But the economic effect of these
social amenities is not therefore lessened, either in the
vicarious consumption of goods or in the exhibition of difficult
and costly achievements in etiquette.
As wealth accumulates, the leisure class develops further in
function and structure, and there arises a differentiation within
the class. There is a more or less elaborate system of rank and
grades. This differentiation is furthered by the inheritance of
wealth and the consequent inheritance of gentility. With the
inheritance of gentility goes the inheritance of obligatory
leisure; and gentility of a sufficient potency to entail a life
of leisure may be inherited without the complement of wealth
required to maintain a dignified leisure. Gentle blood may be
transmitted without goods enough to afford a reputably free
consumption at one's ease. Hence results a class of impecunious
gentlemen of leisure, incidentally referred to already. These
half-caste gentlemen of leisure fall into a system of
hierarchical gradations. Those who stand near the higher and the
highest grades of the wealthy leisure class, in point of birth,
or in point of wealth, or both, outrank the remoter-born and the
pecuniarily weaker.
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