The institution of a leisure
class, by force or class interest and instinct, and by precept
and prescriptive example, makes for the perpetuation of the
existing maladjustment of institutions, and even favors a
reversion to a somewhat more archaic scheme of life; a scheme
which would be still farther out of adjustment with the
exigencies of life under the existing situation even than the
accredited, obsolescent scheme that has come down from the
immediate past.
But after all has been said on the head of conservation of the
good old ways, it remains true that institutions change and
develop. There is a cumulative growth of customs and habits of
thought; a selective adaptation of conventions and methods of
life. Something is to be said of the office of the leisure class
in guiding this growth as well as in retarding it; but little can
be said here of its relation to institutional growth except as it
touches the institutions that are primarily and immediately of an
economic character. These institutions -- the economic structure
-- may be roughly distinguished into two classes or categories,
according as they serve one or the other of two divergent
purposes of economic life.
To adapt the classical terminology, they are institutions of
acquisition or of production; or to revert to terms already
employed in a different connection in earlier chapters, they are
pecuniary or industrial institutions; or in still other terms,
they are institutions serving either the invidious or the
non-invidious economic interest.
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