 Section 23 of the Theory of the Leisure Class. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thornton Weblen, Chapter 10, Modern Survivals of Promise. The Leisure Class lives by the industrial community rather than in it. Its relations to industry are of a pecuniary rather than an industrial kind. Admission to the class is gained by exercise of the pecuniary aptitudes, aptitudes for acquisition rather than for serviceability. There is, therefore, a continued selective sifting of the human material that makes up the leisure class and this selection proceeds on the ground of fitness for pecuniary pursuits. But the scheme of life of the class is in large part a heritage from the past and embodies much of the habits and ideals of the earlier barbarian period. This archaic barbarian scheme of life imposes itself also on the lower orders with more or less mitigation. In its turn the scheme of life of conventions acts selectively and by education to shape the human material and its action runs chiefly in the direction of conserving traits, habits and ideals that belong to the early barbarian age, the age of prowess and predatory life. The most immediate and unequivocal expression of that archaic human nature which characterizes man in the predatory stage is the fighting propensity proper. In cases where the predatory activity is a collective one, this propensity is frequently called the martial spirit or, laterally, patriotism. It needs no insistence to find a scent to the proposition that in the countries of civilized Europe the hereditary leisure class is in doubt with this martial spirit in a higher degree than the middle classes. Indeed, the leisure class claims the distinction as a matter of pride and no doubt with some grounds. War is honorable and warlike prowess is eminently honorific in the eyes of the generality of men and this admiration of warlike prowess is itself the best voucher of a predatory temperament in the admirer of war. The enthusiasm for war and the predatory temper of Pujates the index prevail in the largest measure among the upper classes, especially among the hereditary leisure class. Moreover, the ostensible serious occupation of the upper class is that of government, which, in point of origin and developmental content, is also a predatory occupation. The only class which could have told dispute with the hereditary leisure class the honor of an habitual bellicose frame of mind is that of the lower class delinquents. In ordinary times, the large body of the industrial classes is relatively apathetic touching warlike interests. When unexcited, this body of the common people, which makes up the effective force of the industrial community, is rather averse to any other than a defensive fight. Indeed, it responds a little tardily even to a provocation which makes for an attitude of defense. In the more civilized communities, or rather in the communities which have reached an advanced industrial development, the spirit of warlike aggression may be said to be absolescent among the common people. This does not say that there is not an appreciable number of individuals among the industrial classes in whom the martial spirit asserts itself obtrusively, nor does it say that the body of the people may not be fired with martial order for a time under the stimulus of some special provocation, such as is seen in operation today in more than one of the countries of Europe and for the first time in America. But except for such seasons of temporary exaltation, and except for those individuals who are endowed with an archaic temperament of the predatory type, together with a similarly endowed body of individuals among the higher and the lowest classes, the inertness of the mass of any modern civilized community in this respect is probably so great as would make war impracticable, except against actual invasion. The habits and aptitudes of the common run of men make for an unfolding of activity in other, less picturesque directions than that of war. This class difference in temperament may be due in part to a difference in the inheritance of acquired traits in the several classes, but it seems also, in some measure, to correspond with the difference in ethnic derivation. The class difference is in this respect visibly less in those countries whose population is relatively homogenous, ethnically, than in the countries where there is a broader divergence between the ethnic elements that make up the several classes of the community. In the same connection, it may be noted that the later accessions to the leisure class in the latter countries, in a general way, show less of the martial spirit than the contemporary representatives of the aristocracy of the ancient line. These Nouveau-Arrivées have recently emerged from the commonplace body of the population and owe their emergence into the leisure class to the exercise of traits and propensities, which are not to be classed as prowess in the ancient sense. Apart from warlike activity proper, the institution of the duel is also an expression of the same superior readiness for combat, and the duel is a leisure class institution. The duel is, in substance, a more or less deliberate resort to a fight as a final settlement of a difference of opinion. In civilized communities it prevails as a normal phenomenon only where there is an ereditary leisure class, and almost exclusively among that class. The exceptions are, one, military and naval officers who are ordinarily members of the leisure class, and who are at the same time especially trained to predatory habits of mind, and two, the lower class delinquents who are by inheritance, or training, or both, of a similarly predatory disposition and habit. It is only the high-bred gentlemen and the rowdy that normally resort to blows as the universal solvent of differences of opinion. The plain man will ordinarily fight only when excessive momentary irritation or alcoholic exaltation act to inhibit the more complex habits of response to the stimuli that make for provocation. He is then thrown back upon the simpler, less differentiated forms of the instinct of self-assertion. That is to say, he reverts temporarily and without reflection to an archaic habit of mind. This institution of the duel as a mode of finally settling disputes and serious questions of precedence shades off into the obligatory, unprovoked private fight as a social obligation due to one's good repute. As a leisure class usage of this kind we have, particularly, that bizarre survival of bellicose chivalry, the German student-dual. In the lower or spurious leisure class of the delinquents there is in all countries a similar, though less formal, social obligation incumbent on the rowdy to assert his manhood in unprovoked combat with his fellows. And spreading through all grades of society, a similar usage prevails among the boys of the community. The boy usually knows tenacity, from day to day how he and his associates grade in respect of relative fighting capacity, and in the community of boys there is ordinarily no secure basis of reputability for anyone who, by exception, will not or cannot fight on invitation. All this applies especially to boys above a certain somewhat vague limit of maturity. The child's temperament does not commonly answer to this description during infancy and the years of close tutelage when the child still habitually seeks contact with its mother at every turn of its daily life. During this earlier period there is little aggression and little propensity for antagonism. The transition from this peaceable temper to the predacious and in extreme cases malignant, mischievousness of the boy is a gradual one and it is accomplished with more completeness, covering a larger range of the individual's aptitudes in some cases than in others. In the earlier stage of his growth, the child, whether boy or girl, shows less of initiative and aggressive self-assertion and less of an inclination to isolate himself and his interest from the domestic group in which he lives, and he shows more of sensitiveness to rebuke, bashfulness, timidity, and the need of friendly human contact. In the common run of cases this early temperament passes by gradual but somewhat rapid obsolescence of the infantile features into the temperament of the boy proper, though there are also cases where the predacious futures of boy life do not emerge at all or at the most emerge in but a slight and obscure degree. In girls the transition to the predacious stage is seldom accomplished with the same degree of completeness as in boys, and in a relatively large proportion of cases it is scarcely undergone at all. In such cases the transition from infancy to adolescence and maturity is a gradual and unbroken process of the shifting of interest from infantile purposes and aptitudes to the purposes, functions, and relations of adult life. In the girls there is a less general prevalence of a predacious interval in the development, and in the cases where it occurs the predacious and isolating attitude during the interval is commonly less accentuated. In the male child the predacious interval is ordinarily fairly well marked and lasts for some time, but it is commonly terminated, if at all, with the attainment of maturity. This last statement may need very material qualification. The cases are by no means rare in which the transition from the boyish to the adult temperament is not made, nor is made only partially. Understanding by the adult temperament the average temperament of those adult individuals in modern industrial life who have some serviceability for the purposes of the collective life process, and who may therefore be said to make up the effective average of the industrial community. The ethnic composition of the European population varies. In some cases even the lower classes are in large measure made up of the peace-disturbing