<p>A doubt will present itself as to the full legitimacy of this
characterization of the sacerdotal scheme of life, on the ground that a
considerable proportion of the modern priesthood departs from the scheme
in many details. The scheme does not hold good for the clergy of those
denominations which have in some measure diverged from the old established
schedule of beliefs or observances. These take thought, at least
ostensibly or permissively, for the temporal welfare of the laity, as well
as for their own. Their manner of life, not only in the privacy of their
own household, but often even before the public, does not differ in an
extreme degree from that of secular-minded persons, either in its
ostensible austerity or in the archaism of its apparatus. This is truest
for those denominations that have wandered the farthest. To this objection
it is to be said that we have here to do not with a discrepancy in the
theory of sacerdotal life, but with an imperfect conformity to the scheme
on the part of this body of clergy. They are but a partial and imperfect
representative of the priesthood, and must not be taken as exhibiting the
sacerdotal scheme of life in an authentic and competent manner. The clergy
of the sects and denominations might be characterized as a half-caste
priesthood, or a priesthood in process of becoming or of reconstitution.
Such a priesthood may be expected to show the characteristics of the
sacerdotal office only as blended and obscured with alien motives and
traditions, due to the disturbing presence of other factors than those of
animism and status in the purposes of the organizations to which this
non-conforming fraction of the priesthood belongs.</p>
<p>Appeal may be taken direct to the taste of any person with a
discriminating and cultivated sense of the sacerdotal proprieties, or to
the prevalent sense of what constitutes clerical decorum in any community
at all accustomed to think or to pass criticism on what a clergyman may or
may not do without blame. Even in the most extremely secularized
denominations, there is some sense of a distinction that should be
observed between the sacerdotal and the lay scheme of life. There is no
person of sensibility but feels that where the members of this
denominational or sectarian clergy depart from traditional usage, in the
direction of a less austere or less archaic demeanor and apparel, they are
departing from the ideal of priestly decorum. There is probably no
community and no sect within the range of the Western culture in which the
bounds of permissible indulgence are not drawn appreciably closer for the
incumbent of the priestly office than for the common layman. If the
priest's own sense of sacerdotal propriety does not effectually impose a
limit, the prevalent sense of the proprieties on the part of the community
will commonly assert itself so obtrusively as to lead to his conformity or
his retirement from office.</p>
<p>Few if any members of any body of clergy, it may be added, would avowedly
seek an increase of salary for gain's sake; and if such avowal were openly
made by a clergyman, it would be found obnoxious to the sense of propriety
among his congregation. It may also be noted in this connection that no
one but the scoffers and the very obtuse are not instinctively grieved
inwardly at a jest from the pulpit; and that there are none whose respect
for their pastor does not suffer through any mark of levity on his part in
any conjuncture of life, except it be levity of a palpably histrionic kind—a
constrained unbending of dignity. The diction proper to the sanctuary and
to the priestly office should also carry little if any suggestion of
effective everyday life, and should not draw upon the vocabulary of modern
trade or industry. Likewise, one's sense of the proprieties is readily
offended by too detailed and intimate a handling of industrial and other
purely human questions at the hands of the clergy. There is a certain
level of generality below which a cultivated sense of the proprieties in
homiletical discourse will not permit a well-bred clergyman to decline in
his discussion of temporal interests. These matters that are of human and
secular consequence simply, should properly be handled with such a degree
of generality and aloofness as may imply that the speaker represents a
master whose interest in secular affairs goes only so far as to
permissively countenance them.</p>
<p>It is further to be noticed that the non-conforming sects and variants
whose priesthood is here under discussion, vary among themselves in the
degree of their conformity to the ideal scheme of sacerdotal life. In a
general way it will be found that the divergence in this respect is widest
in the case of the relatively young denominations, and especially in the
case of such of the newer denominations as have chiefly a lower
middle-class constituency. They commonly show a large admixture of
humanitarian, philanthropic, or other motives which can not be classed as
expressions of the devotional attitude; such as the desire of learning or
of conviviality, which enter largely into the effective interest shown by
members of these organizations. The non-conforming or sectarian movements
have commonly proceeded from a mixture of motives, some of which are at
variance with that sense of status on which the priestly office rests.
