A discoursive rehearsal of certain incidents of modern life will show
the organic relation of the anthropomorphic cults to the barbarian
culture and temperament. It will likewise serve to show how the survival
and efficacy of the cults and he prevalence of their schedule of devout
observances are related to the institution of a leisure class and to the
springs of action underlying that institution. Without any intention to
commend or to deprecate the practices to be spoken of under the head of
devout observances, or the spiritual and intellectual traits of which
these observances are the expression, the everyday phenomena of current
anthropomorphic cults may be taken up from the point of view of the
interest which they have for economic theory. What can properly
be spoken of here are the tangible, external features of devout
observances. The moral, as well as the devotional value of the life of
faith lies outside of the scope of the present inquiry. Of course no
question is here entertained as to the truth or beauty of the creeds on
which the cults proceed. And even their remoter economic bearing can not
be taken up here; the subject is too recondite and of too grave import
to find a place in so slight a sketch.
Something has been said in an earlier chapter as to the influence which
pecuniary standards of value exert upon the processes of valuation
carried out on other bases, not related to the pecuniary interest. The
relation is not altogether one-sided. The economic standards or canons
of valuation are in their turn influenced by extra-economic standards of
value. Our judgments of the economic bearing of facts are to some extent
shaped by the dominant presence of these weightier interests. There is
a point of view, indeed, from which the economic interest is of weight
only as being ancillary to these higher, non-economic interests. For the
present purpose, therefore, some thought must be taken to isolate
the economic interest or the economic hearing of these phenomena of
anthropomorphic cults. It takes some effort to divest oneself of the
more serious point of view, and to reach an economic appreciation
of these facts, with as little as may be of the bias due to higher
interests extraneous to economic theory. In the discussion of the
sporting temperament, it has appeared that the sense of an animistic
propensity in material things and events is what affords the spiritual
basis of the sporting man's gambling habit. For the economic purpose,
this sense of propensity is substantially the same psychological element
as expresses itself, under a variety of forms, in animistic beliefs and
anthropomorphic creeds. So far as concerns those tangible psychological
features with which economic theory has to deal, the gambling spirit
which pervades the sporting element shades off by insensible gradations
into that frame of mind which finds gratification in devout observances.
As seen from the point of view of economic theory, the sporting
character shades off into the character of a religious devotee. Where
the betting man's animistic sense is helped out by a somewhat consistent
tradition, it has developed into a more or less articulate belief in
a preternatural or hyperphysical agency, with something of an
anthropomorphic content. And where this is the case, there is commonly
a perceptible inclination to make terms with the preternatural agency
by some approved method of approach and conciliation. This element of
propitiation and cajoling has much in common with the crasser forms
of worship--if not in historical derivation, at least in actual
psychological content. It obviously shades off in unbroken continuity
into what is recognized as superstitious practice and belief, and so
asserts its claim to kinship with the grosser anthropomorphic cults.
The sporting or gambling temperament, then, comprises some of the
substantial psychological elements that go to make a believer in creeds
and an observer of devout forms, the chief point of coincidence being
the belief in an inscrutable propensity or a preternatural interposition
in the sequence of events. For the purpose of the gambling practice the
belief in preternatural agency may be, and ordinarily is, less closely
formulated, especially as regards the habits of thought and the scheme
of life imputed to the preternatural agent; or, in other words, as
regards his moral character and his purposes in interfering in events.
With respect to the individuality or personality of the agency whose
presence as luck, or chance, or hoodoo, or mascot, etc., he feels and
sometimes dreads and endeavors to evade, the sporting man's views are
also less specific, less integrated and differentiated. The basis of his
gambling activity is, in great measure, simply an instinctive sense
of the presence of a pervasive extraphysical and arbitrary force or
propensity in things or situations, which is scarcely recognized as a
personal agent. The betting man is not infrequently both a believer
in luck, in this naive sense, and at the same time a pretty staunch
adherent of some form of accepted creed. He is especially prone to
accept so much of the creed as concerts the inscrutable power and the
arbitrary habits of the divinity which has won his confidence. In such a
case he is possessed of two, or sometimes more than two, distinguishable
phases of animism. Indeed, the complete series of successive phases of
animistic belief is to be found unbroken in the spiritual furniture
of any sporting community. Such a chain of animistic conceptions will
comprise the most elementary form of an instinctive sense of luck and
chance and fortuitous necessity at one end of the series, together with
the perfectly developed anthropomorphic divinity at the other end, with
all intervening stages of integration. Coupled with these beliefs in
preternatural agency goes an instinctive shaping of conduct to conform
with the surmised requirements of the lucky chance on the one hand,
and a more or less devout submission to the inscrutable decrees of the
divinity on the other hand.
