nd to discountenance work that brings no
pecuniary gain. At the same time the effect on consumption is to
concentrate it upon the lines which are most patent to the observers
whose good opinion is sought; while the inclinations and aptitudes whose
exercise does not involve a honorific expenditure of time or substance
tend to fall into abeyance through disuse.

Through this discrimination in favor of visible consumption it has come
about that the domestic life of most classes is relatively shabby, as
compared with the eclat of that overt portion of their life that is
carried on before the eyes of observers. As a secondary consequence of
the same discrimination, people habitually screen their private life
from observation. So far as concerns that portion of their consumption
that may without blame be carried on in secret, they withdraw from all
contact with their neighbors, hence the exclusiveness of people, as
regards their domestic life, in most of the industrially developed
communities; and hence, by remoter derivation, the habit of privacy and
reserve that is so large a feature in the code of proprieties of the
better class in all communities. The low birthrate of the classes upon
whom the requirements of reputable expenditure fall with great urgency
is likewise traceable to the exigencies of a standard of living based
on conspicuous waste. The conspicuous consumption, and the consequent
increased expense, required in the reputable maintenance of a child is
very considerable and acts as a powerful deterrent. It is probably the
most effectual of the Malthusian prudential checks.

The effect of this factor of the standard of living, both in the way of
retrenchment in the obscurer elements of consumption that go to physical
comfort and maintenance, and also in the paucity or absence of children,
is perhaps seen at its best among the classes given to scholarly
pursuits. Because of a presumed superiority and scarcity of the gifts
and attainments that characterize their life, these classes are by
convention subsumed under a higher social grade than their pecuniary
grade should warrant. The scale of decent expenditure in their case
is pitched correspondingly high, and it consequently leaves an
exceptionally narrow margin disposable for the other ends of life. By
force of circumstances, their habitual sense of what is good and right
in these matters, as well as the expectations of the community in the
way of pecuniary decenc