lses;
and the dominant presence of these canons of conduct goes far to divert
such efforts as are made on the basis of the non-invidious interest to
the service of that invidious interest on which the pecuniary culture
rests. The canons of pecuniary decency are reducible for the present
purpose to the principles of waste, futility, and ferocity. The
requirements of decency are imperiously present in meliorative
enterprise as in other lines of conduct, and exercise a selective
surveillance over the details of conduct and management in any
enterprise. By guiding and adapting the method in detail, these canons
of decency go far to make all non-invidious aspiration or effort
nugatory. The pervasive, impersonal, un-eager principle of futility is
at hand from day to day and works obstructively to hinder the effectual
expression of so much of the surviving ante-predatory aptitudes as is to
be classed under the instinct of workmanship; but its presence does not
preclude the transmission of those aptitudes or the continued recurrence
of an impulse to find expression for them.

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

It has been well and repeatedly said by popular writers and speakers who
reflect the common sense of intelligent people on questions of social
structure and function that the position of woman in any community
is the most striking index of the level of cul