Theory of the Leisure Class Part 10

As indicated above, the exemption from pecuniary stress has been carried farther in the case of the leisure-cla.s.s women of the advanced industrial communities than in that of any other considerable group of persons. The women may therefore be expected to show a more p.r.o.nounced reversion to a non-invidious temperament than the men. But there is also among men of the leisure cla.s.s a perceptible increase in the range and scope of activities that proceed from apt.i.tudes which are not to be cla.s.sed as self-regarding, and the end of which is not an invidious distinction. So, for instance, the greater number of men who have to do with industry in the way of pecuniarily managing an enterprise take some interest and some pride in seeing that the work is well done and is industrially effective, and this even apart from the profit which may result from any improvement of this kind. The efforts of commercial clubs and manufacturers' organizations in this direction of non-invidious advancement of industrial efficiency are also well know.

The tendency to some other than an invidious purpose in life has worked out in a mult.i.tude of organizations, the purpose of which is some work of charity or of social amelioration. These organizations are often of a quasi-religious or pseudo-religious character, and are partic.i.p.ated in by both men and women. Examples will present themselves in abundance on reflection, but for the purpose of indicating the range of the propensities in question and of characterizing them, some of the more obvious concrete cases may be cited. Such, for instance, are the agitation for temperance and similar social reforms, for prison reform, for the spread of education, for the suppression of vice, and for the avoidance of war by arbitration, disarmament, or other means; such are, in some measure, university settlements, neighborhood guilds, the various organizations typified by the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation and Young People's Society for Christian Endeavor, sewing-clubs, art clubs, and even commercial clubs; such are also, in some slight measure, the pecuniary foundations of semi-public establishments for charity, education, or amus.e.m.e.nt, whether they are endowed by wealthy individuals or by contributions collected from persons of smaller means--in so far as these establishments are not of a religious character.

It is of course not intended to say that these efforts proceed entirely from other motives than those of a self-regarding kind. What can be claimed is that other motives are present in the common run of cases, and that the perceptibly greater prevalence of effort of this kind under the circ.u.mstances of the modern industrial life than under the unbroken regime of the principle of status, indicates the presence in modern life of an effective scepticism with respect to the full legitimacy of an emulative scheme of life. It is a matter of sufficient notoriety to have become a commonplace jest that extraneous motives are commonly present among the incentives to this cla.s.s of work--motives of a self-regarding kind, and especially the motive of an invidious distinction. To such an extent is this true, that many ostensible works of disinterested public spirit are no doubt initiated and carried on with a view primarily to the enhance repute or even to the pecuniary gain, of their promoters. In the case of some considerable groups of organizations or establishments of this kind the invidious motive is apparently the dominant motive both with the initiators of the work and with their supporters. This last remark would hold true especially with respect to such works as lend distinction to their doer through large and conspicuous expenditure; as, for example, the foundation of a university or of a public library or museum; but it is also, and perhaps equally, true of the more commonplace work of partic.i.p.ation in such organizations. These serve to authenticate the pecuniary reputability of their members, as well as gratefully to keep them in mind of their superior status by pointing the contrast between themselves and the lower-lying humanity in whom the work of amelioration is to be wrought; as, for example, the university settlement, which now has some vogue. But after all allowances and deductions have been made, there is left some remainder of motives of a non-emulative kind. The fact itself that distinction or a decent good fame is sought by this method is evidence of a prevalent sense of the legitimacy, and of the presumptive effectual presence, of a non-emulative, non-invidious interest, as a consistent factor in the habits of thought of modern communities.

In all this latter-day range of leisure-cla.s.s activities that proceed on the basis of a non-invidious and non-religious interest, it is to be noted that the women partic.i.p.ate more actively and more persistently than the men--except, of course, in the case of such works as require a large expenditure of means. The dependent pecuniary position of the women disables them for work requiring large expenditure. As regards the general range of ameliorative work, the members of the priesthood or clergy of the less naively devout sects, or the secularized denominations, are a.s.sociated with the cla.s.s of women. This is as the theory would have it. In other economic relations, also, this clergy stands in a somewhat equivocal position between the cla.s.s of women and that of the men engaged in economic pursuits. By tradition and by the prevalent sense of the proprieties, both the clergy and the women of the well-to-do cla.s.ses are placed in the position of a vicarious leisure cla.s.s; with both cla.s.ses the characteristic relation which goes to form the habits of thought of the cla.s.s is a relation of subservience--that is to say, an economic relation conceived in personal terms; in both cla.s.ses there is consequently perceptible a special p.r.o.neness to construe phenomena in terms of personal relation rather than of causal sequence; both cla.s.ses are so inhibited by the canons of decency from the ceremonially unclean processes of the lucrative or productive occupations as to make partic.i.p.ation in the industrial life process of today a moral impossibility for them. The result of this ceremonial exclusion from productive effort of the vulgar sort is to draft a relatively large share of the energies of the modern feminine and priestly cla.s.ses into the service of other interests than the self-regarding one. The code leaves no alternative direction in which the impulse to purposeful action may find expression. The effect of a consistent inhibition on industrially useful activity in the case of the leisure-cla.s.s women shows itself in a restless a.s.sertion of the impulse to workmans.h.i.+p in other directions than that of business activity. As has been noticed already, the everyday life of the well-to-do women and the clergy contains a larger element of status than that of the average of the men, especially than that of the men engaged in the modern industrial occupations proper. Hence the devout att.i.tude survives in a better state of preservation among these cla.s.ses than among the common run of men in the modern communities. Hence an appreciable share of the energy which seeks expression in a non-lucrative employment among these members of the vicarious leisure cla.s.ses may be expected to eventuate in devout observances and works of piety. Hence, in part, the excess of the devout proclivity in women, spoken of in the last chapter. But it is more to the present point to note the effect of this proclivity in shaping the action and coloring the purposes of the non-lucrative movements and organizations here under discussion. Where this devout coloring is present it lowers the immediate efficiency of the organizations for any economic end to which their efforts may be directed. Many organizations, charitable and ameliorative, divide their attention between the devotional and the secular well-being of the people whose interests they aim to further. It can scarcely be doubted that if they were to give an equally serious attention and effort undividedly to the secular interests of these people, the immediate economic value of their work should be appreciably higher than it is.