There is a relationship in this respect between the sporting temperament
and the temperament of the delinquent classes; and the two are related
to the temperament which inclines to an anthropomorphic cult. Both
the delinquent and the sporting man are on the average more apt to be
adherents of some accredited creed, and are also rather more inclined
to devout observances, than the general average of the community. It is
also noticeable that unbelieving members of these classes show more of
a proclivity to become proselytes to some accredited faith than the
average of unbelievers. This fact of observation is avowed by the
spokesmen of sports, especially in apologizing for the more naively
predatory athletic sports. Indeed, it is somewhat insistently claimed as
a meritorious feature of sporting life that the habitual participants in
athletic games are in some degree peculiarly given to devout practices.
And it is observable that the cult to which sporting men and the
predaceous delinquent classes adhere, or to which proselytes from
these classes commonly attach themselves, is ordinarily not one of the
so-called higher faiths, but a cult which has to do with a thoroughly
anthropomorphic divinity. Archaic, predatory human nature is not
satisfied with abstruse conceptions of a dissolving personality that
shades off into the concept of quantitative causal sequence, such as the
speculative, esoteric creeds of Christendom impute to the First Cause,
Universal Intelligence, World Soul, or Spiritual Aspect. As an instance
of a cult of the character which the habits of mind of the athlete and
the delinquent require, may be cited that branch of the church militant
known as the Salvation Army. This is to some extent recruited from the
lower-class delinquents, and it appears to comprise also, among its
officers especially, a larger proportion of men with a sporting record
than the proportion of such men in the aggregate population of the
community.
College athletics afford a case in point. It is contended by exponents
of the devout element in college life--and there seems to be no ground
for disputing the claim--that the desirable athletic material afforded
by any student body in this country is at the same time predominantly
religious; or that it is at least given to devout observances to a
greater degree than the average of those students whose interest in
athletics and other college sports is less. This is what might be
expected on theoretical grounds. It may be remarked, by the way, that
from one point of view this is felt to reflect credit on the college
sporting life, on athletic games, and on those persons who occupy
themselves with these matters. It happens not frequently that college
sporting men devote themselves to religious propaganda, either as a
vocation or as a by-occupation; and it is observable that when this
happens they are likely to become propagandists of some one of the more
anthropomorphic cults. In their teaching they are apt to insist
chiefly on the personal relation of status which subsists between an
anthropomorphic divinity and the human subject.
This intimate relation between athletics and devout observance among
college men is a fact of sufficient notoriety; but it has a special
feature to which attention has not been called, although it is obvious
enough. The religious zeal which pervades much of the college sporting
element is especially prone to express itself in an unquestioning
devoutness and a naive and complacent submission to an inscrutable
Providence. It therefore by preference seeks affiliation with some one
of those lay religious organizations which occupy themselves with
the spread of the exoteric forms of faith--as, e.g., the Young Men's
Christian Association or the Young People's Society for Christian
Endeavor. These lay bodies are organized to further "practical"
religion; and as if to enforce the argument and firmly establish the
close relationship between the sporting temperament and the archaic
devoutness, these lay religious bodies commonly devote some appreciable
portion of their energies to the furtherance of athletic contests and
similar games of chance and skill. It might even be said that sports
of this kind are apprehended to have some efficacy as a means of grace.
