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Updated: May 3, 2025
The students had to read one book a week such books as Hart's "Psychology of Insanity," Keller's "Societal Evolution," Holt's "Freudian Wish," McDougall's "Social Psychology," two weeks to that, Lippmann's "Preface to Politics," Veblen's "Instinct of Workmanship," Wallas's "Great Society," Thorndike's "Educational Psychology," Hoxie's "Scientific Management," Ware's "The Worker and his Country," G.H. Parker's "Biology and Social Problems," and so forth and ending, as a concession to the idealists, with Royce's "Philosophy of Loyalty."
When I talked about wages and hours of labour, I was dealing with things that were remote from her, and difficult to make real; but Veblen's theme, the idle rich, and the arts and graces whereby they demonstrate their power, was the stuff of which her life was made.
Thorstein Veblen's brilliant descriptions penetrate deeply into our mental life, and Jane Addams has given new hope to many of us by her capacity for making ideals the goal of natural desire. Nor is it just to pass by such a suggestive thinker as Gabriel Tarde, even though we may feel that his psychology is too simple and his conclusions somewhat overdriven by a favorite theory.
A flood that bore us straight back to Castleman Hall, and to all the scenes of her young ladyhood! If only Lady Dee could have revised this book of Veblen's, how many points she could have given to him!
The problem is to select the goals of competition and the rules of the game. Almost always the most visible and obvious standard of measurement will determine the rules of the game: such as money, power, popularity, applause, or Mr. Veblen's "conspicuous waste." What other standards of measurement does our civilization normally provide?
In the leisure-class regime, the woman is a cherished possession for it is through her that the ability to waste both time and goods can best be shown. So came Veblen's grim and ironic exposition of the leisure-class woman, an exposition which Corydon found almost too painful to be read. For Corydon's ancestors, as far back as documents could trace, had been members of that class.
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.
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.
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