ABSTRACT
Thorstein Veblen was certainly one of the American masters at coining abstract epithets. Veblen had his own highly abstract Eden, which he conceptualized as the stage of "savagery," and saw all the evils of civilization as variations on the theme of "barbarism," the next higher stage in the evolutionary process. In fact, Veblen conceptualized the history of human evolution in terms of his own hatred for the predatory and crude capitalism of the Gilded Age and, like his contemporary, Mark Twain, ended up in a mood of pure despair. Thus private property, conspicuous consumption, leisure classes, idle curiosity, good manners, and especially predatory sports and capitalism were all examples of man's fall. Veblen is remembered primarily as the man who debunked gentlemen of the leisure class who bought clothes, lived in correct neighborhoods, cultivated good manners and good grammar, went to church, and built cathedrals purely to impress others, especially those beneath them.
