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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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