born. Especially is the transmission of the habits of thought which
characterize the predatory master somewhat precarious in the case of a
line of descent in which but one or two of the latest steps have lain
within the leisure-class discipline. The chances of occurrence of a
strong congenital or acquired bent towards the exercise of the cognitive
aptitudes are apparently best in those members of the leisure class who
are of lower class or middle class antecedents--that is to say, those
who have inherited the complement of aptitudes proper to the industrious
classes, and who owe their place in the leisure class to the possession
of qualities which count for more today than they did in the times when
the leisure-class scheme of life took shape. But even outside the range
of these later accessions to the leisure class there are an appreciable
number of individuals in whom the invidious interest is not sufficiently
dominant to shape their theoretical views, and in whom the proclivity to
theory is sufficiently strong to lead them into the scientific quest.
The higher learning owes the intrusion of the sciences in part to these
aberrant scions of the leisure class, who have come under the dominant
influence of the latter-day tradition of impersonal relation and who
have inherited a complement of human aptitudes differing in certain
salient features from the temperament which is characteristic of
the regime of status. But it owes the presence of this alien body of
scientific knowledge also in part, and in a higher degree, to members of
the industrious classes who have been in sufficiently easy circumstances
to turn their attention to other interests than that of finding daily
sustenance, and whose inherited aptitudes and anthropomorphic point of
view does not dominate their intellectual processes. As between
these two groups, which approximately comprise the effective force of
scientific progress, it is the latter that has contributed the most. And
with respect to both it seems to be true that they are not so much
the source as the vehicle, or at the most they are the instrument of
commutation, by which the habits of thought enforced upon the community,
through contact with its environment under the exigencies of modern
associated life and the mechanical industries, are turned to account for
theoretical knowledge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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