y be truth in the view (as a question of policy)
so often expressed by the spokesmen of the conservative element, that
without some such substantial and consistent resistance to innovation as
is offered by the conservative well-to-do classes, social innovation
and experiment would hurry the community into untenable and intolerable
situations; the only possible result of which would be discontent and
disastrous reaction. All this, however, is beside the present argument.

But apart from all deprecation, and aside from all question as to the
indispensability of some such check on headlong innovation, the leisure
class, in the nature of things, consistently acts to retard that
adjustment to the environment which is called social advance or
development. The characteristic attitude of the class may be summed
up in the maxim: "Whatever is, is right" whereas the law of natural
selection, as applied to human institutions, gives the axiom: "Whatever
is, is wrong." Not that the institutions of today are wholly wrong
for the purposes of the life of today, but they are, always and in the
nature of things, wrong to some extent. They are the result of a more or
less inadequate adjustment of the methods of living to a situation which
prevailed at some point in the past development; and they are therefore
wrong by something more than the interval which separates the present
situation from that of the past. "Right" and "wrong" are of course here
used without conveying any rejection as to what ought or ought not to
be. They are applied simply from the (morally colorless) evolutionary
standpoint, and are intended to designate compatibility or
incompatibility with the effective evolutionary process. 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 of