The process is slower where the mobility of the population is less or where the intervals between the several classes are wider and more abrupt.

But if time be allowed, the scope of the discretion of the leisure class as regards questions of form and detail in the community's scheme of life is large; while as regards the substantial principles of reputability, the changes which it can effect lie within a narrow margin of tolerance.

Its example and precept carries the force of prescription for all classes below it; but in working out the precepts which are handed down as governing the form and method of reputability--in shaping the usages and the spiritual attitude of the lower classes--this authoritative prescription constantly works under the selective guidance of the canon of conspicuous waste, tempered in varying degree by the instinct of workmanship.

To those norms is to be added another broad principle of human nature--the predatory animus--which in point of generality and of psychological content lies between the two just named.

The effect of the latter in shaping the accepted scheme of life is yet to be discussed.
The canon of reputability, then, must adapt itself to the economic circumstances, the traditions, and the degree of spiritual maturity of the particular class whose scheme of life it is to regulate.