dolly coblonde, while in others this ethnic element is found chiefly among the hereditary leisure class. The fighting habit seems to prevail to a less extent among the working-class boys in the latter class of populations than among the boys of the upper classes, or among those of the populations first named. If this generalization as to the temperament of the boy among the working classes should be found true on the fuller and closer scrutiny of the field, it would add force to the view that the bellicose temperament is in some appreciable degree a race characteristic. It appears to enter more largely into the makeup of the dominant upper-class ethnic type, the dolly coblonde of the European countries than into the subservient lower-class types of men which are conceived to constitute the body of the population of the same communities. The case of the boy may seem not to bear seriously on the question of the relative endowment of prowess with which the several classes of society are gifted, but it is at least of some value as going to show that this fighting impulse belongs to a more archaic temperament than that possessed by the average adult man of the industrious classes. In this, as in many other features of child life, the child reproduces temporarily and in miniature some of the earlier phases of the development of adult man. Under this interpretation, the boy's predilection for exploit and for isolation of his own interest is to be taken as a transient reversion to the human nature that is normal to the earlier barbarian culture, the predatory culture proper. In this respect, as in much else, the leisure class and the delinquent class character shows a persistence into adult life of traits that are normal to childhood and youth and that are likewise normal or habitual to the earlier stages of culture. Unless the difference is traceable entirely to a fundamental difference between persistent ethnic types, the traits that distinguish the swaggering delinquent and the punctilious gentleman of leisure from the common crowd are, in some measure, marks of an arrested spiritual development. They mark an immature phase as compared with the stage of development attained by the average of the adults in the modern industrial community. And it will appear presently that the pure spiritual makeup of these representatives of the upper and the lowest social strata shows itself also in the presence of other archaic traits than this proclivity to ferocious exploit and isolation. As if to leave no doubt about the essential immaturity of the fighting temperament, we have bridging the interval between legitimate boyhood and adult manhood, the aimless and playful but more or less systematic and elaborate disturbances of the peace and vogue among schoolboys of a slightly higher age. In the common run of cases, these disturbances are confined to the period of adolescence. They recur with decreasing frequency and acuteness as youth merges into adult life and so they reproduce, in a general way, in the life of the individual, the sequence by which the group has passed from the predatory to a more settled habit of life. In an appreciable number of cases, the spiritual growth of the individual comes to a close before he emerges from the spiritual phase. In these cases, the fighting temper persists through life. Those individuals, who in spiritual development eventually reach man's estate, therefore, ordinarily pass through a temporary archaic phase corresponding to the permanent spiritual level of the fighting and sporting men. Different individuals will, of course, achieve spiritual maturity and sobriety in this respect in different degrees, and those who fail of the average remain as an undissolved residue of crude humanity in the modern industrial community and as a foil for that selective process of adaptation which makes for heightened industrial efficiency and the fullness of life of the collectivity. This arrested spiritual development may express itself not only in indirect participation by adults in youthful exploits of ferocity, but also indirectly in aiding and abetting disturbances of this kind on the part of younger persons. It thereby furthers the formation of habits of ferocity which may persist in the later life of the growing generation and so retard any movement in the direction of a more peaceable, effective temperament on the part of the community. If a person so endowed with a proclivity for exploits is in a position to guide the development of habits in the adolescent members of the community, the influence which he exerts in a direction of conservation and reversion to prowess may be very considerable. This is the significance, for instance, of the fostering care laterally bestowed by many clergymen and other pillars of society among boys' brigades and similar pseudo-military organizations. The same is true of the encouragement given to the growth of college spirit, college athletics and the like in the higher institutions of learning. These manifestations of the predatory temperament are all to be classed under the head of exploit. They are partly simple and unreflected expressions of an attitude of ferocity, partly activities deliberately entered upon with the view to gaining repute for prowess. Sports of all kinds are of the same general character, including prize fights, bullfights, athletics, shooting, angling, yachting and games of skill, even where the element of destructive physical efficiency is not an intrusive feature. Sports shade off from the basis of hostile combat through skill to cunning and chicanery without it being possible to draw a line at any point. The ground of an addiction to sports is an archaic spiritual constitution, the possession of the predatory emulative propensity in a relatively high potency, a strong proclivity to adventure some exploit and to the infliction of damage is especially pronounced in those employments which are in colloquial usage specifically called sportmanship. And the first part of Chapter 10. Section 24 of the Theory of the Leisure Class. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorsten Weblen. Second part of Chapter 10. Modern Survivals of Prowess. It is perhaps truer or at least more evident, as regards sports than as regards the other expressions of predatory emulation already spoken of, that the temperament which inclines men to them is essentially a boyish temperament. The addiction to sports therefore, in a peculiar degree, marks an arrested development of the man's moral nature. This peculiar boyishness of temperament in sporting men immediately becomes apparent when attention is directed to the large element of make-believe that is present in all sporting activity. Sports share this character of make-believe with the games and exploits to which children, especially boys, are habitually inclined. Make-believe does not enter in the same proportion into all sports, but it is present in a very appreciable degree in all. It is apparently present in a larger measure in sportsmanship proper and in athletic contests than in set games of skill of a more sedentary character, although this rule may not be found to apply with any great uniformity. It is noticeable, for instance, that even very mild mannered and matter-of-fact men who go out shooting are apt to carry an excess of arms and accoutrements in order to impress upon their own imagination the seriousness of their undertaking. These huntsmen are also prone to a histrionic prancing-gate and to an elaborate exaggeration of the motions, whether of stealth or a onslaught, involved in their deeds of exploit. Similarly, in athletic sports, there is almost invariably present a good share of front and swagger and ostensible mystification, features which mark the histrionic nature of these employments. In all this, of course, the reminder of boyish make-believe is plain enough. The slang of athletics, by the way, is in great part made up of extremely sanguinary locutions borrowed from the terminology of warfare. Except for it is adopted as a necessary means of secret communication, the use of a special slang in any employment is probably to be accepted as evidence that occupation in question is substantially make-believe. A further feature in which sports differ from the dual and similar disturbances of the piece is the peculiarity that they admit of other motives being assigned for them besides the impulses of exploit and ferocity. There is probably little, if any, other motive present in any given case. But the fact that other reasons for indulging in sports are frequently assigned goes to say that other grounds are sometimes present in a subsidiary way. Sportsmen, hunters and anglers, are more or less in the habit of assigning a love of nature to need the recreation and the like as the incentives to their favorite pastime. These motives are no doubt frequently present and make up a part of the attractiveness of the sportsman's life, but these cannot be the chief incentives. These ostensible means could be more readily and fully satisfied without the accompaniment of a systematic effort to take the life of those creatures that make up an essential feature of that nature that is beloved by the sportsman. It is indeed the most noticeable effect of the sportsman's activity to keep nature in a state of chronic desolation by killing off all living things whose destruction he can compass. Still, there is ground for the sportsman's claim that under the existing conventionalities, his need of recreation and off-contact with nature can best be satisfied by the course which he takes. Certain canons of good breathing have been imposed by the prescriptive example of a predatory leisure class in the past and have been somewhat painstakingly conserved by the usage of the latter data representatives of that class, and these canons will not permit him without playing