It might of course similarly be said, if this were the place to say it, that the immediate efficiency of these works of amelioration for the devout might be greater if it were not hampered with the secular motives and aims which are usually present.

Some deduction is to be made from the economic value of this cla.s.s of non-invidious enterprise, on account of the intrusion of the devotional interest. But there are also deductions to be made on account of the presence of other alien motives which more or less broadly traverse the economic trend of this non-emulative expression of the instinct of workmans.h.i.+p. To such an extent is this seen to be true on a closer scrutiny, that, when all is told, it may even appear that this general cla.s.s of enterprises is of an altogether dubious economic value--as measured in terms of the fullness or facility of life of the individuals or cla.s.ses to whose amelioration the enterprise is directed.

For instance, many of the efforts now in reputable vogue for the amelioration of the indigent population of large cities are of the nature, in great part, of a mission of culture. It is by this means sought to accelerate the rate of speed at which given elements of the upper-cla.s.s culture find acceptance in the everyday scheme of life of the lower cla.s.ses. The solicitude of "settlements," for example, is in part directed to enhance the industrial efficiency of the poor and to teach them the more adequate utilization of the means at hand; but it is also no less consistently directed to the inculcation, by precept and example, of certain punctilios of upper-cla.s.s propriety in manners and customs. The economic substance of these proprieties will commonly be found on scrutiny to be a conspicuous waste of time and goods. Those good people who go out to humanize the poor are commonly, and advisedly, extremely scrupulous and silently insistent in matters of decorum and the decencies of life. They are commonly persons of an exemplary life and gifted with a tenacious insistence on ceremonial cleanness in the various items of their daily consumption. The cultural or civilizing efficacy of this inculcation of correct habits of thought with respect to the consumption of time and commodities is scarcely to be overrated; nor is its economic value to the individual who acquires these higher and more reputable ideals inconsiderable. Under the circ.u.mstances of the existing pecuniary culture, the reputability, and consequently the success, of the individual is in great measure dependent on his proficiency in demeanor and methods of consumption that argue habitual waste of time and goods. But as regards the ulterior economic bearing of this training in worthier methods of life, it is to be said that the effect wrought is in large part a subst.i.tution of costlier or less efficient methods of accomplis.h.i.+ng the same material results, in relations where the material result is the fact of substantial economic value. The propaganda of culture is in great part an inculcation of new tastes, or rather of a new schedule of proprieties, which have been adapted to the upper-cla.s.s scheme of life under the guidance of the leisure-cla.s.s formulation of the principles of status and pecuniary decency. This new schedule of proprieties is intruded into the lower-cla.s.s scheme of life from the code elaborated by an element of the population whose life lies outside the industrial process; and this intrusive schedule can scarcely be expected to fit the exigencies of life for these lower cla.s.ses more adequately than the schedule already in vogue among them, and especially not more adequately than the schedule which they are themselves working out under the stress of modern industrial life.

All this of course does not question the fact that the proprieties of the subst.i.tuted schedule are more decorous than those which they displace. The doubt which presents itself is simply a doubt as to the economic expediency of this work of regeneration--that is to say, the economic expediency in that immediate and material bearing in which the effects of the change can be ascertained with some degree of confidence, and as viewed from the standpoint not of the individual but of the facility of life of the collectivity. For an appreciation of the economic expediency of these enterprises of amelioration, therefore, their effective work is scarcely to be taken at its face value, even where the aim of the enterprise is primarily an economic one and where the interest on which it proceeds is in no sense self-regarding or invidious. The economic reform wrought is largely of the nature of a permutation in the methods of conspicuous waste.

