Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/852

 836 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The author has certainly handled the English language with con- summate skill, and, notwithstanding his indictment of " classicism," he displays no mean acquaintance with the classics. The book abounds in terse expressions, sharp antitheses, and quaint^ but happy phrases. Some of these have been interpreted as irony and satire, but, as said above, this is the work of the critics themselves. The language is plain and unmistakable, as it should be, but the style is the farthest removed possible from either advocacy or vituperation, and the lan- guage, to use the author's own words, is " morally colorless." Some of it, if it is not classical, is likely to become so. His general termi- nology has already been used to a considerable extent in this review, the peculiar terms and expressions being put in quotation marks. Many others might be given if space permitted, such, for example, as "reputably wasteful expenditure," or "reputable waste," "reputable futility," and " pecuniary reputability ; " and he speaks of certain things that have " advantages in the way of uselessness." On the other hand, we have such expressions as " vulgarly useful occupations," " vulgar effectiveness," and the "taint of usefulness." Then we have the "predatory animus," " quasi -predatory methods," " predatory fraud," " predatory parasitism," and " parasitic predation." Many incidental expressions are noteworthy, such as the "skilled and graded inebriety and perfunctory dueling" of the German students, and his statement that the " higher learning " chiefly confers a " knowledge of the unknowable." He says that the " exaltation of the defective " and admiration for " painstaking crudeness " and " elaborate ineptitude " are characteristics of "pecuniary standards of taste." And anyone who has noted how all athletic sports degenerate and become restricted to a few professionals will appreciate his remark that " the relation of football to physical culture is much the same as that of the bull fight to agriculture."

As has already been seen, the two great social classes are charac- terized by an assortment of sharply contrasted words and phrases, and not only their occupations, but their underlying instincts, are clearly marked off by such expressions as the " instinct of sportsmanship " and the " instinct of workmanship;" "exploit and industry," or " exploit and drudgery;" "honorific andhumilific " occupations, and "perfunc- tory and proficuous " activities, all forming the primary contrast between " futility and utility." In each of these pairs the first belongs to the leisure class and represents the superior fitness to survive in human society. The leisure class constitutes the biologically fittest, the soci- ally best, the aristocracy.