to seek contact with nature on other terms. From being an honorable employment handed down from the predatory culture as the highest form of everyday leisure, sports have come to be the only form of outdoor activity that has the full sanction of decorum. Among the proximate incentives to shooting and angling, then may be the need of recreation and outdoor life. The remotor cost which imposes the necessity of seeking these objects under the cover of systematic slaughter is a prescription that cannot be violated except at the risk of disrepute and consequent lesion to one's self-respect. The case of other kinds of sport is somewhat similar. Of this, athletic games are the best example. Prescriptive usage with respect to what forms of activity, exercise, and recreation are permissible under the code of profitable living is of course present here also. Those who are addicted to athletic sports or who admire them set up the claim that these are for the best available means of recreation and of physical culture. And prescriptive usage gives countenance to the claim. The currents of reputable living exclude from the scheme of life of the leisure class all activity that cannot be classed as conspicuous leisure. And consequently, they tend by prescription to exclude it also from the scheme of life of the community generally. At the same time, purpose less physical exertion is tedious and is tasteful beyond tolerance. As has been noticed in another connection, recourse is in such a case had to some form of activity which shall at least afford a colorable pretense of purpose even if the object assigned be only a make-believe. Sports satisfy these requirements of substantial fertility together with the colorable make-believe of purpose. In addition to this, they afford scope for emulation and are attractive also on that account. In order to be decorous, unemployment must conform to the leisure class canon of reputable waste. At the same time, all activity in order to be persisted in as an habitual even if only partial expression of life must conform to the generically human canon of efficiency for some serviceable objective end. The leisure class canon demands strict and comprehensive fertility. The instinct of workmanship demands purposeful action. The leisure class canon of decorum acts slowly and pervasively by a selective elimination of all substantially useful or purposeful modes of action from the accredited scheme of life. The instinct of workmanship acts impulsively and may be satisfied provisionally with approximate purpose. It is only as the apprehended ulterior fertility of a given line of action enters the reflective complex of consciousness as an element essentially alien to the normally purposeful trend of the life process that it's disquieting in the effect on the consciousness of the agent is wrought. The individual's habits of thought make an organic complex, the trend of which is necessarily in the direction of serviceability to the life process. When it is attempted to assimilate systematic waste of utility as an end in life into this organic complex, there presently supervins a revulsion. But this revulsion of the organism may be avoided if the attention can be confined to the proximate unreflected purpose of dexterous or emulative exertion. Sports, hunting, angling, athletic games, and the like afford an exercise for dexterity and for the emulative ferocity and astuteness characteristic of predatory life. So long as the individual is but slightly gifted with reflection or with a sense of the ulterior trend of his actions, so long as his life is substantially alive of naive impulsive action, so long the immediate and unreflected purposefulness of sports in the way of an expression of dominance will measurably satisfy his instinct of workmanship. This is especially true if his dominant impulses are the unreflecting emulative propensities of the per day's shoe temperament. At the same time, the cannons of decorum will commend sports to him as expressions of a pecuniarily blameless life. It is by meeting these two requirements of ulterior wastefulness and proximate purposefulness that any given employment holds its place as a traditional and habitual mode of decorus recreation. In the sense that other forms of recreation and exercise are morally impossible to persons of good breathing and delicate sensibilities, then sports are the best available means of recreation under existing circumstances. But those members of respectable society who advocate athletic games commonly justify their attitude on this head to themselves and to their neighbors on the ground that these games serve as an invaluable means of development. They not only improve the contestants' physique but it is commonly added that they also foster a manly spirit both in the participants and in the spectators. Football is a particular game which will probably first occur to anyone in this community when the question of the serviceability of athletic games is raised as this form of athletic contest is at present uppermost in the mind of those who plead for or against games as a means of physical or moral salvation. This typical athletic sport may therefore serve to illustrate the bearing of athletics upon the development of the contestants' character and physique. It has been said not in aptly that the relation of football to physical culture is much the same as that of the bullfight to agriculture. Serviceability for these illusory institutions requires sedulous training or breathing. The material used whether brute or human is subjected to careful selection and discipline in order to secure and accentuate certain attitudes and propensities which are characteristic of the ferein state and which tend to obsolescence under domestication. This does not mean that the resulting either case is an all-around and consistent rehabilitation of the ferein or barbarian habit of mind and body. The result is rather a one-sided return to barbarism or to the feroven natura, a rehabilitation and accentuation of those ferein traits which make for damage and desolation without a corresponding development of the traits which would serve the individual's self-preservation and fullness of life in a ferein environment. The culture bestowed in football gives a product of exotic ferocity and cunning. It is a rehabilitation of the early barbarian temperament together with the suppression of those details of temperament which as seen from the standpoint of the social and economic exigencies are the redeeming features of the savage character. The physical vigor acquired in the training for athletic games so far as the training may be said to have this effect is of advantage both to the individual and to the collectivity in that other things being equal it conduces to economic serviceability. The spiritual traits which go with athletic sports are likewise economically advantageous to the individual as contradistinguished from the interests of the collectivity. This holds true in any community where these traits are present in some degree in the population. Modern competition is in large part a process of self- assertion on the basis of these traits of predatory human nature in the sophisticated form in which they enter into the modern peaceable emulation the possession of these traits in some measure is almost a necessary of life to the civilized man but while they are indispensable to the competitive individual they are not directly serviceable to the community so far as regards the serviceability of the individual for the purposes of the collective life emulative efficiency is of use only indirectly if at all. Ferocity and cunning are of no use to the community except in its hostile dealings with other communities and they are useful to the individual only because there is so large a proportion of the same traits actively present in the human environment to which he is exposed. Any individual who enters the competitive struggle without the due endowment of these traits is at a disadvantage somewhat as a hornless steer would find himself at a disadvantage in a drove of horn cattle. The possession and the cultivation of the predatory traits of character may of course be desirable on other than economic grounds. There is a prevalent aesthetic or ethical predilection for the barbarian attitudes and the traits in question minister so effectively to this predilection that their serviceability in the aesthetic or ethical respect probably offsets any economic and serviceability which they may give but for the present purpose that is beside the point therefore nothing is said here as to the desirability or advisability of sports on the whole or as to their value on other than economic grounds. In popular apprehensions there is much that is admirable in the type of manhood which the lack of sport fosters. There is self-reliance and good fellowship so termed in the somewhat loose colloquial use of the words. From a different point of view the qualities currently so characterized might be described as succulents and clannishness. The reason for the current approval and admiration of these manly qualities as well as for their being called manly is the same as the reason for the usefulness to the individual. The members of the community and especially that class of the community which sets the pace in clannins of taste are endowed with this range of propensities in sufficient measure to make their absence in others felt as a shortcoming and to make their possession in an exceptional degree appreciated as an attribute of superior merit. The traits of predatory men are by no means obsolete in the common run of modern populations. They are present and can be called out in bold relief at any time by any appeal to the sentiments in which they express themselves unless this appeal should clash with the specific activities that make up our habitual