the foundation. All concerned, whether
their interest is immediate and self-regarding, or contemplative only,
agree that some considerable share of the expenditure should go to
the higher or spiritual needs derived from the habit of an invidious
comparison in predatory exploit and pecuniary waste. But this only goes
to say that the canons of emulative and pecuniary reputability so far
pervade the common sense of the community as to permit no escape or
evasion, even in the case of an enterprise which ostensibly proceeds
entirely on the basis of a non-invidious interest.

It may even be that the enterprise owes its honorific virtue, as a means
of enhancing the donor's good repute, to the imputed presence of this
non-invidious motive; but that does not hinder the invidious interest
from guiding the expenditure. The effectual presence of motives of an
emulative or invidious origin in non-emulative works of this kind
might be shown at length and with detail, in any one of the classes of
enterprise spoken of above. Where these honorific details occur, in such
cases, they commonly masquerade under designations that belong in the
field of the aesthetic, ethical or economic interest. These special
motives, derived from the standards and canons of the pecuniary culture,
act surreptitiously to divert effort of a non-invidious kind from
effective service, without disturbing the agent's sense of good
intention or obtruding upon his consciousness the substantial futility
of his work. Their effect might be traced through the entire range
of that schedule of non-invidious, meliorative enterprise that is so
considerable a feature, and especially so conspicuous a feature, in the
overt scheme of life of the well-to-do. But the theoretical bearing is
perhaps clear enough and may require no further illustration; especially
as some detailed attention will be given to one of these lines of
enterprise--the establishments for the higher learning--in another
connection.

Under the circumstances of the sheltered situation in which the leisure
class is placed there seems, therefore, to be something of a reversion
to the range of non-invidious impulses that characterizes the
ante-predatory savage culture. The reversion comprises both the sense of
workmanship and the proclivity to indolence and good-fellowship. But
in the modern scheme of life canons of conduct based on pecuniary or
invidious merit stand in the way of a free exercise of these impu