But something further is to be said with respect to the character of the disinterested motives and canons of procedure in all work of this cla.s.s that is affected by the habits of thought characteristic of the pecuniary culture; and this further consideration may lead to a further qualification of the conclusions already reached. As has been seen in an earlier chapter, the canons of reputability or decency under the pecuniary culture insist on habitual futility of effort as the mark of a pecuniarily blameless life. There results not only a habit of disesteem of useful occupations, but there results also what is of more decisive consequence in guiding the action of any organized body of people that lays claim to social good repute. There is a tradition which requires that one should not be vulgarly familiar with any of the processes or details that have to do with the material necessities of life. One may meritoriously show a quant.i.tative interest in the well-being of the vulgar, through subscriptions or through work on managing committees and the like. One may, perhaps even more meritoriously, show solicitude in general and in detail for the cultural welfare of the vulgar, in the way of contrivances for elevating their tastes and affording them opportunities for spiritual amelioration. But one should not betray an intimate knowledge of the material circ.u.mstances of vulgar life, or of the habits of thought of the vulgar cla.s.ses, such as would effectually direct the efforts of these organizations to a materially useful end.

This reluctance to avow an unduly intimate knowledge of the lower-cla.s.s conditions of life in detail of course prevails in very different degrees in different individuals; but there is commonly enough of it present collectively in any organization of the kind in question profoundly to influence its course of action. By its c.u.mulative action in shaping the usage and precedents of any such body, this shrinking from an imputation of unseemly familiarity with vulgar life tends gradually to set aside the initial motives of the enterprise, in favor of certain guiding principles of good repute, ultimately reducible to terms of pecuniary merit. So that in an organization of long standing the initial motive of furthering the facility of life in these cla.s.ses comes gradually to be an ostensible motive only, and the vulgarly effective work of the organization tends to obsolescence.

What is true of the efficiency of organizations for non-invidious work in this respect is true also as regards the work of individuals proceeding on the same motives; though it perhaps holds true with more qualification for individuals than for organized enterprises. The habit of gauging merit by the leisure-cla.s.s canons of wasteful expenditure and unfamiliarity with vulgar life, whether on the side of production or of consumption, is necessarily strong in the individuals who aspire to do some work of public utility. And if the individual should forget his station and turn his efforts to vulgar effectiveness, the common sense of the community-the sense of pecuniary decency--would presently reject his work and set him right. An example of this is seen in the administration of bequests made by public-spirited men for the single purpose (at least ostensibly) of furthering the facility of human life in some particular respect. The objects for which bequests of this cla.s.s are most frequently made at present are most frequently made at present are schools, libraries, hospitals, and asylums for the infirm or unfortunate. The avowed purpose of the donor in these cases is the amelioration of human life in the particular respect which is named in the bequest; but it will be found an invariable rule that in the execution of the work not a little of other motives, frequency incompatible with the initial motive, is present and determines the particular disposition eventually made of a good share of the means which have been set apart by the bequest. Certain funds, for instance, may have been set apart as a foundation for a foundling asylum or a retreat for invalids. The diversion of expenditure to honorific waste in such cases is not uncommon enough to cause surprise or even to raise a smile. An appreciable share of the funds is spent in the construction of an edifice faced with some aesthetically objectionable but expensive stone, covered with grotesque and incongruous details, and designed, in its battlemented walls and turrets and its ma.s.sive portals and strategic approaches, to suggest certain barbaric methods of warfare. The interior of the structure shows the same pervasive guidance of the canons of conspicuous waste and predatory exploit. The windows, for instance, to go no farther into detail, are placed with a view to impress their pecuniary excellence upon the chance beholder from the outside, rather than with a view to effectiveness for their ostensible end in the convenience or comfort of the beneficiaries within; and the detail of interior arrangement is required to conform itself as best it may to this alien but imperious requirement of pecuniary beauty.

In all this, of course, it is not to be presumed that the donor would have found fault, or that he would have done otherwise if he had taken control in person; it appears that in those cases where such a personal direction is exercised--where the enterprise is conducted by direct expenditure and superintendence instead of by bequest--the aims and methods of management are not different in this respect. Nor would the beneficiaries, or the outside observers whose ease or vanity are not immediately touched, be pleased with a different disposition of the funds. It would suit no one to have the enterprise conducted with a view directly to the most economical and effective use of the means at hand for the initial, material end of the foundation. All concerned, whether their interest is immediate and self-regarding, or contemplative only, agree that some considerable share of the expenditure should go to the higher or spiritual needs derived from the habit of an invidious comparison in predatory exploit and pecuniary waste. But this only goes to say that the canons of emulative and pecuniary reputability so far pervade the common sense of the community as to permit no escape or evasion, even in the case of an enterprise which ostensibly proceeds entirely on the basis of a non-invidious interest.

It may even be that the enterprise owes its honorific virtue, as a means of enhancing the donor's good repute, to the imputed presence of this non-invidious motive; but that does not hinder the invidious interest from guiding the expenditure. The effectual presence of motives of an emulative or invidious origin in non-emulative works of this kind might be shown at length and with detail, in any one of the cla.s.ses of enterprise spoken of above. Where these honorific details occur, in such cases, they commonly masquerade under designations that belong in the field of the aesthetic, ethical or economic interest. These special motives, derived from the standards and canons of the pecuniary culture, act surrept.i.tiously to divert effort of a non-invidious kind from effective service, without disturbing the agent's sense of good intention or obtruding upon his consciousness the substantial futility of his work. Their effect might be traced through the entire range of that schedule of non-invidious, meliorative enterprise that is so considerable a feature, and especially so conspicuous a feature, in the overt scheme of life of the well-to-do. But the theoretical bearing is perhaps clear enough and may require no further ill.u.s.tration; especially as some detailed attention will be given to one of these lines of enterprise--the establishments for the higher learning--in another connection.

