<p>The guiding habits of thought of a devout person move on the plane of an
archaic scheme of life which has outlived much of its usefulness for the
economic exigencies of the collective life of today. In so far as the
economic organization fits the exigencies of the collective life of today,
it has outlived the regime of status, and has no use and no place for a
relation of personal subserviency. So far as concerns the economic
efficiency of the community, the sentiment of personal fealty, and the
general habit of mind of which that sentiment is an expression, are
survivals which cumber the ground and hinder an adequate adjustment of
human institutions to the existing situation. The habit of mind which best
lends itself to the purposes of a peaceable, industrial community, is that
matter-of-fact temper which recognizes the value of material facts simply
as opaque items in the mechanical sequence. It is that frame of mind which
does not instinctively impute an animistic propensity to things, nor
resort to preternatural intervention as an explanation of perplexing
phenomena, nor depend on an unseen hand to shape the course of events to
human use. To meet the requirements of the highest economic efficiency
under modern conditions, the world process must habitually be apprehended
in terms of quantitative, dispassionate force and sequence.</p>
<p>As seen from the point of view of the later economic exigencies,
devoutness is, perhaps in all cases, to be looked upon as a survival from
an earlier phase of associated life—a mark of arrested spiritual
development. Of course it remains true that in a community where the
economic structure is still substantially a system of status; where the
attitude of the average of persons in the community is consequently shaped
by and adapted to the relation of personal dominance and personal
subservience; or where for any other reason—of tradition or of
inherited aptitude—the population as a whole is strongly inclined to
devout observances; there a devout habit of mind in any individual, not in
excess of the average of the community, must be taken simply as a detail
of the prevalent habit of life. In this light, a devout individual in a
devout community can not be called a case of reversion, since he is
abreast of the average of the community. But as seen from the point of
view of the modern industrial situation, exceptional devoutness—devotional
zeal that rises appreciably above the average pitch of devoutness in the
community—may safely be set down as in all cases an atavistic trait.</p>
<p>It is, of course, equally legitimate to consider these phenomena from a
different point of view. They may be appreciated for a different purpose,
and the characterization here offered may be turned about. In speaking
from the point of view of the devotional interest, or the interest of
devout taste, it may, with equal cogency, be said that the spiritual
attitude bred in men by the modern industrial life is unfavorable to a
free development of the life of faith. It might fairly be objected to the
later development of the industrial process that its discipline tends to
"materialism," to the elimination of filial piety. From the aesthetic
point of view, again, something to a similar purport might be said. But,
however legitimate and valuable these and the like reflections may be for
their purpose, they would not be in place in the present inquiry, which is
exclusively concerned with the valuation of these phenomena from the
economic point of view.</p>
<p>The grave economic significance of the anthropomorphic habit of mind and
of the addiction to devout observances must serve as apology for speaking
further on a topic which it can not but be distasteful to discuss at all
as an economic phenomenon in a community so devout as ours. Devout
observances are of economic importance as an index of a concomitant
variation of temperament, accompanying the predatory habit of mind and so
indicating the presence of industrially disserviceable traits. They
indicate the presence of a mental attitude which has a certain economic
value of its own by virtue of its influence upon the industrial
serviceability of the individual. But they are also of importance more
directly, in modifying the economic activities of the community,
especially as regards the distribution and consumption of goods.</p>
<p>The most obvious economic bearing of these observances is seen in the
devout consumption of goods and services. The consumption of ceremonial
paraphernalia required by any cult, in the way of shrines, temples,
churches, vestments, sacrifices, sacraments, holiday attire, etc., serves
no immediate material end. All this material apparatus may, therefore,
without implying deprecation, be broadly characterized as items of
conspicuous waste. The like is true in a general way of the personal
service consumed under this head; such as priestly education, priestly
service, pilgrimages, fasts, holidays, household devotions, and the like.
At the same time the observances in the execution of which this
consumption takes place serve to extend and protract the vogue of those
habits of thought on which an anthropomorphic cult rests. That is to say,
they further the habits of thought characteristic of the regime of status.