They are apparently useful as a means of proselyting, and as a means of
sustaining the devout attitude in converts once made. That is to
say, the games which give exercise to the animistic sense and to the
emulative propensity help to form and to conserve that habit of mind to
which the more exoteric cults are congenial. Hence, in the hands of
the lay organizations, these sporting activities come to do duty as a
novitiate or a means of induction into that fuller unfolding of the
life of spiritual status which is the privilege of the full communicant
along.
That the exercise of the emulative and lower animistic proclivities are
substantially useful for the devout purpose seems to be placed beyond
question by the fact that the priesthood of many denominations is
following the lead of the lay organizations in this respect. Those
ecclesiastical organizations especially which stand nearest the lay
organizations in their insistence on practical religion have gone some
way towards adopting these or analogous practices in connection with the
traditional devout observances. So there are "boys' brigades," and other
organizations, under clerical sanction, acting to develop the emulative
proclivity and the sense of status in the youthful members of the
congregation. These pseudo-military organizations tend to elaborate and
accentuate the proclivity to emulation and invidious comparison, and so
strengthen the native facility for discerning and approving the relation
of personal mastery and subservience. And a believer is eminently a
person who knows how to obey and accept chastisement with good grace.
But the habits of thought which these practices foster and conserve
make up but one half of the substance of the anthropomorphic cults.
The other, complementary element of devout life--the animistic habit
of mind--is recruited and conserved by a second range of practices
organized under clerical sanction. These are the class of gambling
practices of which the church bazaar or raffle may be taken as the type.
As indicating the degree of legitimacy of these practices in connection
with devout observances proper, it is to be remarked that these raffles,
and the like trivial opportunities for gambling, seem to appeal with
more effect to the common run of the members of religious organizations
than they do to persons of a less devout habit of mind.
All this seems to argue, on the one hand, that the same temperament
inclines people to sports as inclines them to the anthropomorphic cults,
and on the other hand that the habituation to sports, perhaps especially
to athletic sports, acts to develop the propensities which find
satisfaction in devout observances. Conversely; it also appears that
habituation to these observances favors the growth of a proclivity
for athletic sports and for all games that give play to the habit of
invidious comparison and of the appeal to luck. Substantially the same
range of propensities finds expression in both these directions of
the spiritual life. That barbarian human nature in which the predatory
instinct and the animistic standpoint predominate is normally prone
to both. The predatory habit of mind involves an accentuated sense of
personal dignity and of the relative standing of individuals. The social
structure in which the predatory habit has been the dominant factor
in the shaping of institutions is a structure based on status. The
pervading norm in the predatory community's scheme of life is the
relation of superior and inferior, noble and base, dominant and
subservient persons and classes, master and slave. The anthropomorphic
cults have come down from that stage of industrial development and
have been shaped by the same scheme of economic differentiation--a
differentiation into consumer and producer--and they are pervaded by the
same dominant principle of mastery and subservience. The cults impute to
their divinity the habits of thought answering to the stage of economic
differentiation at which the cults took shape. The anthropomorphic
divinity is conceived to be punctilious in all questions of precedence
and is prone to an assertion of mastery and an arbitrary exercise of
power--an habitual resort to force as the final arbiter.
In the later and maturer formulations of the anthropomorphic creed this
imputed habit of dominance on the part of a divinity of awful presence
and inscrutable power is chastened into "the fatherhood of God." The
spiritual attitude and the aptitudes imputed to the preternatural agent
are still such as belong under the regime of status, but they now assume
the patriarchal cast characteristic of the quasi-peaceable stage of
culture. Still it is to be noted that even in this advanced phase of the
cult the observances in which devoutness finds expression consistently
aim to propitiate the divinity by extolling his greatness and glory and
by professing subservience and fealty. The act of propitiation or
of worship is designed to appeal to a sense of status imputed to the
inscrutable power that is thus approached. The propitiatory formulas
most in vogue are still such as carry or imply an invidious comparison.
A loyal attachment to the person of an anthropomorphic divinity endowed
with such an archaic human nature implies the like archaic propensities
in the devotee. For the purposes of economic theory, the relation of
fealty, whether to a physical or to an extraphysical person, is to be
taken as a variant of that personal subservience which makes up so large
a share of the predatory and the quasi-peaceable scheme of life.
