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Updated: May 24, 2025
Off he went then on his pilgrimage, his Research Magnificent, absolutely unknown to almost every man he hoped to see before his return. The first stop he made was at Columbia, Missouri, to see his idol Veblen. He quaked a bit beforehand, had heard Veblen might not see him, but the second letter from Missouri began, "Just got in after thirteen hours with Veblen.
Wharton with her House of Mirth, a Thorstein Veblen with his Higher Learning in America, a Savonarola with his call to repentance and indictment of worldly and unfaithful living. It is a difficult and dangerous office, this of the prophet; it calls for a considerate and honest mind as well as a flashing insight and an eager heart.
That is a typical Veblen subject. It scared the student to death, and Veblen chuckled over my advice." In Wisconsin he was especially anxious to see Guyer. Of his visit with him he wrote: "It was a whiz of a session. He is just my meat." At Yale he saw Keller. "He is a wonder and is going to do a lot for me in criticism."
Nicolai says that patriotism and chauvinism would have no meaning and no interest without reference to war, and that for the arts of peace one needs no patriotism at all. Hoesch-Ernst , another German writer, says that patriotism has made history a story of wars. Veblen says that patriotism is the only obstacle to peace among the nations.
Without this moral sanction it is doubtful whether wars could be conducted at all, although this moral sanction may be based upon very superficial grounds. The higher patriotic feeling runs, says Veblen , the thinner may be the moral sanction that satisfies the public conscience.
Several writers, Powers , and especially Veblen, place questions of national honor among the main causes of war. Veblen would hold that wars never occur unless the questions involved are first converted into questions of national honor and are then, but only then, supported as moral issues.
This is what Veblen so well calls "idle curiosity". And it is usually idle enough. Some of us when we face the line of people opposite us in a subway train impulsively consider them in detail and engage in rapid inferences and form theories in regard to them.
But now the combination of Veblen and myself had helped her to realize what it meant. Douglas van Tuiver spent his money upon a definite system: whatever went to the maintaining of his social position, whatever added to the glory, prestige and power of the van Tuiver name that money was well-spent; while money spent to any other end was money wasted and this included all ideas and "causes."
She had been thinking, and she had even found time, in the midst of her distractions, to read part of a book. In the course of our talks I had mentioned Veblen, and she had been reading snatches of his work on the Leisure Class, and I was surprised, and not a little amused, to observe her reaction to it.
As machine production superseded craftsmanship the basis of fixing the price of an article shifted from values fixed by the standards of workers to standards of machines, Professor Veblen says to standards of salesmen. It is along these lines that mechanical science applied to the production of wealth, has eliminated the personality of the workers.
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