occupations and comprise the general range of our everyday interests. The common run of the population of any industrial community is emancipated from this economically considered untold propensities only in the sense that through partial and temporary disuse they have lapsed into the background of subconscious motives. With varying degrees of potency in different individuals they remain available for the aggressive shaping of men's actions and sentiments whenever a stimulus of more than everyday intensity comes in to call them forth. And they are certain selves forcibly in any case where no occupation alien to the predatory culture has usurped the individual's everyday range of interests and sentiment. This is the case among the leisure class and among certain portions of the population which are ancillary to that class. Hence the facility with which any new accessions to the leisure class take to sports and hence the rapid growth of sports and of the sporting sentiment in any industrial community where wealth has accumulated sufficiently to exempt a considerable part of the population from work. A homely and familiar fact may serve to show that the predacious impulse does not prevail in the same degree in all classes. Taken simply as a feature of modern life the habit of carrying a walking stick may seem at best a trivial detail but the usage has a significance for the point in question. The classes among whom the habit most prevails the classes with whom the walking stick is associated in popular apprehension are the men of the leisure class proper, sporting men and the lower class delinquents. So this might perhaps be added the men engaged in the pecuniary employments. The same is not true of the common run of men engaged in the industry and it may be noted by the way that women do not carry a stick except in case of infirmity where it has a use of a different kind. The practice is of course in great measure a matter of polite usage but the basis of polite usage is in turn the proclivities of the class which sets the pace in polite usage. The walking stick serves the purpose of an advertisement that the bearer's hands are employed otherwise than in useful effort and it therefore has utility as an evidence of leisure. But it is also a weapon and it meets a felt need of barbarian man on that ground. The handling of so tangible and primitive amines of offense is very comforting to anyone who is gifted with even a moderate share of ferocity. The exigencies of the language make it impossible to avoid an apparent implication of disapproval of the attitudes, propensities and expressions of life here under discussion. It is however not intended to imply anything in the way of deprecation or commendation of any of these faces of human character or of the life process. The various elements of the prevalent human nature are taken up from the point of view of economic theory and the traits discussed are gauged and graded with regard to their immediate economic bearing on the facility of the collective life process. That is to say this phenomena are here apprehended from the economic point of view and are valued with respect to their direct action in furtherance or hindrance of a more perfect adjustment of the human collectivity to the environment and to the institutional structure required by the economic situation of the collectivity for the present and for the immediate future. For these purposes the traits hunted down from the predatory culture are less serviceable than might be although even in this connection it is not to be overlooked that the energetic aggressiveness and pertinacity of predatory man is a heritage of no mean value. The economic value with some regard also to the social value in the narrower sense of these aptitudes and propensities is attempted to be passed upon without reflecting on their value as seen from another point of view. When contrasted with the prosy mediocrity of the latter-day industrial scheme of life and judged by the accredited standards of morality and more especially by the standards of aesthetics and of poetry these revivals from a more primitive type of manhood may have a very different value from that here assigned to them. But all this being foreign to the purpose in hand no expression of opinion on this latter head would be in place here. All that is admissible is to enter the caution that these standards of excellence which are alien to the present purpose must not be allowed to influence economic appreciation of these traits of human character or of the activities which foster further growth. These applies both as regards those persons who actively participate in sports and those who's sporting experience consists in contemplation only. What is here said of the sporting propensity is likewise pertinent to sundry reflections presently to be made in this connection on what would colloquially be known as the religious life. End of second part of chapter 10 Recording by Shana Sear, President of California. Section 25 of The Theory of the Leisure Class. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit l-i-b-r-i-v-o-x dot o-r-g. Recording by Rachel Resnick. The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorsten Veblen. Third part of chapter 10 Modern Survivals of Pravis. The last paragraph incidentally touches upon the fact that everyday speech can scarcely be employed in discussing this class of aptitudes and activities without implying deprecation or apology. The fact is significant as showing the habitual attitude of the dispassionate common man toward the propensities which express themselves in sports and in exploit generally. And this is perhaps as convenient a place as any to discuss that undertone of deprecation which runs through all the voluminous discourse in defense or in laudation of athletic sports as well as of other activities of a predominantly predatory character. The same apologetic frame of mind is at least beginning to be observable in the spokesmen of most other institutions handed down from the barbarian phase of life. Among these archaic institutions which are felt to need apology are comprised with others the entire existing system of the distribution of wealth together with the resulting class distinction of status. All or nearly all forms of consumption that come under the head of conspicuous waste, the status of women under the patriarchal system, and many features of the traditional creeds and devout observances, especially the exoteric expressions of the creed and the naive apprehension of received observances. What is to be said in this connection of the apologetic attitude taken in commending sports and the sporting character will therefore apply with a suitable change in phraseology to the apologies offered in behalf of these other related elements of our social heritage. There is a feeling, usually vague and not commonly avowed in so many words by the apologist himself, but ordinarily perceptible in the manner of his discourse, that these sports, as well as the general range of predacious impulses and habits of thought which underlie the sporting character, do not altogether commend themselves to common sense. As to the majority of murderers, they are very incorrect characters. This aphorism offers evaluation of the predacious temperament and of the disciplinary effects of its overt expression and exercise, as seen from the moralist's point of view. As such, it affords an indication of what is the deliverance of the somer sense of mature men as to the degree of availability of the predatory habit of mind for the purposes of the collective life. It is felt that the presumption is against any activity which involves habituation to the predatory attitude, and that the burden of proof lies with those who speak for the rehabilitation of the predacious temper and for the practices which strengthen it. There is a strong body of popular sentiment in favor of diversions and enterprises of the kind in question, but there is at the same time present in the community a pervading sense that this ground of sentiment wants legitimation. The required legitimation is ordinarily sought by showing that although sports are substantially of a predatory socially disintegrating effect, although their proximate effect runs in the direction of reversion to propensities that are industrially disserviceable, yet indirectly and remotely, by some not readily comprehensible process of polar induction or counter irritation perhaps, sports are conceived to foster a habit of mind that is serviceable for the social or industrial purpose. That is to say, although sports are essentially of the nature of invidious exploit, it is presumed that by some remote and obscure effect they result in the growth of a temperament conducive to non-invidious work. It is commonly attempted to show all this empirically, or it is rather assumed that this is the empirical generalization which must be obvious to anyone who cares to see it. In conducting the proof of this thesis, the treacherous ground of inference from cause to effect is somewhat shrewdly avoided, except so far as to show that the quote manly virtues, unquote spoken of above, are fostered by sports. But since it is these manly virtues that are economically in need of legitimation, the chain of proof breaks off where it should begin. In the most general economic terms, these apologies are an effort to show that, in spite of the logic of the thing, sports do in fact further what may be broadly called workmanship. So long as he has not succeeded in persuading himself or others that this is their effect, the thoughtful apologist for sports will not rest content, and commonly it is to be admitted he does not rest content. His discontent with his own vindication of the practice in question is ordinarily shown by his truculent tone and by the eagerness with which he heaps up