Under the circ.u.mstances of the sheltered situation in which the leisure cla.s.s is placed there seems, therefore, to be something of a reversion to the range of non-invidious impulses that characterizes the ante-predatory savage culture. The reversion comprises both the sense of workmans.h.i.+p and the proclivity to indolence and good-fellows.h.i.+p. But in the modern scheme of life canons of conduct based on pecuniary or invidious merit stand in the way of a free exercise of these impulses; and the dominant presence of these canons of conduct goes far to divert such efforts as are made on the basis of the non-invidious interest to the service of that invidious interest on which the pecuniary culture rests. The canons of pecuniary decency are reducible for the present purpose to the principles of waste, futility, and ferocity. The requirements of decency are imperiously present in meliorative enterprise as in other lines of conduct, and exercise a selective surveillance over the details of conduct and management in any enterprise. By guiding and adapting the method in detail, these canons of decency go far to make all non-invidious aspiration or effort nugatory. The pervasive, impersonal, un-eager principle of futility is at hand from day to day and works obstructively to hinder the effectual expression of so much of the surviving ante-predatory apt.i.tudes as is to be cla.s.sed under the instinct of workmans.h.i.+p; but its presence does not preclude the transmission of those apt.i.tudes or the continued recurrence of an impulse to find expression for them.

In the later and farther development of the pecuniary culture, the requirement of withdrawal from the industrial process in order to avoid social odium is carried so far as to comprise abstention from the emulative employments. At this advanced stage the pecuniary culture negatively favors the a.s.sertion of the non-invidious propensities by relaxing the stress laid on the merit of emulative, predatory, or pecuniary occupations, as compared with those of an industrial or productive kind. As was noticed above, the requirement of such withdrawal from all employment that is of human use applies more rigorously to the upper-cla.s.s women than to any other cla.s.s, unless the priesthood of certain cults might be cited as an exception, perhaps more apparent than real, to this rule. The reason for the more extreme insistence on a futile life for this cla.s.s of women than for the men of the same pecuniary and social grade lies in their being not only an upper-grade leisure cla.s.s but also at the same time a vicarious leisure cla.s.s. There is in their case a double ground for a consistent withdrawal from useful effort.

It has been well and repeatedly said by popular writers and speakers who reflect the common sense of intelligent people on questions of social structure and function that the position of woman in any community is the most striking index of the level of culture attained by the community, and it might be added, by any given cla.s.s in the community.

This remark is perhaps truer as regards the stage of economic development than as regards development in any other respect. At the same time the position a.s.signed to the woman in the accepted scheme of life, in any community or under any culture, is in a very great degree an expression of traditions which have been shaped by the circ.u.mstances of an earlier phase of development, and which have been but partially adapted to the existing economic circ.u.mstances, or to the existing exigencies of temperament and habits of mind by which the women living under this modern economic situation are actuated.

The fact has already been remarked upon incidentally in the course of the discussion of the growth of economic inst.i.tutions generally, and in particular in speaking of vicarious leisure and of dress, that the position of women in the modern economic scheme is more widely and more consistently at variance with the promptings of the instinct of workmans.h.i.+p than is the position of the men of the same cla.s.ses. It is also apparently true that the woman's temperament includes a larger share of this instinct that approves peace and disapproves futility.

It is therefore not a fortuitous circ.u.mstance that the women of modern industrial communities show a livelier sense of the discrepancy between the accepted scheme of life and the exigencies of the economic situation.

The several phases of the "woman question" have brought out in intelligible form the extent to which the life of women in modern society, and in the polite circles especially, is regulated by a body of common sense formulated under the economic circ.u.mstances of an earlier phase of development. It is still felt that woman's life, in its civil, economic, and social bearing, is essentially and normally a vicarious life, the merit or demerit of which is, in the nature of things, to be imputed to some other individual who stands in some relation of owners.h.i.+p or tutelage to the woman. So, for instance, any action on the part of a woman which traverses an injunction of the accepted schedule of proprieties is felt to reflect immediately upon the honor of the man whose woman she is. There may of course be some sense of incongruity in the mind of any one pa.s.sing an opinion of this kind on the woman's frailty or perversity; but the common-sense judgment of the community in such matters is, after all, delivered without much hesitation, and few men would question the legitimacy of their sense of an outraged tutelage in any case that might arise. On the other hand, relatively little discredit attaches to a woman through the evil deeds of the man with whom her life is a.s.sociated.

The good and beautiful scheme of life, then--that is to say the scheme to which we are habituated--a.s.signs to the woman a "sphere" ancillary to the activity of the man; and it is felt that any departure from the traditions of her a.s.signed round of duties is unwomanly. If the question is as to civil rights or the suffrage, our common sense in the matter--that is to say the logical deliverance of our general scheme of life upon the point in question--says that the woman should be represented in the body politic and before the law, not immediately in her own person, but through the mediation of the head of the household to which she belongs. It is unfeminine in her to aspire to a self-directing, self-centered life; and our common sense tells us that her direct partic.i.p.ation in the affairs of the community, civil or industrial, is a menace to that social order which expresses our habits of thought as they have been formed under the guidance of the traditions of the pecuniary culture. "All this fume and froth of 'emanc.i.p.ating woman from the slavery of man' and so on, is, to use the chaste and expressive language of Elizabeth Cady Stanton inversely, 'utter rot.'

