We must confine ourselves more closely, however, to the sphere of material goods and their uses. And in this sphere objection to the view proposed will run in some such terms as the following: Take our ancestors, for example, and their household arrangements to which invidious reference has been made: why should we suppose that their seeming contentment was anything more (or less) than a dignified composure in which we might well imitate them--an attitude in no way precluding a definite sense of specific discomforts and embarrassments and a distinct determination to be rid of them as soon as might be? And, in fact, if they were satisfied with what they had why did they receive the new when it was offered? If, on the other hand, they were not satisfied, how is the fact intelligible except upon the assumption that they had distinct and definite wants not yet supplied, and were wishing (but patiently) for conveniences and comforts of a sort not yet existent. And this latter hypothesis, it will be urged, is precisely what the foregoing argument has sought to discredit as an account of the moving springs in the evolution of consumption. Sec. 5. Any adequate discussion of the central issue thus presented would fall into two parts. In the first place, before a consumption good can come into general acceptance and currency it must have been in some way discovered, suggested or invented, and the psychology of invention is undoubtedly a matter of very great complexity and difficulty. But for the purposes of the present inquiry all this may be passed over. The other branch of a full discussion of our problem has to do with the reception of the newly invented commodity or process into wider and wider use--and this again is a social phenomenon not less complex than the other. It is this phenomenon of increasing extension and vogue, of widening propagation from person to person, that is directly of present concern for us--and in particular the individual person's attitude toward the new thing and the nature of the interest he takes in it.