assertions and support of his position. But why are apologies needed? If there prevails a body of popular sentient in favor of sports, why is not that fact sufficient legitimation? The protracted discipline of prowess to which the race has been subjected under the predatory and quasi-peaceable culture has transmitted to the men of today a temperament that finds gratification in these expressions of ferocity and cunning. So why not accept these sports as legitimate expressions of a normal and wholesome human nature? What other norm is there that is to be lived up to than that given in the aggregate range of propensities that express themselves in the sentiments of this generation, including the hereditary strain of prowess? The ulterior norm to which appeal is taken is the instinct of workmanship, which is an instinct more fundamental of more ancient prescription than the propensity to predatory emulation. The latter is but a special development of the instinct of workmanship, a variant relatively late and ephemeral in spite of its great absolute antiquity. The emulative predatory impulse, or the instinct of sportsmanship, as it might well be called, is essentially unstable in comparison with the primordial instinct of workmanship out of which it has been developed and differentiated. Tested by this ulterior norm of life, predatory emulation, and therefore the life of sports falls short. The manner and the measure in which the institution of a leisure class conduces to the conservation of sports and invidious exploit can, of course, not be succinctly stated. From the evidence already recited, it appears that, in sentient and inclinations, the leisure class is more favorable to a warlike attitude and animus than the industrial classes. Something similar seems to be true as regards sports. But it is cheaply in its indirect effect though the cannons of decorus living that the institution has its influence on the prevalent sentiment with respect to the sporting life. This indirect effect goes almost unequivocally in the direction of furthering a survival of the predatory temperament and habits. And this is true even with respect to those variants of the sporting life which the higher leisure class code proprieties proscribes, as, e.g., prize fighting, cock fighting, and other like vulgar expressions of the sporting temper. Whatever the latest authenticated schedule of detail proprieties may say, the accredited cannons of decency sanctioned by the institution say without equivocation that emulation and waste are good and their opposites are disreputable. In the crepuscular light of the social nether spaces, the details of the code are not apprehended with all the facility that might be desired. And these broad underlying cannons of decency are therefore applied somewhat unreflectingly with little question as to the scope of their competence or the exceptions that have been sanctioned in detail. Addiction to athletic sports not only in the way of direct participation but also in the way of sentiment and moral support is, in a more or less pronounced degree, a characteristic of the leisure class. And it is a trait which that class shares with the lower class delinquents and with such adivistic elements throughout the body of the community as are endowed with a dominant predacious trend. Few individuals among the populations of western civilized countries are so far devoid of the predacious instinct as to find no diversion in contemplating athletic sports and games but with the common run of individuals among the industrial classes, the inclination to sports does not assert itself to the extent of constituting what may fairly be called a sporting habit. With these classes, sports are an occasional diversion rather than a serious feature of life. This common body of the people can therefore not be said to cultivate the sporting propensity. Although it is not obsolete in the average of them or even in any appreciable number of individuals, yet the predilection for sports in the commonplace industrial classes is of the nature of a reminiscence, more or less diverting as an occasional interest rather than a vital and permanent interest that counts as a dominant factor in shaping the organic complex of habits of thought into which it enters. As it manifests itself in the sporting life of today, this propensity may not appear to be an economic factor of great consequence. Taken simply by itself, it does not count for a great deal in its direct effects on the industrial efficiency or the consumption of any given individual, but the prevalence and the growth of the type of human nature of which this propensity is a characteristic feature is a matter of some consequence. It affects the economic life of the collectivity, both as regards the rate of economic development and as regards the character of the results attained by the development. For better or worse, the fact that the popular habits of thought are in any degree dominated by this type of character cannot but greatly affect the scope, direction, standards, and ideals of the collective economic life as well as the degree of adjustment of the collective life to the environment. Something to a like effect is to be said of other traits that go to make up the barbarian character. For the purposes of economic theory, these further barbarian traits may be taken as concomitant variations of that predacious temper of which prowess is an expression. In great measure, they are not primarily of an economic character, nor do they have much direct economic bearing. They serve to indicate the stage of economic evolution to which the individual possessed of them is adapted. They are of importance, therefore, as extraneous tests of the degree of adaptation of the character in which they are comprised to the economic exigencies of today. But they are also, to some extent, important as being aptitudes which themselves go to increase or diminish the economic serviceability of the individual. As it finds expression in the life of the barbarian, prowess manifests itself in two main directions, force and fraud. In varying degrees, these two forms of expression are similarly present in modern warfare, in the pecuniary occupations, and in sports and games. Both lines of aptitudes are cultivated and strengthened by the life of sport as well as by the more serious forms of emulative life. Strategy or cunning is an element invariably present in games as also in warlike pursuits and in the chase. In all of these employments, strategy tends to develop into finesse and chicanery. Chicanery, falsehood, brow-beating hold a well-secured place in the method of procedure of any athletic contest and in games generally. The habitual employment of an umpire and the minute technical regulations governing the limits and details of permissible fraud and strategic advantage sufficiently attest the fact that fraudulent practices and attempts to overreach one's opponents are not advantageous features of the game. In the nature of the case, habituation to sport should conduce to a fuller development of the aptitude for fraud, and the prevalence in the community of that predatory temperament which inclines men to sports connotes a prevalence of sharp practice and callous disregard of the interests of others, individually and collectively, resort to fraud In any guise and under any legitimation of law or custom is an expression of a narrowly self-regarding habit of mind. It is needless to dwell at any length on the economic value of this feature of the sporting character. In this connection it is to be noted that the most obvious characteristic of the physiognomy affected by athletic and other sporting men is that of an extreme astuteness. The gifts and exploits of Ulysses are scarcely second to those of Achilles, either in their substantial furtherance of the game or in the enclos which they give the astute sporting men among his associates. The pantomime of astuteness is commonly the first step in that assimilation to the professional sporting man which a youth undergoes after matriculation in any reputable school of the secondary or higher education as the case may be. And the physiognomy of astuteness as a decorative feature never ceases to receive the thoughtful attention of men whose serious interest lies in athletic games, races or other contests of a similar emulative nature. As a further indication of their spiritual kinship it may be pointed out that the members of the lower delinquent class usually show this physiognomy of astuteness in a marked degree and that they very commonly show the same histrionic exaggeration of it that is often seen in the young candidate for athletic honors. This, by the way, is the most legible mark of what is vulgarly called toughness in youthful aspirants for a bad mate. The astute man, it may be remarked, is of no economic value to the community unless it be for the purpose of sharp practice in dealings with other communities. His functioning is not a furtherance of the generic life process. At its best, in its direct economic bearing, it is a conversion of the economic substance of the collectivity to a growth alien to the collective life process. Very much after the analogy of what in medicine would be called a benign tumor, with some tendency to transgress the uncertain line that divides the benign from the malign growths. The two barbarian traits, ferocity and astuteness, go to make up the predacious temper or spiritual attitude. They are the expressions of a narrowly self-regarding habit of mind. Both are highly serviceable for individual expediency in a life looking to invidious success. Both also have a high aesthetic value. Both are fostered by the pecuniary culture. But both alike are of no use for the purposes of the collective life. Please visit LibreFox.org Recording by Anna Simon The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorsten