The aid of friends and competitors is therefore brought in by resorting to the giving of valuable presents and expensive feasts and entertainments.

Presents and feasts had probably another origin than that of naive ostentation, but they required their utility for this purpose very early, and they have retained that character to the present; so that their utility in this respect has now long been the substantial ground on which these usages rest.

Costly entertainments, such as the potlatch or the ball, are peculiarly adapted to serve this end.

The competitor with whom the entertainer wishes to institute a comparison is, by this method, made to serve as a means to the end.

He consumes vicariously for his host at the same time that he is witness to the consumption of that excess of good things which his host is unable to dispose of single-handed, and he is also made to witness his host's facility in etiquette.
In the giving of costly entertainments other motives, of more genial kind, are of course also present.