tute the
standard of living goes to explain the extreme reluctance with which men
give up any habitual expenditure in the way of conspicuous consumption.
The aptitudes or propensities to which a habit of this kind is to be
referred as its ground are those aptitudes whose exercise is comprised
in emulation; and the propensity for emulation--for invidious
comparison--is of ancient growth and is a pervading trait of human
nature. It is easily called into vigorous activity in any new form, and
it asserts itself with great insistence under any form under which it
has once found habitual expression. When the individual has once
formed the habit of seeking expression in a given line of honorific
expenditure--when a given set of stimuli have come to be habitually
responded to in activity of a given kind and direction under the
guidance of these alert and deep-reaching propensities of emulation--it
is with extreme reluctance that such an habitual expenditure is given
up. And on the other hand, whenever an accession of pecuniary strength
puts the individual in a position to unfold his life process in larger
scope and with additional reach, the ancient propensities of the race
will assert themselves in determining the direction which the new
unfolding of life is to take. And those propensities which are already
actively in the field under some related form of expression, which are
aided by the pointed suggestions afforded by a current accredited
scheme of life, and for the exercise of which the material means and
opportunities are readily available--these will especially have much to
say in shaping the form and direction in which the new accession to
the individual's aggregate force will assert itself. That is to say,
in concrete terms, in any community where conspicuous consumption is an
element of the scheme of life, an increase in an individual's ability
to pay is likely to take the form of an expenditure for some accredited
line of conspicuous consumption.

With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity
for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of
the economic motives proper. In an industrial community this propensity
for emulation expresses itself in pecuniary emulation; and this, so
far as regards the Western civilized communities of the present, is
virtually equivalent to saying that it expresses itself in some form
of conspicuous waste. The need of conspicuous waste, the