The social relations of the s.e.xes are fixed by nature. Our entire civilization--that is whatever is good in it--is based on the home."

The "home" is the household with a male head. This view, but commonly expressed even more chastely, is the prevailing view of the woman's status, not only among the common run of the men of civilized communities, but among the women as well. Women have a very alert sense of what the scheme of proprieties requires, and while it is true that many of them are ill at ease under the details which the code imposes, there are few who do not recognize that the existing moral order, of necessity and by the divine right of prescription, places the woman in a position ancillary to the man. In the last a.n.a.lysis, according to her own sense of what is good and beautiful, the woman's life is, and in theory must be, an expression of the man's life at the second remove.

But in spite of this pervading sense of what is the good and natural place for the woman, there is also perceptible an incipient development of sentiment to the effect that this whole arrangement of tutelage and vicarious life and imputation of merit and demerit is somehow a mistake.

Or, at least, that even if it may be a natural growth and a good arrangement in its time and place, and in spite of its patent aesthetic value, still it does not adequately serve the more everyday ends of life in a modern industrial community. Even that large and substantial body of well-bred, upper and middle-cla.s.s women to whose dispa.s.sionate, matronly sense of the traditional proprieties this relation of status commends itself as fundamentally and eternally right-even these, whose att.i.tude is conservative, commonly find some slight discrepancy in detail between things as they are and things as they should be in this respect. But that less manageable body of modern women who, by force of youth, education, or temperament, are in some degree out of touch with the traditions of status received from the barbarian culture, and in whom there is, perhaps, an undue reversion to the impulse of self-expression and workmans.h.i.+p--these are touched with a sense of grievance too vivid to leave them at rest.

In this "New-Woman" movement--as these blind and incoherent efforts to rehabilitate the woman's pre-glacial standing have been named--there are at least two elements discernible, both of which are of an economic character. These two elements or motives are expressed by the double watchword, "Emanc.i.p.ation" and "Work." Each of these words is recognized to stand for something in the way of a wide-spread sense of grievance.

The prevalence of the sentiment is recognized even by people who do not see that there is any real ground for a grievance in the situation as it stands today. It is among the women of the well-to-do cla.s.ses, in the communities which are farthest advanced in industrial development, that this sense of a grievance to be redressed is most alive and finds most frequent expression. That is to say, in other words, there is a demand, more or less serious, for emanc.i.p.ation from all relation of status, tutelage, or vicarious life; and the revulsion a.s.serts itself especially among the cla.s.s of women upon whom the scheme of life handed down from the regime of status imposes with least litigation a vicarious life, and in those communities whose economic development has departed farthest from the circ.u.mstances to which this traditional scheme is adapted. The demand comes from that portion of womankind which is excluded by the canons of good repute from all effectual work, and which is closely reserved for a life of leisure and conspicuous consumption.

More than one critic of this new-woman movement has misapprehended its motive. The case of the American "new woman" has lately been summed up with some warmth by a popular observer of social phenomena: "She is petted by her husband, the most devoted and hard-working of husbands in the world.... She is the superior of her husband in education, and in almost every respect. She is surrounded by the most numerous and delicate attentions. Yet she is not satisfied.... The Anglo-Saxon 'new woman' is the most ridiculous production of modern times, and destined to be the most ghastly failure of the century." Apart from the deprecation--perhaps well placed--which is contained in this presentment, it adds nothing but obscurity to the woman question. The grievance of the new woman is made up of those things which this typical characterization of the movement urges as reasons why she should be content. She is petted, and is permitted, or even required, to consume largely and conspicuously--vicariously for her husband or other natural guardian. She is exempted, or debarred, from vulgarly useful employment--in order to perform leisure vicariously for the good repute of her natural (pecuniary) guardian. These offices are the conventional marks of the un-free, at the same time that they are incompatible with the human impulse to purposeful activity. But the woman is endowed with her share-which there is reason to believe is more than an even share--of the instinct of workmans.h.i.+p, to which futility of life or of expenditure is obnoxious. She must unfold her life activity in response to the direct, unmediated stimuli of the economic environment with which she is in contact. The impulse is perhaps stronger upon the woman than upon the man to live her own life in her own way and to enter the industrial process of the community at something nearer than the second remove.

