It takes time for any change to permeate the mass
and change the habitual attitude of the people; and especially it
takes time to change the habits of those classes that are
socially more remote from the radiant body. The process is slower
where the mobility of the population is less or where the
intervals between the several classes are wider and more abrupt.
But if time be allowed, the scope of the discretion of the
leisure class as regards questions of form and detail in the
community's scheme of life is large; while as regards the
substantial principles of reputability, the changes which it can
effect lie within a narrow margin of tolerance. Its example and
precept carries the force of prescription for all classes below
it; but in working out the precepts which are handed down as
governing the form and method of reputability -- in shaping the
usages and the spiritual attitude of the lower classes -- this
authoritative prescription constantly works under the selective
guidance of the canon of conspicuous waste, tempered in varying
degree by the instinct of workmanship. To those norms is to be
added another broad principle of human nature -- the predatory
animus -- which in point of generality and of psychological
content lies between the two just named.
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