mmonly the invidious one that the wealthy class opposes
innovation because it has a vested interest, of an unworthy sort, in
maintaining the present conditions. The explanation here put forward
imputes no unworthy motive. The opposition of the class to changes in
the cultural scheme is instinctive, and does not rest primarily on an
interested calculation of material advantages; it is an instinctive
revulsion at any departure from the accepted way of doing and of looking
at things--a revulsion common to all men and only to be overcome by
stress of circumstances. All change in habits of life and of thought
is irksome. The difference in this respect between the wealthy and the
common run of mankind lies not so much in the motive which prompts to
conservatism as in the degree of exposure to the economic forces that
urge a change. The members of the wealthy class do not yield to the
demand for innovation as readily as other men because they are not
constrained to do so.

This conservatism of the wealthy class is so obvious a feature that
it has even come to be recognized as a mark of respectability. Since
conservatism is a characteristic of the wealthier and therefore more
reputable portion of the community, it has acquired a certain honorific
or decorative value. It has become prescriptive to such an extent that
an adherence to conservative views is comprised as a matter of course in
our notions of respectability; and it is imperatively incumbent on all
who would lead a blameless life in point of social repute. Conservatism,
being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and conversely,
innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar. The first and
most unreflected element in that instinctive revulsion and reprobation
with which we turn from all social innovators is this sense of the
essential vulgarity of the thing. So that even in cases where one
recognizes the substantial merits of the case for which the innovator
is spokesman--as may easily happen if the evils which he seeks to
remedy are sufficiently remote in point of time or space or personal
contact--still one cannot but be sensible of the fact that the innovator
is a person with whom it is at least distasteful to be associated, and
from whose social contact one must shrink. Innovation is bad form.

The fact that the usages, actions, and views of the well-to-do leisure
class acquire the character of a prescriptive canon of conduct for
the rest of society,