So long as the woman's place is consistently that of a drudge, she is, in the average of cases, fairly contented with her lot. She not only has something tangible and purposeful to do, but she has also no time or thought to spare for a rebellious a.s.sertion of such human propensity to self-direction as she has inherited. And after the stage of universal female drudgery is pa.s.sed, and a vicarious leisure without strenuous application becomes the accredited employment of the women of the well-to-do cla.s.ses, the prescriptive force of the canon of pecuniary decency, which requires the observance of ceremonial futility on their part, will long preserve high-minded women from any sentimental leaning to self-direction and a "sphere of usefulness." This is especially true during the earlier phases of the pecuniary culture, while the leisure of the leisure cla.s.s is still in great measure a predatory activity, an active a.s.sertion of mastery in which there is enough of tangible purpose of an invidious kind to admit of its being taken seriously as an employment to which one may without shame put one's hand. This condition of things has obviously lasted well down into the present in some communities. It continues to hold to a different extent for different individuals, varying with the vividness of the sense of status and with the feebleness of the impulse to workmans.h.i.+p with which the individual is endowed. But where the economic structure of the community has so far outgrown the scheme of life based on status that the relation of personal subservience is no longer felt to be the sole "natural" human relation; there the ancient habit of purposeful activity will begin to a.s.sert itself in the less conformable individuals against the more recent, relatively superficial, relatively ephemeral habits and views which the predatory and the pecuniary culture have contributed to our scheme of life. These habits and views begin to lose their coercive force for the community or the cla.s.s in question so soon as the habit of mind and the views of life due to the predatory and the quasi-peaceable discipline cease to be in fairly close accord with the later-developed economic situation. This is evident in the case of the industrious cla.s.ses of modern communities; for them the leisure-cla.s.s scheme of life has lost much of its binding force, especially as regards the element of status. But it is also visibly being verified in the case of the upper cla.s.ses, though not in the same manner.

The habits derived from the predatory and quasi-peaceable culture are relatively ephemeral variants of certain underlying propensities and mental characteristics of the race; which it owes to the protracted discipline of the earlier, proto-anthropoid cultural stage of peaceable, relatively undifferentiated economic life carried on in contact with a relatively simple and invariable material environment. When the habits superinduced by the emulative method of life have ceased to enjoy the section of existing economic exigencies, a process of disintegration sets in whereby the habits of thought of more recent growth and of a less generic character to some extent yield the ground before the more ancient and more pervading spiritual characteristics of the race.

In a sense, then, the new-woman movement marks a reversion to a more generic type of human character, or to a less differentiated expression of human nature. It is a type of human nature which is to be characterized as proto-anthropoid, and, as regards the substance if not the form of its dominant traits, it belongs to a cultural stage that may be cla.s.sed as possibly sub-human. The particular movement or evolutional feature in question of course shares this characterization with the rest of the later social development, in so far as this social development shows evidence of a reversion to the spiritual att.i.tude that characterizes the earlier, undifferentiated stage of economic revolution. Such evidence of a general tendency to reversion from the dominance of the invidious interest is not entirely wanting, although it is neither plentiful nor unquestionably convincing. The general decay of the sense of status in modern industrial communities goes some way as evidence in this direction; and the perceptible return to a disapproval of futility in human life, and a disapproval of such activities as serve only the individual gain at the cost of the collectivity or at the cost of other social groups, is evidence to a like effect. There is a perceptible tendency to deprecate the infliction of pain, as well as to discredit all marauding enterprises, even where these expressions of the invidious interest do not tangibly work to the material detriment of the community or of the individual who pa.s.ses an opinion on them. It may even be said that in the modern industrial communities the average, dispa.s.sionate sense of men says that the ideal character is a character which makes for peace, good-will, and economic efficiency, rather than for a life of self-seeking, force, fraud, and mastery.

The influence of the leisure cla.s.s is not consistently for or against the rehabilitation of this proto-anthropoid human nature. So far as concerns the chance of survival of individuals endowed with an exceptionally large share of the primitive traits, the sheltered position of the cla.s.s favors its members directly by withdrawing them from the pecuniary struggle; but indirectly, through the leisure-cla.s.s canons of conspicuous waste of goods and effort, the inst.i.tution of a leisure cla.s.s lessens the chance of survival of such individuals in the entire body of the population. The decent requirements of waste absorb the surplus energy of the population in an invidious struggle and leave no margin for the non-invidious expression of life. The remoter, less tangible, spiritual effects of the discipline of decency go in the same direction and work perhaps more effectually to the same end. The canons of decent life are an elaboration of the principle of invidious comparison, and they accordingly act consistently to inhibit all non-invidious effort and to inculcate the self-regarding att.i.tude.

Chapter Fourteen -- The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture

To the end that suitable habits of thought on certain heads may be conserved in the incoming generation, a scholastic discipline is sanctioned by the common sense of the community and incorporated into the accredited scheme of life. The habits of thought which are so formed under the guidance of teachers and scholastic traditions have an economic value--a value as affecting the serviceability of the individual--no less real than the similar economic value of the habits of thought formed without such guidance under the discipline of everyday life. Whatever characteristics of the accredited scholastic scheme and discipline are traceable to the predilections of the leisure cla.s.s or to the guidance of the canons of pecuniary merit are to be set down to the account of that inst.i.tution, and whatever economic value these features of the educational scheme possess are the expression in detail of the value of that inst.i.tution. It will be in place, therefore, to point out any peculiar features of the educational system which are traceable to the leisure-cla.s.s scheme of life, whether as regards the aim and method of the discipline, or as regards the compa.s.s and character of the body of knowledge inculcated. It is in learning proper, and more particularly in the higher learning, that the influence of leisure-cla.s.s ideals is most patent; and since the purpose here is not to make an exhaustive collation of data showing the effect of the pecuniary culture upon education, but rather to ill.u.s.trate the method and trend of the leisure-cla.s.s influence in education, a survey of certain salient features of the higher learning, such as may serve this purpose, is all that will be attempted.