They are in so far an obstruction to the most effective organization of
industry under modern circumstances; and are, in the first instance,
antagonistic to the development of economic institutions in the direction
required by the situation of today. For the present purpose, the indirect
as well as the direct effects of this consumption are of the nature of a
curtailment of the community's economic efficiency. In economic theory,
then, and considered in its proximate consequences, the consumption of
goods and effort in the service of an anthropomorphic divinity means a
lowering of the vitality of the community. What may be the remoter,
indirect, moral effects of this class of consumption does not admit of a
succinct answer, and it is a question which can not be taken up here.</p>
<p>It will be to the point, however, to note the general economic character
of devout consumption, in comparison with consumption for other purposes.
An indication of the range of motives and purposes from which devout
consumption of goods proceeds will help toward an appreciation of the
value both of this consumption itself and of the general habit of mind to
which it is congenial. There is a striking parallelism, if not rather a
substantial identity of motive, between the consumption which goes to the
service of an anthropomorphic divinity and that which goes to the service
of a gentleman of leisure chieftain or patriarch—in the upper class
of society during the barbarian culture. Both in the case of the chieftain
and in that of the divinity there are expensive edifices set apart for the
behoof of the person served. These edifices, as well as the properties
which supplement them in the service, must not be common in kind or grade;
they always show a large element of conspicuous waste. It may also be
noted that the devout edifices are invariably of an archaic cast in their
structure and fittings. So also the servants, both of the chieftain and of
the divinity, must appear in the presence clothed in garments of a
special, ornate character. The characteristic economic feature of this
apparel is a more than ordinarily accentuated conspicuous waste, together
with the secondary feature—more accentuated in the case of the
priestly servants than in that of the servants or courtiers of the
barbarian potentate—that this court dress must always be in some
degree of an archaic fashion. Also the garments worn by the lay members of
the community when they come into the presence, should be of a more
expensive kind than their everyday apparel. Here, again, the parallelism
between the usage of the chieftain's audience hall and that of the
sanctuary is fairly well marked. In this respect there is required a
certain ceremonial "cleanness" of attire, the essential feature of which,
in the economic respect, is that the garments worn on these occasions
should carry as little suggestion as may be of any industrial occupation
or of any habitual addiction to such employments as are of material use.</p>
<p>This requirement of conspicuous waste and of ceremonial cleanness from the
traces of industry extends also to the apparel, and in a less degree to
the food, which is consumed on sacred holidays; that is to say, on days
set apart—tabu—for the divinity or for some member of the
lower ranks of the preternatural leisure class. In economic theory, sacred
holidays are obviously to be construed as a season of vicarious leisure
performed for the divinity or saint in whose name the tabu is imposed and
to whose good repute the abstention from useful effort on these days is
conceived to inure. The characteristic feature of all such seasons of
devout vicarious leisure is a more or less rigid tabu on all activity that
is of human use. In the case of fast-days the conspicuous abstention from
gainful occupations and from all pursuits that (materially) further human
life is further accentuated by compulsory abstinence from such consumption
as would conduce to the comfort or the fullness of life of the consumer.</p>
<p>It may be remarked, parenthetically, that secular holidays are of the same
origin, by slightly remoter derivation. They shade off by degrees from the
genuinely sacred days, through an intermediate class of semi-sacred
birthdays of kings and great men who have been in some measure canonized,
to the deliberately invented holiday set apart to further the good repute
of some notable event or some striking fact, to which it is intended to do
honor, or the good fame of which is felt to be in need of repair. The
remoter refinement in the employment of vicarious leisure as a means of
augmenting the good repute of a phenomenon or datum is seen at its best in
its very latest application. A day of vicarious leisure has in some
communities been set apart as Labor Day. This observance is designed to
augment the prestige of the fact of labor, by the archaic, predatory
method of a compulsory abstention from useful effort. To this datum of
labor-in-general is imputed the good repute attributable to the pecuniary
strength put in evidence by abstaining from labor. Sacred holidays, and
holidays generally, are of the nature of a tribute levied on the body of