Sometimes, indeed, the motive has been in good part a revulsion against a
system of status. Where this is the case the institution of the priesthood
has broken down in the transition, at least partially. The spokesman of
such an organization is at the outset a servant and representative of the
organization, rather than a member of a special priestly class and the
spokesman of a divine master. And it is only by a process of gradual
specialization that, in succeeding generations, this spokesman regains the
position of priest, with a full investiture of sacerdotal authority, and
with its accompanying austere, archaic and vicarious manner of life. The
like is true of the breakdown and redintegration of devout ritual after
such a revulsion. The priestly office, the scheme of sacerdotal life, and
the schedule of devout observances are rehabilitated only gradually,
insensibly, and with more or less variation in details, as a persistent
human sense of devout propriety reasserts its primacy in questions
touching the interest in the preternatural—and it may be added, as
the organization increases in wealth, and so acquires more of the point of
view and the habits of thought of a leisure class.</p>
<p>Beyond the priestly class, and ranged in an ascending hierarchy,
ordinarily comes a superhuman vicarious leisure class of saints, angels,
etc.—or their equivalents in the ethnic cults. These rise in grade,
one above another, according to elaborate system of status. The principle
of status runs through the entire hierarchical system, both visible and
invisible. The good fame of these several orders of the supernatural
hierarchy also commonly requires a certain tribute of vicarious
consumption and vicarious leisure. In many cases they accordingly have
devoted to their service sub-orders of attendants or dependents who
perform a vicarious leisure for them, after much the same fashion as was
found in an earlier chapter to be true of the dependent leisure class
under the patriarchal system.</p>
<p>It may not appear without reflection how these devout observances and the
peculiarity of temperament which they imply, or the consumption of goods
and services which is comprised in the cult, stand related to the leisure
class of a modern community, or to the economic motives of which that
class is the exponent in the modern scheme of life to this end a summary
review of certain facts bearing on this relation will be useful. It
appears from an earlier passage in this discussion that for the purpose of
the collective life of today, especially so far as concerns the industrial
efficiency of the modern community, the characteristic traits of the
devout temperament are a hindrance rather than a help. It should
accordingly be found that the modern industrial life tends selectively to
eliminate these traits of human nature from the spiritual constitution of
the classes that are immediately engaged in the industrial process. It
should hold true, approximately, that devoutness is declining or tending
to obsolescence among the members of what may be called the effective
industrial community. At the same time it should appear that this aptitude
or habit survives in appreciably greater vigor among those classes which
do not immediately or primarily enter into the community's life process as
an industrial factor.</p>
<p>It has already been pointed out that these latter classes, which live by,
rather than in, the industrial process, are roughly comprised under two
categories (1) the leisure class proper, which is shielded from the stress
of the economic situation; and (2) the indigent classes, including the
lower-class delinquents, which are unduly exposed to the stress. In the
case of the former class an archaic habit of mind persists because no
effectual economic pressure constrains this class to an adaptation of its
habits of thought to the changing situation; while in the latter the
reason for a failure to adjust their habits of thought to the altered
requirements of industrial efficiency is innutrition, absence of such
surplus of energy as is needed in order to make the adjustment with
facility, together with a lack of opportunity to acquire and become
habituated to the modern point of view. The trend of the selective process
runs in much the same direction in both cases.</p>
<p>From the point of view which the modern industrial life inculcates,
phenomena are habitually subsumed under the quantitative relation of
mechanical sequence. The indigent classes not only fall short of the
modicum of leisure necessary in order to appropriate and assimilate the
more recent generalizations of science which this point of view involves,
but they also ordinarily stand in such a relation of personal dependence
or subservience to their pecuniary superiors as materially to retard their
emancipation from habits of thought proper to the regime of status. The
result is that these classes in some measure retain that general habit of
mind the chief expression of which is a strong sense of personal status,
and of which devoutness is one feature.</p>
<p>In the older communities of the European culture, the hereditary leisure
class, together with the mass of the indigent population, are given to
devout observances in an appreciably higher degree than the average of the
industrious middle class, wherever a considerable class of the latter
character exists. But in some of these countries, the two categories of
conservative humanity named above comprise virtually the whole population.
