the purpose of an invidious comparison in pecuniary success.
It is evident that these canons of expenditure have much to say
in determining the standard of living for any community and for
any class. It is no less evident that the standard of living
which prevails at any time or at any given social altitude will
in its turn have much to say as to the forms which honorific
expenditure will take, and as to the degree to which this
"higher" need will dominate a people's consumption. In this
respect the control exerted by the accepted standard of living is
chiefly of a negative character; it acts almost solely to prevent
recession from a scale of conspicuous expenditure that has once
become habitual.

A standard of living is of the nature of habit. It is an habitual
scale and method of responding to given stimuli. The difficulty
in the way of receding from an accustomed standard is the
difficulty of breaking a habit that has once been formed. The
relative facility with which an advance in the standard is made
means that the life process is a process of unfolding activity
and that it will readily unfold in a new direction whenever and
wherever the resistance to self-expression decreases. But when
the habit of expression along such a given line of low resistance
has once been formed, the discharge will seek the accustomed
outlet even after a change has taken place in the environment
whereby the external resistance has appreciably risen. That
heightened facility of expression in a given direction which is
called habit may offset a considerable increase in the resistance
offered by external circumstances to the unfolding of life in the
given direction. As between the various habits, or habitual modes
and directions of expression, which go to make up an individual's