of the able-bodied men on the one side, and a base
inferior class of labouring women on the other. According to the ideal
scheme of life in force at the time it is the office of the men to
consume what the women produce. Such consumption as falls to the women
is merely incidental to their work; it is a means to their continued
labour, and not a consumption directed to their own comfort and fulness
of life. Unproductive consumption of goods is honourable, primarily as
a mark of prowess and a perquisite of human dignity; secondarily it
becomes substantially honourable to itself, especially the consumption
of the more desirable things. The consumption of choice articles of
food, and frequently also of rare articles of adornment, becomes tabu to
the women and children; and if there is a base (servile) class of men,
the tabu holds also for them. With a further advance in culture this
tabu may change into simple custom of a more or less rigorous character;
but whatever be the theoretical basis of the distinction which is
maintained, whether it be a tabu or a larger conventionality, the
features of the conventional scheme of consumption do not change
easily. When the quasi-peaceable stage of industry is reached, with its
fundamental institution of chattel slavery, the general principle, more
or less rigorously applied, is that the base, industrious class should
consume only what may be necessary to their subsistence. In the nature
of things, luxuries and the comforts of life belong to the leisure
class. Under the tabu, certain victuals, and more particularly certain
beverages, are strictly reserved for the use of the superior class.

The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the use of
intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption
are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific. Therefore the
base classes, primarily the women, practice an enforced continence
with respect to these stimulants, except in countries where they are
obtainable at a very low cost. From archaic times down through all the
length of the patriarchal regime it has been the office of the women to
prepare and administer these luxuries, and it has been the perquisite
of the men of gentle birth and breeding to consume them. Drunkenness
and the other pathological consequences of the free use of stimulants
therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a mark,
at the second remove, of the superior stat