In point of derivation and early development, learning is somewhat closely related to the devotional function of the community, particularly to the body of observances in which the service rendered the supernatural leisure cla.s.s expresses itself. The service by which it is sought to conciliate supernatural agencies in the primitive cults is not an industrially profitable employment of the community's time and effort. It is, therefore, in great part, to be cla.s.sed as a vicarious leisure performed for the supernatural powers with whom negotiations are carried on and whose good-will the service and the professions of subservience are conceived to procure. In great part, the early learning consisted in an acquisition of knowledge and facility in the service of a supernatural agent. It was therefore closely a.n.a.logous in character to the training required for the domestic service of a temporal master. To a great extent, the knowledge acquired under the priestly teachers of the primitive community was knowledge of ritual and ceremonial; that is to say, a knowledge of the most proper, most effective, or most acceptable manner of approaching and of serving the preternatural agents. What was learned was how to make oneself indispensable to these powers, and so to put oneself in a position to ask, or even to require, their intercession in the course of events or their abstention from interference in any given enterprise. Propitiation was the end, and this end was sought, in great part, by acquiring facility in subservience.

It appears to have been only gradually that other elements than those of efficient service of the master found their way into the stock of priestly or shamanistic instruction.

The priestly servitor of the inscrutable powers that move in the external world came to stand in the position of a mediator between these powers and the common run of unrestricted humanity; for he was possessed of a knowledge of the supernatural etiquette which would admit him into the presence. And as commonly happens with mediators between the vulgar and their masters, whether the masters be natural or preternatural, he found it expedient to have the means at hand tangibly to impress upon the vulgar the fact that these inscrutable powers would do what he might ask of them. Hence, presently, a knowledge of certain natural processes which could be turned to account for spectacular effect, together with some sleight of hand, came to be an integral part of priestly lore.

Knowledge of this kind pa.s.ses for knowledge of the "unknowable", and it owes its serviceability for the sacerdotal purpose to its recondite character. It appears to have been from this source that learning, as an inst.i.tution, arose, and its differentiation from this its parent stock of magic ritual and shamanistic fraud has been slow and tedious, and is scarcely yet complete even in the most advanced of the higher seminaries of learning.

The recondite element in learning is still, as it has been in all ages, a very attractive and effective element for the purpose of impressing, or even imposing upon, the unlearned; and the standing of the savant in the mind of the altogether unlettered is in great measure rated in terms of intimacy with the occult forces. So, for instance, as a typical case, even so late as the middle of this century, the Norwegian peasants have instinctively formulated their sense of the superior erudition of such doctors of divinity as Luther, Malanchthon, Peder Da.s.s, and even so late a scholar in divinity as Grundtvig, in terms of the Black Art. These, together with a very comprehensive list of minor celebrities, both living and dead, have been reputed masters in all magical arts; and a high position in the ecclesiastical personnel has carried with it, in the apprehension of these good people, an implication of profound familiarity with magical practice and the occult sciences. There is a parallel fact nearer home, similarly going to show the close relations.h.i.+p, in popular apprehension, between erudition and the unknowable; and it will at the same time serve to ill.u.s.trate, in somewhat coa.r.s.e outline, the bent which leisure-cla.s.s life gives to the cognitive interest. While the belief is by no means confined to the leisure cla.s.s, that cla.s.s today comprises a disproportionately large number of believers in occult sciences of all kinds and shades. By those whose habits of thought are not shaped by contact with modern industry, the knowledge of the unknowable is still felt to the ultimate if not the only true knowledge.

Learning, then, set out by being in some sense a by-product of the priestly vicarious leisure cla.s.s; and, at least until a recent date, the higher learning has since remained in some sense a by-product or by-occupation of the priestly cla.s.ses. As the body of systematized knowledge increased, there presently arose a distinction, traceable very far back in the history of education, between esoteric and exoteric knowledge, the former--so far as there is a substantial difference between the two--comprising such knowledge as is primarily of no economic or industrial effect, and the latter comprising chiefly knowledge of industrial processes and of natural phenomena which were habitually turned to account for the material purposes of life.

This line of demarcation has in time become, at least in popular apprehension, the normal line between the higher learning and the lower.

It is significant, not only as an evidence of their close affiliation with the priestly craft, but also as indicating that their activity to a good extent falls under that category of conspicuous leisure known as manners and breeding, that the learned cla.s.s in all primitive communities are great sticklers for form, precedent, gradations of rank, ritual, ceremonial vestments, and learned paraphernalia generally.

This is of course to be expected, and it goes to say that the higher learning, in its incipient phase, is a leisure-cla.s.s occupation--more specifically an occupation of the vicarious leisure cla.s.s employed in the service of the supernatural leisure cla.s.s. But this predilection for the paraphernalia of learning goes also to indicate a further point of contact or of continuity between the priestly office and the office of the savant. In point of derivation, learning, as well as the priestly office, is largely an outgrowth of sympathetic magic; and this magical apparatus of form and ritual therefore finds its place with the learned cla.s.s of the primitive community as a matter of course. The ritual and paraphernalia have an occult efficacy for the magical purpose; so that their presence as an integral factor in the earlier phases of the development of magic and science is a matter of expediency, quite as much as of affectionate regard for symbolism simply.

