use of it lends dignity to
even the most commonplace and trivial string of talk.
The newest form of EngHsh diction is of course never
written ; the sense of that leisure-class propriety which
requires archaism in speech is present even in the most
illiterate or sensational writers in sufficient force to
prevent such a lapse. On the other hand, the highest
and most conventionalised style of archaic diction is
— quite characteristically — properly employed only in
communications between an anthropomorphic divinity
and his subjects. Midway between these extremes lies
the everyday speech of leisure-class conversation and
literature.

Elegant diction, whether in writing or speaking, is an
effective means of reputability. It is of moment to
know with some precision what is the degree of archa-
ism conventionally required in speaking on any given
topic. Usage differs appreciably from the pulpit to the
market-place; the latter, as might be expected, admits
the use of relatively new and effective words and turns

The Higher Learning 399

of expression, even by fastidious persons. A discrimi-
nate avoidance of neologisms is honorific, not only be-
cause it argues that time has been wasted in acquiring
the obsolescent habit of speech, but also as showing
that the speaker has from infancy habitually associated
with persons who have been familiar with the obsoles-
cent idiom. It thereby goes to show his leisure-class
antecedents. Great purity of speech is presumptive evi-
dence of several successive lives spent in other than
vulgarly useful occupations; although its evidence is by
no means entirely conclusive to this point.

As felicitous an instance of futile classicism as can
well be found, outside of the Far East, is the conven-
tional spelling of the English language. A breach of
the proprieties in spelling is extremely annoying and
will discredit any writer in the eyes of all persons who
are possessed of a developed sense of the true and
beautiful. English orthography satisfies all the re-
quirements of the canons of reputability under the law
of conspicuous waste. It is archaic, cumbrous, and
ineffective; its acquisition consumes much time and
effort ; failure to acquire it is easy of detection. There-
fore it is the first and readiest test of reputability in
learning, and conformity to its ritual is indispensable
to a blameless scholastic life.

On this head of purity of speech, as at other points
where a conventional usage rests on the canons of
archaism and waste, the spokesmen for the usage in-
stinctively take an apologetic attitude. It is contended,
in substance, that a punctilious use of ancient and
accredited locutions will serve to convey thought more

400 The Theory of the Leisure Class

adequately and more precisely than would the straight
forward use of the latest form of spoken English ;
whereas it is notorious that the ideas of to-day are
effectively expressed in the slang of to-day. Classic
speech has the honorific virtue of dignity ; it com-
mands attention and respect as being the accredited
method of communication under the leisure-class scheme
of life, because it carries a pointed suggestion of the
industrial exemption of the speaker. The advantage of
the accredited locutions lies in their reputability ; they
are reputable because they are cumbrous and out of
date, and therefore argue waste of time and exemption
from the use and the need of direct and forcible speech.

INDEX

(Prepared by H. P. Shilston)

Ability to pay 57, 182 I

Esthetic nausea 178

Esthetic values . . . . 97, 150

Ainu of Yezo 6

American 3, 326

American farmers and city cousins 87

Andamans 6, 13

Animism 283, 285, 288

Apparel 172

Archaic structures 7

Archaic traits 212

Architecture 154, 349

Aristocratic virtues .... 236

Artisan class 322

Athletes and culture . . . . 297
Athletics 258, 298, 397

Banking 231

Barbarian hunting .... 5, 14
Barbarian leisure class . . . 3, 7
Barbarian notions of animate . 1 1

Bazaars 300

Beauty and fashion , . . . 177

and taste 149

and use 126-129

economic 151

of forms 151

Beliefs, economic use of . . . 287

Belief in luck 276

Bequests 348

Birth-rate 113

Boys and fighting .... 250, 255

Boys' brigadqp 255, 300

Brahmin India i

Bushmen 6

Canons of taste 115

Caps and gowns 372

Captains of industry .... 230

Cats 140

Change and stability . . ,. 201, 202
Charity 334

Chase 41

Cheapness 1 55, 169

Church attendance 321

City and country life .... 88

Class distinctions 242

Classics 394-397, 400

College sports 378

Connoisseur 74

Conscience 221

Conservation of archaic traits . 212

Conservatism 188, igr

Conspicuous consumption . . 68

offsets to 91-93

Conspicuous leisure .... 35

Conspicuous waste 166

Corsets 172, 841

Courtesy 52

Cows and effect 134

Creeds ........ 302

Devout observances .... 293

Devoutness 318

Dignity, derivation of . ... 15

of priestly office 315

meaning of 15

Dogs 141

Dolicho-blond temperament . .

133, 197, 225

Domestic f)ets 139

Domestic sphere 324

Dram drinking 89

Dress and taste 131

Dress as an expression of pecu-
niary culture 167

Drunkenness 70

Duels 249, 397

Economic man 241

287

113

16

22

Economic value of beliefs .
Education and status . . .
Emulation and workmanship .
Emulation, pecuniary . . .

