Section 12. Then one of his Socialist friends sent him Thorstein Veblen’s “Theory of the Leisure Class”; a book which he read in a continuous ebullition of glee. Truly it was a delicious thing to find a man who could employ the lingo of the ultra-sophisticated sociologist, and use it in a demonstration of the most revolutionary propositions. The drollery of this was all the more enjoyable because Thyrsis could never be sure that the author himself intended it--whether his sesquipedalian irony might not be a pure product of nature, untouched by any human art. Veblen’s book might have been called a study of the ultimate destiny of “surplus value”; an economic interpretation of the social arts and graces, of “fashions” and “fads”. Where men competed for the fruit of each other’s labor, the possession of wealth was the sign of excellence. This excellence men wished to demonstrate to others; and step by step, as the methods of production and exploitation changed, one might trace the change in the methods of this demonstration. The savage chief began with nose-rings and anklets, and the trophies of his fights; then, as he grew richer, he would employ courtiers and concubines, and shine by vicarious splendor. He would give banquets and build palaces--the end being always “the conspicuous consumption of goods”. Later on came those stages when he no longer had to gain his wealth by physical prowess; when cunning took the place of force, and he ruled by laws and religions and moral codes, and handed down his power through long lines of descendants. Then ostentation became a highly specialized and conventionalized thing--its criterion changing gradually to “conspicuous waste of time”. Those characteristics were cultivated which served to advertise to the world that their possessor had never had to earn wealth, nor to do anything for himself; the aristocrat became a special type of being, with small feet and hands and a feeble body, with special ways of walking and talking, of dressing and eating and playing. He developed a separate religion, a separate language, separate literatures and arts, separate vices and virtues. And fantastic and preposterous as some of these might seem, they were real things, they were the means whereby the leisure-class individual took part in the competition of his own world, and secured his own prestige and the survival of his line. Some philosopher had said that virtue is a product like vinegar; and it was a pleasant thing to discover that French heels and “picture-hats” and course-dinners were products also.