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
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