401

402

Index

Eskimo 6

Evolution, Social . . . . i88, 219

assumption of 18

contemporary 215

Exaltation of the defective . . 162
Exclusiveness 87, 112

Fashions 173

seeming beauty of . . . . 177

Feudal Europe i

Feudal Japan 1

Finish in goods 158

Gambling 276

Gems 133

Genteel folk 42, 76

Gentle blood 55

Girls 250, 251

Good breeding, test of ... . 51
Guests 75

Habits, change of 195

of devout observance . . . 108

of life 106, 221

Habituation to love 109

Hand-made goods 159

Hawaian mantles 152

Hereditary' 215

Higher learning 363

Holidays 309

Homeric times 54

Honorific arts 17

Horses 142-145

Housewife, middle class ... 81

Humanitarian work 316

Humanities, the . . . 371, 380, 390

Iceland 2

Indicators, social . . . 288, 306, 356
Industrial communities . . 631, 331

Industrial efficiency 227

Industrial exemption, and conser-
vatism 188

Industrial meaning of ... . 10
Industrial versus pecuniary . . 229
Industry in primitive group . . 12

indignity of . . . 17.18,36,37
Insolation from neighbours 87, 112, 366
Instability of predatory emulation 2 70
Instinct of workmanship ... 16

as offset to predatory ... 93

Institutions 188

Introductory i

Invidious, definition of ... . 34

Kelmscott Press 162

Kindergartens 389

Elnowledge of Unknowable . , 366

Labour, division of 2, 4

indignity of . . . 17, 18 36, 37,

Tabu on 41

Lady-in-waiting 79

Lawns 133

Lawyers 231

Leisure class, adaptability . . . 198

women, ownership of . . . 53

best development .... i

characteristic features ... 40

complacency of 53

condition of emergence of . . 7

conspicuous 35

definition of 43

element of exploit .... 8
entrance to . . . . . 235, 236

function of ownership . . . 211

non-material products of . . 45

occupation of 40

secondary 112

vicarious .... 59, 66, 81, ^^

Like m.aster like man . . . , 243

Loud dress 187

Love of esteem 36

of nature 139

of romantic 109

Luck, belief in 276

Machine-made goods .... 159

Maecenas relation 381

Malthusian checks 113

Manners 46

Modern survivals of prowess . . 246

Morris 162

Negro and devout imagery

125, 322, 326

New Woman 356

Non-invidious instinct .... 332

North American tribes .... 4

Novelty 153

Index

403

Occupations, non-industrial . . 2, 3
Ownership and leisure .... 22

Patriotism 247

Peaceable phase of culture ... 19
Pecuniary canons of taste . . . 115
Pecuniary culture and dress . . 167
Pecuniary culture and learning . 363
Pecuniary emulation .... 22
Pecuniary worth versus industrial

use 239

Pecuniary standard of living . . 102
Personal and honorific arts . . 18

Philanthropy 234, 316

Physiognomy and astuteness . 275

Polynesian adzes 152

Polynesian chiefs 42

Polynesian islanders 3

Praeternatural explanations . .

281-283, 285
Predatory habits, and barbarian

group 14

and emulation . . . . 16, 36
and love of esteem .... 36

attainment of 19

dependence on industry . . 20

Prescription 41, 105, 115

Priestly class 182

Priestly ofiQce 123

Priests 310, 312

Printing trade 8g

Progress, and adaptation 191, 196, 203

change of direction of . . . 196

Property, bases of esteem ... 29

private 117

subdivision of 35

Prowess 246

Public parks i35

Pueblo 6

Quasi-peaceable stage .... 63

Raffles 300

Religion and morality (obedience

to Decalogue) 320

Reputability 105

Reversion i97

Ritual 368, 370

Ruskin 162

Sacred buildings . . . . 119, 120
Sagas, Icelandic 2

Savage groups 6

Scepticism of legitimacy of emu-
lation 340

Scholarly pursuits 113

Science and learning . . 383-384, 390

Self-esteem 30

Serviceability and beauty . . . 128

Servants 58, 60

Services 122, 307

Settlements 339, 344

Sex and industry 13

Snobbery 51

Social duties 94

Social reform 339

Sociability 334

Spelling 399

Spiritual, use of word . 20, 37, 85, 86

Spiritual growth 254

Sports 255, 270

and arrested development . 265
apologetic tone of . . . . 267

college 378

Standard of living 106

Stimulants 70

Styles 174

Subservient habit of mind . . 196
Survival of non-invidious in-
stincts 332

of prowess 246

Sympathy 22s

Talisman 279

Taste IIS

Temperaments 226,238

Theology 317

Time, consumption of ... . 43

Todas 6

Toughness 27s

Traits 212, 220

Trophies 44

Types 213-218

Underfed classes 26, 243

Uniforms 78

University Settlements . 330, 341, 344
Utility and beauty 127

V^aluations 150

Value of facts and change of norm 9
Vicarious leisure 81 » 8-3

404

Index

Walking-sticks 265

War 281, 373

War, class 247

Waste 97

Whatever is, is wrong .... 207
Women, consumption of stimu-
lants 71

devout observances .... 323

dress 171, 179

figure 148

industry . 5

learning 357

non-invidious traits . . 338, 341

position as index of culture . 353

primitive group 13

question 354

rights 355

sphere 354

status 178

Y. M. C. A.'3 299, 339

Y. P. C. E.'s 299, 339

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