Hence
under the competitive struggle for proficiency in good manners,
it comes about that much pains in taken with the cultivation of
habits of decorum; and hence the details of decorum develop into
a comprehensive discipline, 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 discrimination 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
possibility of producing pathological and other idiosyncrasies 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 vulgarly 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 properties.
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