tribes of the Andamans … Pueblo communities … included in the same class: references to aborigines of Japan, Australia, Africa, and the Americas reflect the heightened interest in ethnographic studies, such as Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Societies (1877).
prima facie: at first sight, before future examination.
Nota notœ est nota rei ipsius: a known component of a thing is known by the thing itself.
Summum crede … causas: ‘I believe that the greatest abomination is to prefer life over honour, and on account of life to lose the reason for living.’ (Juvenal, Satire VIII.)
otium cum dignitate: leisure with merit, honour.
Malthusian: Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1837), English economist, published his controversial An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. He argued that unchecked populations increase by means of geometric ratios, whereas food supplies are governed by arithmetic ratios. The grim result: too many people, too little sustenance to support human needs.
dolicho-blond element: in The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen focuses on the effects of selection upon the behaviour of different social groups. In later essays he makes distinctions based on adaptation as groups came to terms with their changing habitation. For him it was a matter of emphasis whether one sees the destructive changes taking place during the secondary predatory stage as the result of mutations within the breed or whether one continues to emphasize the original type of the peaceful savage.
the Columbian Exposition: held in Chicago in 1893; the highly popular World’s Fair that commemorated the ‘discovery’ of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492; famous for the White City designed by Daniel Burnham that featured displays of the newest technologies, and anthropological exhibitions.
the ideal of feminine beauty is a robust, large-limbed woman … that of the maidens of the Homeric poems: Veblen contrasts the modern type of the neurasthenic ‘lady’ with a chocolate-box face valued by the leisure class with the strong, active, will-strong ‘woman’ exemplified by such figures as Hecuba, Cassandra, and Andromache, as well as Penelope, Circe, and Nausicaa.
bona fide: honest.
Diogenes-like: Diogenes (d. c.320 BC) founded the philosophy of the Cynics that rejected social conventions and urged an ascetic life of poverty. He is famed for having gone through the night-time streets of Athens with a lantern, looking for an honest man.
John Ruskin and William Morris: Ruskin (1819–1900), art critic and social reformer who, together with Morris (1834–96), deplored the replacement of handicrafts with machine-made objects. Morris was a poet, artist, Socialist, and founder of a famous decorating firm dedicated to aesthetic beauty in all things (from wallpaper to furniture and book-design) based on traditions set down by medieval artisans. His social views, like those of Ruskin, linked the health of art to the repudiation of industrial capitalism and a return to home-crafts. Veblen met Morris in England in 1896 and decided he did not care for him.
Kelmscott Press: founded by Morris in 1890, the press printed limited editions of fine books using his own type designs and ornate decorations, including the famous ‘Kelmscott Chaucer’ of 1896.
the dolichocephalic-blond … the Mediterranean: in contrast to ‘dolichocephalic’ (long, narrow skulls), ‘brachycephalic’ is the Greek term for wide skulls, while ‘the Mediterranean’ type refers loosely to the Latin races.
Darwinian and Spencerian: Charles Robert Darwin (1809–82), English naturalist whose journeys to South American coasts as a young man led to the long-delayed publication in 1859 of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, followed by The Descent of Man (1871) and other works that created a firestorm among scientists, theologians, and members of the general public. The English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) pointed evolutionary theory in the direction of sociology rather than the natural sciences. The popular conception of Social Darwinism stood as a positive argument for the belief that the strongest members of a society rightly succeed while the weak fall by the wayside. It became an accepted way to read the triumphs of late nineteenth-century capitalism.
only in a Pickwickian sense: Samuel Pickwick, the titular figure of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, published by Charles Dickens in 1837, was a remnant, even in Dickens’s day, of a rapidly disappearing non-predatory society marked by ‘sympathy, honesty, and regard for life’.
a brilliant (Napoleonic) success: a reference to the reoccurrence in history of the ruthless and triumphant male who sweeps all before him, not merely to the specific career of Napoleon Bonaparte (1765–1821), military leader and emperor of France.
the nouveaux arrivés: newly installed members of the leisure class who lack experience in how to handle the useless idleness backed by several generations of wealth.
martial ardour … under the stimulus of some special provocation: Veblen alludes to the inflamed militaristic passions of the period, exemplified by the Boer War in Africa and the Spanish American War in Cuba.
ferœ natura: the nature of the beast.
in petto: in secret.
hamingia or gipta (gœfa, au∂na): both here and in Veblen’s translation of The Laxdaela Saga (1925), he refers to the Icelandic terms for the good luck granted by a preternatural agent that determines one’s destiny.
ignava ratio: worthless calculation.
the Unitarian or the Universalist: practitioners of a Protestant faith which, in Veblen’s view, renders them less ‘anthropomorphic’ because they reject the orthodox Christian belief in the Trinitarian nature of God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
the Salvation Army: a non-sectarian Protestant organization with an evangelical and philanthropic mission, the Salvation Army was founded in London in 1865 by William Booth based upon a military model. Its work spread to the United States in 1878.
the Young Men’s Christian Association … Christian Endeavour: the YMCA was formed in London in 1844 and in the United States in 1851. Together with the Young People’s Society for Christian Endeavour, these organizations promoted spiritual, social, and physical well-being.
Mine eyes… His truth is marching on: ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’, sung to the tune of ‘John Brown’s Body’, was written in 1861 by Julia Ward Howe in support of the Union cause during the American Civil War. It draws upon Old Testament passages, as in Isaiah 5, which detail God’s wrath. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck’s novel of social protest published in 1939, took its title from both the Bible and Howe’s verses—examples of what Veblen called ‘sanguinary epithets applied to the divinity’ that have become ‘acceptable to our unreflecting apprehension’ (p. 197).
Un saint qu’on ne chôme pas: a saint without a feast-day; a person given no regard by the people.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Stanton (1815–1902), leader of the American suffrage movement, organized the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1838, together with Lucretia Mott. She later joined forces with Susan B. Anthony in 1851, and served as first president of the National Woman Suffrage Association from 1869 to 1890.
this ‘New-Woman’ movement: an activist programme promoting the advancement of women’s economic, legal, social, and political rights. It first took hold in England, then moved to the Continent and the United States by the mid-1800s, where it inspired both attacks and strong support.
Luther, Melanchthon, Peder Dass … Grundtvig: the ‘archaic’ animistic beliefs in ‘black arts’ held by Norwegian peasants coloured their views of teaching by erudite theologians such as Martin Luther (1483–1546), German leader of the Protestant Reformation, his associate Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), and others such as the Danish scholar Nicolay Grundtvig (1783–1872), as well as Peder [Petter] Dass (1647–1708), Norwegian poet and clergyman.
the Eleusinian mysteries: ancient Greek secret rites led by women, held at Eleusis in celebration of the abduction of Persephone and her return from the Underworld aided by her mother Demeter, that symbolized the cycle of death and rebirth.
the Mæcenas function: Caius Maecenas (d. 8 BC) was a Roman statesman in the time of Augustus Caesar. As the patron of writers like Horace and Virgil, he represents the tradition of men of wealth who support the arts.
otium cum dignitate: see note to p. 66.
fruges consumere nati: born to consume the fruits of the earth.
Iam fides et pax … Audet: ‘now neglected faith and peace, and ancient honour and shame, dares to return’ (Horace, ‘Carmen Saeculare’).