The barbarian conception of the divinity, as a warlike chieftain
inclined to an overbearing manner of government, has been greatly
softened through the milder manners and the soberer habits of life that
characterize those cultural phases which lie between the early predatory
stage and the present. But even after this chastening of the devout
fancy, and the consequent mitigation of the harsher traits of conduct
and character that are currently imputed to the divinity, there still
remains in the popular apprehension of the divine nature and temperament
a very substantial residue of the barbarian conception. So it comes
about, for instance, that in characterizing the divinity and his
relations to the process of human life, speakers and writers are still
able to make effective use of similes borrowed from the vocabulary of
war and of the predatory manner of life, as well as of locutions which
involve an invidious comparison. Figures of speech of this import
are used with good effect even in addressing the less warlike modern
audiences, made up of adherents of the blander variants of the creed.
This effective use of barbarian epithets and terms of comparison by
popular speakers argues that the modern generation has retained a lively
appreciation of the dignity and merit of the barbarian virtues; and
it argues also that there is a degree of congruity between the devout
attitude and the predatory habit of mind. It is only on second thought,
if at all, that the devout fancy of modern worshippers revolts at the
imputation of ferocious and vengeful emotions and actions to the object
of their adoration. It is a matter of common observation that sanguinary
epithets applied to the divinity have a high aesthetic and honorific
value in the popular apprehension. That is to say, suggestions
which these epithets carry are very acceptable to our unreflecting
apprehension.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 chôme
pas is indeed a saint fallen on evil days.
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.
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 thrown on an austere and discomforting vicarious leisure, to
the neglect of conspicuous consumption as a means of grace.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This peculiar sexual differentiation, which tends to delegate devout
observances to the women and their children, is due, at least in
part, to the fact that the middle-class women are in great measure a
(vicarious) leisure class. The same is true in a less degree of the
women of the lower, artisan classes. They live under a regime of status
handed down from an earlier stage of industrial development, and thereby
they preserve a frame of mind and habits of thought which incline them
to an archaic view of things generally. At the same time they stand in
no such direct organic relation to the industrial process at large as
would tend strongly to break down those habits of thought which, for the
modern industrial purpose, are obsolete. That is to say, the peculiar
devoutness of women is a particular expression of that conservatism
which the women of civilized communities owe, in great measure, to their
economic position. For the modern man the patriarchal relation of status
is by no means the dominant feature of life; but for the women on the
other hand, and for the upper middle-class women especially, confined
as they are by prescription and by economic circumstances to their
"domestic sphere," this relation is the most real and most formative
factor of life. Hence a habit of mind favorable to devout observances
and to the interpretation of the facts of life generally in terms of
personal status. The logic, and the logical processes, of her everyday
domestic life are carried over into the realm of the supernatural, and
the woman finds herself at home and content in a range of ideas which to
the man are in great measure alien and imbecile.
Still the men of this class are also not devoid of piety, although it
is commonly not piety of an aggressive or exuberant kind. The men of
the upper middle class commonly take a more complacent attitude towards
devout observances than the men of the artisan class. This may perhaps
be explained in part by saying that what is true of the women of
the class is true to a less extent also of the men. They are to an
appreciable extent a sheltered class; and the patriarchal relation of
status which still persists in their conjugal life and in their habitual
use of servants, may also act to conserve an archaic habit of mind and
may exercise a retarding influence upon the process of secularization
which their habits of thought are undergoing. The relations of the
American middle-class man to the economic community, however, are
usually pretty close and exacting; although it may be remarked, by the
way and in qualification, that their economic activity frequently also
partakes in some degree of the patriarchal or quasi-predatory character.