Weblen Chapter 11 The Believe in Luck The gambling propensity is another subsidiary trade of the barbarian temperament. It is a concomitant variation of character of almost universal prevalence among sporting men and among men given to warlike and emulative activities generally. This trade also has a direct economic value. It is recognized to be a hindrance to the highest industrial efficiency of the aggregate in any community where it prevails in an appreciable degree. The gambling proclivity is doubtfully to be classed as a feature belonging exclusively to the predatory type of human nature. The chief factor in the gambling habit is the belief in luck, and this belief is apparently traceable, at least in its elements, to a stage in human evolution and to dating the predatory culture. It may well have been under the predatory culture that the belief in luck was developed into the form in which it is present as a chief element of the gambling proclivity in the sporting temperament. It probably owes the specific form under which it occurs in the modern culture to the predatory discipline. But the belief in luck is in substance a habit of more ancient date than the predatory culture. It is one form of the artistic apprehension of things. The belief seems to be a trait carried over in substance from an earlier phase into the barbarian culture and transmuted and transmitted through that culture to a later stage of human development under a specific form imposed by the predatory discipline. But in any case, it is to be taken as an archaic trait inherited from a more or less remote past, more or less incompatible with the requirements of the modern industrial process and more or less of a hindrance to the fullest efficiency of the collective economic life of the present. While the belief in luck is the basis of the gambling habit, it is not the only element that enters into the habit of betting. Betting on the issue of contests of strength and skill proceeds on a further motive without which the belief in luck would scarcely come in as a prominent feature of sporting life. This further motive is a desire of the anticipated winner or the partisan of the anticipated winning side to heighten his side's ascendancy at the cost of the loser. Not only does the stronger side score a more signal victory and the losing side suffer a more painful and humiliating defeat in proportion as the pecuniary gain and loss in the wager is large, although this alone is a consideration of material weight. But the wager is commonly laid also with a view not of outing words nor even recognized in said terms in petto to enhancing the chances of success for the contestant on which it is laid. It is felt that substance and solicitude expended to this end cannot go for naught in the issue. There is here a special manifestation of the instinct of workmanship, backed by an even more manifest sense that the animistic congruity of things must decide for a victorious outcome for the side in whose behalf the propensity inherent in events has been propitiated and fortified by so much of a cognitive and kinetic urging. This incentive to the wager expresses itself freely under the form of backing one's favorite in any contest and that is unmistakably a predatory feature. It is as ancillary to the predacious impulse proper that the belief in luck expresses itself in a wager so that it may be set down that insofar as the belief in luck comes to expression in the form of laying a wager, it is to be accounted an integral element of the predatory type of character. The belief is, in its element, an archaic habit which belongs substantially to early and differentiated human nature. But when this belief is helped out by the predatory emulative impulse and so is differentiated into the specific form of the gambling habit, it is in this higher developed and specific form to be classed as a trait of the barbarian character. The belief in luck is a sense of fortuitous necessity in the sequence of phenomena. In its various mutations and expressions it is of very serious importance for the economic efficiency of any community in which it prevails to an appreciable extent. So much so as to warrant a more detailed discussion of its origin and content and of the bearing of its various ramifications upon economic structure and function as well as a discussion of the relation of the leisure class to its growth, differentiation and persistence. In the developed integrated form in which it is most readily observed in the barbarian of the predatory culture or in the sporting man of modern communities, the belief comprises at least two distinguishable elements which are to be taken as two different phases of the same fundamental habit of thought or as the same psychological factor in two successive phases of its evolution. The fact that these two elements are successive phases of the same general line of growth of belief does not hinder their coexisting in the habits of thought of any given individual. The more primitive form or the more archaic phase is an incipient animistic belief or an animistic sense of relations and things that imputes a quasi-personal character to facts. To the archaic man all the obtrusive and obviously consequential objects and facts in its environment have a quasi-personal individuality. They are conceived to be possessed of volition or rather of propensities which enter into the complex of causes and affect events in an inscrutable manner. The sporting man's sense of luck and chance or of fortuitous necessity is an inarticulate or incoed animism. It applies to objects and situations often in a very vague way, but it is usually so far defined as to imply the possibility of propitiating or of deceiving and cajoling or otherwise disturbing the holding of propensities resident in the objects which constitute the apparatus and accessories of any game of skill or chance. There are few sporting men who are not in the habit of wearing charms or talismans to which more or less of efficacy is felt to belong and the proportion is not much less of those who instinctively dread the hoodooing of the contestants or the apparatus engaged in any contest on which they lay a wager or who feel that the fact of their backing a given contestant or side in the game does and ought to strengthen that side or to whom the mascot which they cultivate means something more than a jest. In its simple form the belief in luck is this instinctive sense of an inscrutable teleological propensity in objects or situations. Objects or events have a propensity to eventuate in a given end whether this end or objective point of the sequence is conceived to be fortuitously given or deliberately sought. From this simple animism the belief shades of by insensible gradations into the second derivative form or phase above referred to which is a more or less articulate belief in an inscrutable preternatural agency. The preternatural agency works through the visible objects with which it is associated but is not identified with these objects in point of individuality. The use of the term preternatural agency here carries no further implication as to the nature of the agency spoken of as preternatural. This is only a further development of animistic belief. The preternatural agency is not necessarily conceived to be a personal agent in the full sense but it is an agency which partakes of the attributes of personality to the extent of somewhat arbitrarily influencing the outcome of any enterprise and especially of any contest. The pervading belief in the Aminkia or Gipta Gaipha, Outna which lends so much of color to the Atlantic sagas specifically and to early Germanic folk legends is an illustration of this sense of an extra physical propensity in the course of events. In this expression or form of the belief the propensity is scarcely personified although to a varying extent an individuality is imputed to it and this individuated propensity is sometimes conceived to yield to circumstances commonly to circumstances of a spiritual or preternatural character. A well-known and striking exemplification of the belief in a fairly advanced stage of differentiation and involving an anthropomorphic personification of the preternatural agent appealed to is afforded by the wager of battle. Here the preternatural agent was conceived to act on request as umpire and to shape the outcome of the contest in accordance with some stipulated ground of decision such as the equity or legality of the respective contestants claims. The like sense of an inscrutable but spiritually necessary tendency in events is still traceable as an obscure element in current popular belief as shown for instance by the well-accredited Maxim. Thrice is he armed who knows his quarrel just. A Maxim which retains much of its significance for the average unreflecting person even in the civilized communities of today. The modern reminiscence of the belief in the Hamingia or in the guidance of an unseen hand which is traceable on the acceptance of this Maxim is faint and perhaps uncertain and it seems in any case to be blended with other psychological moments that are not clearly of an animistic character. For the purpose in hand it is unnecessary to look more closely into the psychological process or the ethnological line of dissent by which the later of these two animistic apprehensions of propensity is derived from the earlier. This question may be of the gravest importance to folk psychology or to the theory of the evolution of creeds and cults. The same is true of the more fundamental question whether the two are related at all as successive phases in a sequence of development. Reference is here made to the existence of these questions only to remark that the interest of the present discussion does not lie in that direction. So far as concerns economic theory these two elements