be dispensed with. This consummation, it is needless
to say, lies yet in the indefinite future. The ameliorations wrought in
favor of the pecuniary interest in modern institutions tend, in another
field, to substitute the "soulless" joint-stock corporation for the
captain, and so they make also for the dispensability, of the great
leisure-class function of ownership. Indirectly, therefore, the bent
given to the growth of economic institutions by the leisure-class
influence is of very considerable industrial consequence.

Chapter Nine ~~ The Conservation of Archaic Traits

The institution of a leisure class has an effect not only upon social
structure but also upon the individual character of the members of
society. So soon as a given proclivity or a given point of view has won
acceptance as an authoritative standard or norm of life it will react
upon the character of the members of the society which has accepted it
as a norm. It will to some extent shape their habits of thought and
will exercise a selective surveillance over the development of men's
aptitudes and inclinations. This effect is wrought partly by a coercive,
educational adaptation of the habits of all individuals, partly by a
selective elimination of the unfit individuals and lines of descent.
Such human material as does not lend itself to the methods of life
imposed by the accepted scheme suffers more or less elimination as well
as repression. The principles of pecuniary emulation and of industrial
exemption have in this way been erected into canons of life, and have
become coercive factors of some importance in the situation to which men
have to adapt themselves.

These two broad principles of conspicuous waste and industrial exemption
affect the cultural development both by guiding men's habits of thought,
and so controlling the growth of institutions, and by selectively
conserving certain traits of human nature that conduce to facility of
life under the leisure-class scheme, and so controlling the effective
temper of the community. The proximate tendency of the institution of
a leisure class in shaping human character runs in the direction of
spiritual survival and reversion. Its effect upon the temper of a
community is of the nature of an arrested spiritual development. In
the later culture especially, the institution has, on the whole, a
conservative trend. This proposition is familiar enough in substance,
but it may to many have the appearanc