The occupations which are in good repute among this class and which have
most to do with shaping the class habits of thought, are the pecuniary
occupations which have been spoken of in a similar connection in an
earlier chapter. There is a good deal of the relation of arbitrary
command and submission, and not a little of shrewd practice, remotely
akin to predatory fraud. All this belongs on the plane of life of the
predatory barbarian, to whom a devotional attitude is habitual. And in
addition to this, the devout observances also commend themselves to this
class on the ground of reputability. But this latter incentive to piety
deserves treatment by itself and will be spoken of presently. There
is no hereditary leisure class of any consequence in the American
community, except in the South. This Southern leisure class is somewhat
given to devout observances; more so than any class of corresponding
pecuniary standing in other parts of the country. It is also well known
that the creeds of the South are of a more old-fashioned cast than their
counterparts in the North. Corresponding to this more archaic devotional
life of the South is the lower industrial development of that section.
The industrial organization of the South is at present, and especially
it has been until quite recently, of a more primitive character than
that of the American community taken as a whole. It approaches nearer
to handicraft, in the paucity and rudeness of its mechanical appliances,
and there is more of the element of mastery and subservience. It may
also be noted that, owing to the peculiar economic circumstances of this
section, the greater devoutness of the Southern population, both white
and black, is correlated with a scheme of life which in many ways
recalls the barbarian stages of industrial development. Among this
population offenses of an archaic character also are and have been
relatively more prevalent and are less deprecated than they are
elsewhere; as, for example, duels, brawls, feuds, drunkenness,
horse-racing, cock-fighting, gambling, male sexual incontinence
(evidenced by the considerable number of mulattoes). There is also a
livelier sense of honor--an expression of sportsmanship and a derivative
of predatory life.
As regards the wealthier class of the North, the American leisure class
in the best sense of the term, it is, to begin with, scarcely possible
to speak of an hereditary devotional attitude. This class is of too
recent growth to be possessed of a well-formed transmitted habit in this
respect, or even of a special home-grown tradition. Still, it may be
noted in passing that there is a perceptible tendency among this class
to give in at least a nominal, and apparently something of a real,
adherence to some one of the accredited creeds. Also, weddings,
funerals, and the like honorific events among this class are
pretty uniformly solemnized with some especial degree of religious
circumstance. It is impossible to say how far this adherence to a creed
is a bona fide reversion to a devout habit of mind, and how far it is to
be classed as a case of protective mimicry assumed for the purpose of
an outward assimilation to canons of reputability borrowed from foreign
ideals. Something of a substantial devotional propensity seems to
be present, to judge especially by the somewhat peculiar degree of
ritualistic observance which is in process of development in the
upper-class cults. There is a tendency perceptible among the upper-class
worshippers to affiliate themselves with those cults which lay
relatively great stress on ceremonial and on the spectacular accessories
of worship; and in the churches in which an upper-class membership
predominates, there is at the same time a tendency to accentuate the
ritualistic, at the cost of the intellectual features in the service and
in the apparatus of the devout observances. This holds true even where
the church in question belongs to a denomination with a relatively
slight general development of ritual and paraphernalia. This peculiar
development of the ritualistic element is no doubt due in part to a
predilection for conspicuously wasteful spectacles, but it probably
also in part indicates something of the devotional attitude of the
worshippers. So far as the latter is true, it indicates a relatively
archaic form of the devotional habit. The predominance of spectacular
effects in devout observances is noticeable in all devout communities at
a relatively primitive stage of culture and with a slight intellectual
development. It is especially characteristic of the barbarian culture.