or phases of the belief in luck or in an extra causal trend or propensity in things are of substantially the same character. They have an economic significance as habits of thought which affect the individual's habitual view of the facts and sequences with which he comes in contact and which thereby affect the individual's serviceability for the industrial purpose. Therefore apart from all question of the beauty worth or beneficence of any animistic belief there is place for a discussion of their economic bearing on the serviceability of the individual as an economic factor and especially as an industrial agent. It has already been noted in an earlier connection that in order to have the highest serviceability in the complex industrial processes of today the individual must be endowed with the aptitude and the habit of readily apprehending and relating facts in terms of causal sequence. Both as a whole and in its details the industrial process is a process of quantitative causation. The intelligence demanded of the workmen as well as of the director of an industrial process is little else than a degree of facility and the apprehension of and adaptation to a quantitatively determined causal sequence. This facility of apprehension and adaptation is what is lacking in stupid workmen and the growth of this facility is the end sold in their education so far as their education aims to enhance their industrial efficiency. In so far as the individual's inherited aptitudes or his training incline him to account for facts and sequences in other terms than those of causation or matter effect they lower his productive efficiency or industrial usefulness. This lowering of efficiency through a penchant for animistic methods of apprehending facts is especially apparent when taken in the mass when a given population with an animistic turn is viewed as a whole. The economic drawbacks of animism are more patent and its consequences are more far reaching under the modern system of large industry than under any other. In the modern industrial communities industry is to a constantly increasing extent being organized in a comprehensive system of organs and functions mutually conditioning one another and therefore freedom from all bias in the causal apprehension of phenomena grows constantly more requisite to efficiency on the part of the man concerned in industry. Under a system of handicraft an advantage in dexterity diligence muscular force or endurance may in a very large measure offset such a bias in the habits of thought of the workmen. Similarly in agricultural industry of the traditional kind which closely resembles handicraft in the nature of the demands made upon the workmen. In both the workmen is himself the prime mover chiefly depended upon and the natural forces engaged are in large part apprehended as inscrutable and fortuitous agencies whose working lies beyond the workmen's control or discretion. In popular apprehension there is in these forms of industry relatively little of the industrial process left to the fateful swing of a comprehensive mechanical sequence which must be comprehended in terms of causation and to which the operations of industry and the movements of the workmen must be adapted. As industrial methods develop the virtues of the handicraft's man count for less and less as an offset to scanty intelligence or a holding acceptance of the sequence of cause and effect. The industrial organization assumes more and more of the character of a mechanism in which it is man's office to discriminate and select what natural forces shall work out their effects in his service. The workmen's part in industry changes from that of a prime mover to that of discrimination and valuation of quantitative sequences and mechanical facts. The faculty of a ready apprehension and unbiased appreciation of causes in his environment grows in relative economic importance and any element in the complex of his habits of thought which intrudes a bias at variance with this ready appreciation of matter effect sequence gains proportionally in importance as a disturbing element acting to lower his industrial usefulness. Through its cumulative effect upon the habitual attitude of the population even a slight or inconspicuous bias towards accounting for everyday effects by recourse to other ground than that of quantitative causation may work an appreciable lowering of the collective industrial efficiency of a community. End of the first part of chapter 11 Section 27 of The Theory of the Leisure Class This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Anosimum The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorsten Weblen Second part of chapter 11 The Belief in Luck The animistic habit of mind may occur in the early undifferentiated form of an incoed animistic belief or in a later and more highly integrated face in which there is an anthropomorphic personification of the propensity imputed to facts. The industrial value of such a lively animistic sense or of such recourse to a preternatural agency or the guidance of an unseen hand is of course very much the same in either case. As affects the industrial serviceability of the individual, the effect is of the same kind in either case, but the extent to which this habit of thought dominates or shapes the complex of his habits of thought varies with the degree of immediacy, urgency or exclusiveness with which the individual habitually applies the animistic or anthropomorphic formula in dealing with the facts of his environment. The animistic habit acts in all cases to blur the appreciation of causal sequence, but the earlier, less reflected, less defined animistic sense of propensity may be expected to affect the intellectual processes of the individual in a more pervasive way than the higher forms of anthropomorphism. Where the animistic habit is present in an e-form, its scope and range of application are not defined or limited. It will therefore pulpably affect his thinking at every turn of the person's life, wherever he has to do with the material means of life. In the later, mature development of animism after it has been defined through the process of anthropomorphic elaboration when its application has been limited in a somewhat consistent fashion to the remote and the invisible, it comes about that an increasing range of everyday facts are provisionally accounted for without recourse to the preternatural agency in which a cultivated animism expresses itself. A highly integrated, personified preternatural agency is not a convenient means of handling the trivial occurrences of life, and a habit is therefore easily fallen into of accounting for many trivial or vulgar phenomena in terms of sequence. The provisional explanation so arrived at is by neglect allowed to stand as definitive for trivial purposes until special provocation or perplexity recourse the individual to his allegiance. But when special exigencies arise, that is to say, when there is peculiar need of a full and free recourse to the law of cause and effect, then the individual commonly has recourse to the preternatural agency as a universal solvent if he is possessed of an anthropomorphic belief. The extra-causal propensity or agent has a very high utility as a recourse in perplexity, but its utility is altogether of a non-economic kind. It is especially a refuge and a fund of comfort where it has attained the degree of consistency and specialization that belongs to an anthropomorphic divinity. It has much to command it, even on other grounds than that of affording the perplexed individual a means of escape from the difficulty of accounting for phenomena in terms of causal sequence. It would scarcely be in place here to dwell on the obvious and well-accepted merits of an anthropomorphic divinity as seen from the point of view of the aesthetic, moral, or spiritual interest or even as seen from the less remote standpoint of political, military, or social policy. The question here concerns the less picturesque and less urgent economic value of the belief in such a preternatural agency taken as a habit of thought which affects the industrial serviceability of the believer. And even within this narrow economic range, the inquiry is perforce confined to the immediate bearing of this habit of thought upon the believer's workman-like serviceability rather than extended to include its remote economic effects. These remotor effects are very difficult to trace. The inquiry into them is so encumbered with current preconceptions as to the degree in which life is enhanced by spiritual contact with such a divinity that any attempt to inquire into their economic value must for the present be fruitless. The immediate direct effect of the animistic habit of thought upon the general frame of mind of the believer goes in the direction of lowering his effective intelligence in the respect in which intelligence is of a special consequence for modern industry. The effect follows in varying degree whether the preternatural agent or propensity believed in is of a higher or a lower caste. This holds true of the barbarians and the sportingmen's sense of luck and propensity and likewise of the somewhat higher developed belief in an anthropomorphic divinity such as is commonly possessed by the same class. It must be taken to hold true also though with what relative degree of cogency is not easy to say of the more adequately developed anthropomorphic cults such as appeal to the devout civilized man. The industrial disability entailed by a popular adherence to one of the higher anthropomorphic cults may be relatively slight but it is not to be overlooked and even these high class cults of the western culture do not represent the last dissolving face of this human sense of extracausal propensity. Beyond these, the same animistic sense shows itself also in such attenuations of anthropomorphisms as