SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



557 



which it has a just claim to occupy. 

 It is the application of science to ag- 



riculture that will bring about this 

 result. 



SPECIAL BOOKS. 



The Theory of the Leisure Class * of Mr. Thorstein Vellen is primarily 

 an inquiry into the place and value of the leisure class as an economic fac- 

 tor in modern life. Hardly less attention, however, is given to the origin 

 and line of derivation of the institution, and to features of social life not 

 commonly classed as economic, into the very heart of some of which the 

 study goes. The institution of the leisure class, which is denned generally 

 as that class whose occupation is not industrial, is found in its best devel- 

 opment at the higher stages of the barbarian culture, as in feudal Europe 

 or feudal Japan. Whichever way we go from this point it is modified. 

 Its origin appears at a very early stage in history, and appears in the germ 

 in the savage division of the occupations of men and women. The women 

 carried on the industries, and the men went to the hunt or to war occupa- 

 tions with which the idea of prowess or exploit was associated, giving the 

 stamp of aristocracy. In the highest development of this distinction, the 

 nonindustrial upper-class occupations may be roughly comprised under 

 the heads of government, warfare, religious observances, and sports. In 

 the sequence of cultural evolution the emergence of a leisure class coin- 

 cides with the beginning of ownership, ownership of women being one of 

 the most conspicuous forms in earlier times, then ownership of property 

 and its symbols. Among the signs of wealth are conspicuous leisure, which 

 includes social distinction and functions and conspicuous consumption, 

 or the possession of fine things not necessaries, and plenty of them. These 

 lead to the setting lip of a pecuniary standard of living and pecuniary 

 canons of taste, and the adoption of dress as an expression of the pecuniary 

 culture. In the chapter on Industrial Exemption and Conservatism we 

 are introduced to the reason of conventionalism and of its power. " The 

 fact that the usages, actions, and views of the well-to-do leisure class ac- 

 quire the character of a prescriptive canon of conduct for the rest of so- 

 ciety gives added weight and reach to the conservative influence of that 

 class. It makes it incumbent upon all respectable people to follow their 

 lead." Hence it exerts a retarding influence on social development, stiff- 

 ening the resistance of all other classes against innovation. Further, the 

 code of proprieties in vogue at any given time or in any society has the 

 character of an organic whole, and any important infringement upon it 

 is likely to derange it. This conservative quality goes so far as to tend 

 toward spiritual survival and reversion. The idea of prowess survives in 

 our barbaric admiration of military exploits, in the taste for sports, and 

 in the gambling tendency, which is based on belief in luck and is enhanced 

 by the desire to triumph at the expense of another. A connection is traced 

 between the admiration of prowess and the cultivation of the devotional 

 spirit which, joined with the fondness for display, leads all worshipers 

 eventually to elaboration of rituals. A further development, classed as 



* The Theory of the Leisure Class. An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions. By 

 Thorstein Veblen. New York : The Macmillan Company. Pp.400. Price, $2. 



