In either case the result is a closely enforced struggle for the means with which to meet the daily needs; whether it be the physical or the higher needs.

The strain of self-assertion against odds takes up the whole energy of the individual; he bends his efforts to compass his own invidious ends alone, and becomes continually more narrowly self-seeking.

The industrial traits in this way tend to obsolescence through disuse.

Indirectly, therefore, by imposing a scheme of pecuniary decency and by withdrawing as much as may be of the means of life from the lower classes, the institution of a leisure class acts to conserve the pecuniary traits in the body of the population.

The result is an assimilation of the lower classes to the type of human nature that belongs primarily to the upper classes only.
It appears, therefore, that there is no wide difference in temperament between the upper and the lower classes; but it appears also that the absence of such a difference is in good part due to the prescriptive example of the leisure class and to the popular acceptance of those broad principles of conspicuous waste and pecuniary emulation on which the institution of a leisure class rests.