the 18th century appealed to an order of nature and natural rights and in their modern representative the ostensibly post-Darwinian concept of a mediative trend in the process of evolution. This animistic explanation of phenomena is a form of the fallacy which the logicians knew by the name of iknava ratio. For the purposes of industry or of science it counts as a blunder in the apprehension and valuation effects. Apart from its direct industrial consequences the animistic habit has a certain significance for economic theory on other grounds. One, it is a fairly reliable indication of the presence and to some extent even of the degree of potency of certain other archaic trades that accompany it and that are of substantial economic consequence. And two, the material consequences of that code of devout proprieties to which the animistic habit gives rise in the development of an anthropomorphic cult are of importance both a. as affecting the community's consumption of goods and the prevalent canons of taste as already suggested in an earlier chapter and b. by inducing and conserving a certain habitual recognition of the relation to a superior and so stiffening the current sense of status and allegiance. As regards the point last named b. That body of habits of thought which makes up the character of any individual is in some sense an organic whole. A marked variation in a given direction at any one point carries with it as its correlative a concomitant variation in the habitual expression of life in other directions or other groups of activities. These various habits of thought or habitual expressions of life are all phases of the single life sequence of the individual. Therefore, a habit formed in response to a given stimulus will necessarily affect the character of the response made to other stimuli. A modification of human nature at any one point is a modification of human nature as a whole. On this ground and perhaps to a still greater extent on obscure grounds that cannot be discussed here there are these concomitant variations as between the different traits of human nature. So for instance barbarian peoples with a well-developed predatory scheme of life are commonly also possessed of a strong prevailing animistic habit a well-formed anthropomorphic cult and a lively sense of status. On the other hand anthropomorphism and the realising sense of an animistic propensity and material are less obtrusively present in the life of the peoples at the cultural stages which proceed and which follow the barbarian culture. The sense of status is also feeble on the whole in peaceable communities. It is to be remarked that a lively but slightly specialized animistic belief is to be found in most if not all peoples living in the anti-predatory savage stage of culture. The primitive savage takes his animism less seriously than the barbarian or the degenerate savage. With him it eventuates in fantastic myth-making rather than in coercive superstition. The barbarian culture shows sportsmanship, status, and anthropomorphism. There is commonly observable a like concomitance of variations in the same respects in the individual temperament of men in the civilized communities of today. Those modern representatives of the predacious barbarian temper that make up the sporting element are commonly believers in luck. At least they have a strong sense of an animistic propensity in things by force of which they are given to gambling. So also as regards anthropomorphism in this class such of them as give in their adhesion to some creed commonly attach themselves to one of the naively and consistently anthropomorphic creeds. There are relatively few sporting men who seek spiritual comfort in the less anthropomorphic cults such as the Unitarian or the Universalist. Closely bound up with this correlation of anthropomorphism and prowess is the fact that anthropomorphic cults act to conserve if not to initiate habits of mind favorable to a regime of status. As regards this point it is quite impossible to say where the disciplinary effect of the cult ends and where the evidence of a concomitance of variations in inherited traits begins. In their finest development the predatory temperament the sense of status and the anthropomorphic cult altogether belong to the barbarian culture and something of a mutual causal relation subsists between the three phenomena as they come into sight in communities on that cultural level. The way in which they recur in correlation in the habits and attitudes of individuals and classes today goes far to imply a light causal or organic relation between the same psychological phenomena considered as traits or habits of the individual. It has appeared at an earlier point in the discussion that the relation of status as a feature of social structure is a consequence of the predatory habit of life. As regards its line of derivation it is substantially an elaborated expression of the predatory attitude. On the other hand an anthropomorphic cult is a code of detailed relations of status superimposed upon the concept of a preternatural inscrutable propensity in material things so that as regards the external facts of its derivation the cult may be taken as an outgrowth of archaic man's pervading animistic sense defined and in some degree transformed by the predatory habit of life the result being a personified preternatural agency which is by imputation endowed with a full complement of the habits of thought that characterize the man of the predatory culture. The grosser psychological features in the case which have an immediate bearing on economic theory and are consequently to be taken account of here are therefore a as has appeared in an earlier chapter the predatory emulative habit of mind here called prowess is but the barbarian variant of the generically human instinct of workmanship which has fallen into this specific form under the guidance of a habit of the invidious comparison of persons. B. The relation of status is a formal expression of such an invidious comparison duly garged and graded according to a sanctioned schedule. C. An anthropomorphic cult in the days of its early vigor at least is an institution the characteristic element of which is a relation of status between the human subject as inferior and the personified preternatural agency as superior with this in mind there should be no difficulty in recognizing the intimate relation which subsists between these three phenomena of human nature and of human life. The relation amounts to an identity in some of their substantial elements. On the one hand the system of status and the predatory habit of life are an expression of the instinct of workmanship as it takes form under a custom of invidious comparison. On the other hand the anthropomorphic cult and the habit of devout observances are an expression of man's animistic sense of a propensity in material things elaborated under the guidance of substantially the same general habit of invidious comparison. The two categories the emulative habit of life and the habit of devout observances are therefore to be taken as complementary elements of the barbarian type of human nature and of its modern barbarian variants. They are expressions of much the same range of aptitudes made in response to different sets of stimuli. Devout Observances A discursive 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 the 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 command 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 remote economic bearing cannot 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 Canon's evaluation 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 is developed into a more or less articulate belief in a pridder natural or a 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 pridder natural agency by some approved method of approach and conciliation. This element of propreciation 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 pridder natural interposition in the sequence of events. For the purpose of the gambling practice the belief in pridder natural agency may be and ordinarily is less closely formulated especially as regards the habits of thought in the scheme of life imputed to the pridder natural 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 extra physical 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 is one 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. Conceptions will compromise 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 spokesman 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 are in some degree peculiarly given to devout practices. And it is observable that the cult to which sporting men and the predacious 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 obstruous 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 portion of men with a sporting record than the proportion of such men in the aggregate population of the community. College athletics affords 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 bi-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 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 to 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 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 mature 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 caste characteristic of the quasi-peaceable stage of culture. Still it is to be noted that even in this advanced phase of the cult of the observances in which devoutness finds expression consistently aimed 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 propitiary formulas most invoke 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 extra physical 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 in 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 worshipers 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 horrific 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.