Where these two classes greatly preponderate, their bent shapes popular
sentiment to such an extent as to bear down any possible divergent
tendency in the inconsiderable middle class, and imposes a devout attitude
upon the whole community.</p>
<p>This must, of course, not be construed to say that such communities or
such classes as are exceptionally prone to devout observances tend to
conform in any exceptional degree to the specifications of any code of
morals that we may be accustomed to associate with this or that confession
of faith. A large measure of the devout habit of mind need not carry with
it a strict observance of the injunctions of the Decalogue or of the
common law. Indeed, it is becoming somewhat of a commonplace with
observers of criminal life in European communities that the criminal and
dissolute classes are, if anything, rather more devout, and more naively
so, than the average of the population. It is among those who constitute
the pecuniary middle class and the body of law-abiding citizens that a
relative exemption from the devotional attitude is to be looked for. Those
who best appreciate the merits of the higher creeds and observances would
object to all this and say that the devoutness of the low-class
delinquents is a spurious, or at the best a superstitious devoutness; and
the point is no doubt well taken and goes directly and cogently to the
purpose intended. But for the purpose of the present inquiry these
extra-economic, extra-psychological distinctions must perforce be
neglected, however valid and however decisive they may be for the purpose
for which they are made.</p>
<p>What has actually taken place with regard to class emancipation from the
habit of devout observance is shown by the latter-day complaint of the
clergy—that the churches are losing the sympathy of the artisan
classes, and are losing their hold upon them. At the same time it is
currently believed that the middle class, commonly so called, is also
falling away in the cordiality of its support of the church, especially so
far as regards the adult male portion of that class. These are currently
recognized phenomena, and it might seem that a simple reference to these
facts should sufficiently substantiate the general position outlined. Such
an appeal to the general phenomena of popular church attendance and church
membership may be sufficiently convincing for the proposition here
advanced. But it will still be to the purpose to trace in some detail the
course of events and the particular forces which have wrought this change
in the spiritual attitude of the more advanced industrial communities of
today. It will serve to illustrate the manner in which economic causes
work towards a secularization of men's habits of thought. In this respect
the American community should afford an exceptionally convincing
illustration, since this community has been the least trammelled by
external circumstances of any equally important industrial aggregate.</p>
<p>After making due allowance for exceptions and sporadic departures from the
normal, the situation here at the present time may be summarized quite
briefly. As a general rule the classes that are low in economic
efficiency, or in intelligence, or both, are peculiarly devout—as,
for instance, the Negro population of the South, much of the lower-class
foreign population, much of the rural population, especially in those
sections which are backward in education, in the stage of development of
their industry, or in respect of their industrial contact with the rest of
the community. So also such fragments as we possess of a specialized or
hereditary indigent class, or of a segregated criminal or dissolute class;
although among these latter the devout habit of mind is apt to take the
form of a naive animistic belief in luck and in the efficacy of
shamanistic practices perhaps more frequently than it takes the form of a
formal adherence to any accredited creed. The artisan class, on the other
hand, is notoriously falling away from the accredited anthropomorphic
creeds and from all devout observances. This class is in an especial
degree exposed to the characteristic intellectual and spiritual stress of
modern organized industry, which requires a constant recognition of the
undisguised phenomena of impersonal, matter-of-fact sequence and an
unreserved conformity to the law of cause and effect. This class is at the
same time not underfed nor over-worked to such an extent as to leave no
margin of energy for the work of adaptation.</p>
<p>The case of the lower or doubtful leisure class in America—the
middle class commonly so called—is somewhat peculiar. It differs in
respect of its devotional life from its European counterpart, but it
differs in degree and method rather than in substance. The churches still
have the pecuniary support of this class; although the creeds to which the
class adheres with the greatest facility are relatively poor in
anthropomorphic content. At the same time the effective middle-class
congregation tends, in many cases, more or less remotely perhaps, to
become a congregation of women and minors. There is an appreciable lack of
devotional fervor among the adult males of the middle class, although to a
considerable extent there survives among them a certain complacent,
reputable assent to the outlines of the accredited creed under which they
were born. Their everyday life is carried on in a more or less close
contact with the industrial process.</p>
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