usage has an immediate effect upon economic life, but it has also
an indirect and remoter effect upon conduct in other respects as
well. Habits of thought with respect to the expression of life in
any given direction unavoidably affect the habitual view of what
is good and right in life in other directions also. In the
organic complex of habits of thought which make up the substance
of an individual's conscious life the economic interest does not
lie isolated and distinct from all other interests. Something,
for instance, has already been said of its relation to the canons
of reputability.

The principle of conspicuous waste guides the formation of habits
of thought as to what is honest and reputable in life and in
commodities. In so doing, this principle will traverse other
norms of conduct which do not primarily have to do with the code
of pecuniary honor, but which have, directly or incidentally, an
economic significance of some magnitude. So the canon of
honorific waste may, immediately or remotely, influence the sense
of duty, the sense of beauty, the sense of utility, the sense of
devotional or ritualistic fitness, and the scientific sense of
truth.

It is scarcely necessary to go into a discussion here of the
particular points at which, or the particular manner in which,
the canon of honorific expenditure habitually traverses the
canons of moral conduct. The matter is one which has received
large attention and illustration at the hands of those whose
office it is to watch and admonish with respect to any departures
from the accepted code of morals. In modern communities, where
the dominant economic and legal feature of the community's life