the people. The tribute is paid in vicarious leisure, and the honorific
effect which emerges is imputed to the person or the fact for whose good
repute the holiday has been instituted. Such a tithe of vicarious leisure
is a perquisite of all members of the preternatural leisure class and is
indispensable to their good fame. Un saint qu'on ne ch�me pas is indeed a
saint fallen on evil days.</p>
<p>Besides this tithe of vicarious leisure levied on the laity, there are
also special classes of persons—the various grades of priests and
hierodules—whose time is wholly set apart for a similar service. It
is not only incumbent on the priestly class to abstain from vulgar labor,
especially so far as it is lucrative or is apprehended to contribute to
the temporal well-being of mankind. The tabu in the case of the priestly
class goes farther and adds a refinement in the form of an injunction
against their seeking worldly gain even where it may be had without
debasing application to industry. It is felt to be unworthy of the servant
of the divinity, or rather unworthy the dignity of the divinity whose
servant he is, that he should seek material gain or take thought for
temporal matters. "Of all contemptible things a man who pretends to be a
priest of God and is a priest to his own comforts and ambitions is the
most contemptible." There is a line of discrimination, which a cultivated
taste in matters of devout observance finds little difficulty in drawing,
between such actions and conduct as conduce to the fullness of human life
and such as conduce to the good fame of the anthropomorphic divinity; and
the activity of the priestly class, in the ideal barbarian scheme, falls
wholly on the hither side of this line. What falls within the range of
economics falls below the proper level of solicitude of the priesthood in
its best estate. Such apparent exceptions to this rule as are afforded,
for instance, by some of the medieval orders of monks (the members of
which actually labored to some useful end), scarcely impugn the rule.
These outlying orders of the priestly class are not a sacerdotal element
in the full sense of the term. And it is noticeable also that these
doubtfully sacerdotal orders, which countenanced their members in earning
a living, fell into disrepute through offending the sense of propriety in
the communities where they existed.</p>
<p>The priest should not put his hand to mechanically productive work; but he
should consume in large measure. But even as regards his consumption it is
to be noted that it should take such forms as do not obviously conduce to
his own comfort or fullness of life; it should conform to the rules
governing vicarious consumption, as explained under that head in an
earlier chapter. It is not ordinarily in good form for the priestly class
to appear well fed or in hilarious spirits. Indeed, in many of the more
elaborate cults the injunction against other than vicarious consumption by
this class frequently goes so far as to enjoin mortification of the flesh.
And even in those modern denominations which have been organized under the
latest formulations of the creed, in a modern industrial community, it is
felt that all levity and avowed zest in the enjoyment of the good things
of this world is alien to the true clerical decorum. Whatever suggests
that these servants of an invisible master are living a life, not of
devotion to their master's good fame, but of application to their own
ends, jars harshly on our sensibilities as something fundamentally and
eternally wrong. They are a servant class, although, being servants of a
very exalted master, they rank high in the social scale by virtue of this
borrowed light. Their consumption is vicarious consumption; and since, in
the advanced cults, their master has no need of material gain, their
occupation is vicarious leisure in the full sense. "Whether therefore ye
eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." It may be
added that so far as the laity is assimilated to the priesthood in the
respect that they are conceived to be servants of the divinity. So far
this imputed vicarious character attaches also to the layman's life. The
range of application of this corollary is somewhat wide. It applies
especially to such movements for the reform or rehabilitation of the
religious life as are of an austere, pietistic, ascetic cast—where
the human subject is conceived to hold his life by a direct servile tenure
from his spiritual sovereign. That is to say, where the institution of the
priesthood lapses, or where there is an exceptionally lively sense of the
immediate and masterful presence of the divinity in the affairs of life,
there the layman is conceived to stand in an immediate servile relation to
the divinity, and his life is construed to be a performance of vicarious
leisure directed to the enhancement of his master's repute. In such cases
of reversion there is a return to the unmediated relation of subservience,
as the dominant fact of the devout attitude. The emphasis is thereby throw
on an austere and discomforting vicarious leisure, to the neglect of
conspicuous consumption as a means of grace.</p>
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