Here there is pretty uniformly present in the devout observances a
direct appeal to the emotions through all the avenues of sense. And
a tendency to return to this naive, sensational method of appeal is
unmistakable in the upper-class churches of today. It is perceptible
in a less degree in the cults which claim the allegiance of the lower
leisure class and of the middle classes. There is a reversion to the
use of colored lights and brilliant spectacles, a freer use of symbols,
orchestral music and incense, and one may even detect in "processionals"
and "recessionals" and in richly varied genuflexional evolutions, an
incipient reversion to so antique an accessory of worship as the sacred
dance. This reversion to spectacular observances is not confined to the
upper-class cults, although it finds its best exemplification and its
highest accentuation in the higher pecuniary and social altitudes. The
cults of the lower-class devout portion of the community, such as the
Southern Negroes and the backward foreign elements of the population,
of course also show a strong inclination to ritual, symbolism, and
spectacular effects; as might be expected from the antecedents and the
cultural level of those classes. With these classes the prevalence of
ritual and anthropomorphism are not so much a matter of reversion as of
continued development out of the past. But the use of ritual and related
features of devotion are also spreading in other directions. In the
early days of the American community the prevailing denominations
started out with a ritual and paraphernalia of an austere simplicity;
but it is a matter familiar to every one that in the course of time
these denominations have, in a varying degree, adopted much of the
spectacular elements which they once renounced. In a general way, this
development has gone hand in hand with the growth of the wealth and the
ease of life of the worshippers and has reached its fullest expression
among those classes which grade highest in wealth and repute.
The causes to which this pecuniary stratification of devoutness is
due have already been indicated in a general way in speaking of
class differences in habits of thought. Class differences as regards
devoutness are but a special expression of a generic fact. The lax
allegiance of the lower middle class, or what may broadly be called the
failure of filial piety among this class, is chiefly perceptible among
the town populations engaged in the mechanical industries. In a general
way, one does not, at the present time, look for a blameless filial
piety among those classes whose employment approaches that of the
engineer and the mechanician. These mechanical employments are in a
degree a modern fact. The handicraftsmen of earlier times, who served
an industrial end of a character similar to that now served by the
mechanician, were not similarly refractory under the discipline of
devoutness. The habitual activity of the men engaged in these branches
of industry has greatly changed, as regards its intellectual discipline,
since the modern industrial processes have come into vogue; and the
discipline to which the mechanician is exposed in his daily employment
affects the methods and standards of his thinking also on topics which
lie outside his everyday work. Familiarity with the highly organized and
highly impersonal industrial processes of the present acts to derange
the animistic habits of thought. The workman's office is becoming more
and more exclusively that of discretion and supervision in a process of
mechanical, dispassionate sequences. So long as the individual is the
chief and typical prime mover in the process; so long as the obtrusive
feature of the industrial process is the dexterity and force of the
individual handicraftsman; so long the habit of interpreting phenomena
in terms of personal motive and propensity suffers no such considerable
and consistent derangement through facts as to lead to its elimination.
But under the later developed industrial processes, when the prime
movers and the contrivances through which they work are of an
impersonal, non-individual character, the grounds of generalization
habitually present in the workman's mind and the point of view from
which he habitually apprehends phenomena is an enforced cognizance of
matter-of-fact sequence. The result, so far as concerts the workman's
life of faith, is a proclivity to undevout scepticism.
It appears, then, that the devout habit of mind attains its best
development under a relatively archaic culture; the term "devout" being
of course here used in its anthropological sense simply, and not
as implying anything with respect to the spiritual attitude so
characterized, beyond the fact of a proneness to devout observances.
It appears also that this devout attitude marks a type of human nature
which is more in consonance with the predatory mode of life than with
the later-developed, more consistently and organically industrial life
process of the community. It is in large measure an expression of the
archaic habitual sense of personal status--the relation of mastery and
subservience--and it therefore fits into the industrial scheme of the
predatory and the quasi-peaceable culture, but does not fit into the
industrial scheme of the present. It also appears that this habit
persists with greatest tenacity among those classes in the modern
communities whose everyday life is most remote from the mechanical
processes of industry and which are the most conservative also in other
respects; while for those classes that are habitually in immediate
contact with modern industrial processes, and whose habits of thought
are therefore exposed to the constraining force of technological
necessities, that animistic interpretation of phenomena and that
respect of persons on which devout observance proceeds are in process
of obsolescence. And also--as bearing especially on the present
discussion--it appears that the devout habit to some extent
progressively gains in scope and elaboration among those classes in
the modern communities to whom wealth and leisure accrue in the most
pronounced degree. In this as in other relations, the institution of a
leisure class acts to conserve, and even to rehabilitate, that archaic
type of human nature and those elements of the archaic culture which the
industrial evolution of society in its later stages acts to eliminate.