This sense of the efficacy of symbolic ritual, and of sympathetic effect to be wrought through dexterous rehearsal of the traditional accessories of the act or end to be compa.s.sed, is of course present more obviously and in larger measure in magical practice than in the discipline of the sciences, even of the occult sciences. But there are, I apprehend, few persons with a cultivated sense of scholastic merit to whom the ritualistic accessories of science are altogether an idle matter. The very great tenacity with which these ritualistic paraphernalia persist through the later course of the development is evident to any one who will reflect on what has been the history of learning in our civilization. Even today there are such things in the usage of the learned community as the cap and gown, matriculation, initiation, and graduation ceremonies, and the conferring of scholastic degrees, dignities, and prerogatives in a way which suggests some sort of a scholarly apostolic succession. The usage of the priestly orders is no doubt the proximate source of all these features of learned ritual, vestments, sacramental initiation, the transmission of peculiar dignities and virtues by the imposition of hands, and the like; but their derivation is traceable back of this point, to the source from which the specialized priestly cla.s.s proper came to be distinguished from the sorcerer on the one hand and from the menial servant of a temporal master on the other hand. So far as regards both their derivation and their psychological content, these usages and the conceptions on which they rest belong to a stage in cultural development no later than that of the angekok and the rain-maker. Their place in the later phases of devout observance, as well as in the higher educational system, is that of a survival from a very early animistic phase of the development of human nature.

These ritualistic features of the educational system of the present and of the recent past, it is quite safe to say, have their place primarily in the higher, liberal, and cla.s.sic inst.i.tutions and grades of learning, rather than in the lower, technological, or practical grades, and branches of the system. So far as they possess them, the lower and less reputable branches of the educational scheme have evidently borrowed these things from the higher grades; and their continued persistence among the practical schools, without the sanction of the continued example of the higher and cla.s.sic grades, would be highly improbable, to say the least. With the lower and practical schools and scholars, the adoption and cultivation of these usages is a case of mimicry--due to a desire to conform as far as may be to the standards of scholastic reputability maintained by the upper grades and cla.s.ses, who have come by these accessory features legitimately, by the right of lineal devolution.

The a.n.a.lysis may even be safely carried a step farther. Ritualistic survivals and reversions come out in fullest vigor and with the freest air of spontaneity among those seminaries of learning which have to do primarily with the education of the priestly and leisure cla.s.ses.

Accordingly it should appear, and it does pretty plainly appear, on a survey of recent developments in college and university life, that wherever schools founded for the instruction of the lower cla.s.ses in the immediately useful branches of knowledge grow into inst.i.tutions of the higher learning, the growth of ritualistic ceremonial and paraphernalia and of elaborate scholastic "functions" goes hand in hand with the transition of the schools in question from the field of homely practicality into the higher, cla.s.sical sphere. The initial purpose of these schools, and the work with which they have chiefly had to do at the earlier of these two stages of their evolution, has been that of fitting the young of the industrious cla.s.ses for work. On the higher, cla.s.sical plane of learning to which they commonly tend, their dominant aim becomes the preparation of the youth of the priestly and the leisure cla.s.ses--or of an incipient leisure cla.s.s--for the consumption of goods, material and immaterial, according to a conventionally accepted, reputable scope and method. This happy issue has commonly been the fate of schools founded by "friends of the people" for the aid of struggling young men, and where this transition is made in good form there is commonly, if not invariably, a coincident change to a more ritualistic life in the schools.

In the school life of today, learned ritual is in a general way best at home in schools whose chief end is the cultivation of the "humanities".

This correlation is shown, perhaps more neatly than anywhere else, in the life-history of the American colleges and universities of recent growth. There may be many exceptions from the rule, especially among those schools which have been founded by the typically reputable and ritualistic churches, and which, therefore, started on the conservative and cla.s.sical plane or reached the cla.s.sical position by a short-cut; but the general rule as regards the colleges founded in the newer American communities during the present century has been that so long as the const.i.tuency from which the colleges have drawn their pupils has been dominated by habits of industry and thrift, so long the reminiscences of the medicine-man have found but a scant and precarious acceptance in the scheme of college life. But so soon as wealth begins appreciably to acc.u.mulate in the community, and so soon as a given school begins to lean on a leisure-cla.s.s const.i.tuency, there comes also a perceptibly increased insistence on scholastic ritual and on conformity to the ancient forms as regards vestments and social and scholastic solemnities. So, for instance, there has been an approximate coincidence between the growth of wealth among the const.i.tuency which supports any given college of the Middle West and the date of acceptance--first into tolerance and then into imperative vogue--of evening dress for men and of the decollete for women, as the scholarly vestments proper to occasions of learned solemnity or to the seasons of social amenity within the college circle. Apart from the mechanical difficulty of so large a task, it would scarcely be a difficult matter to trace this correlation. The like is true of the vogue of the cap and gown.

Cap and gown have been adopted as learned insignia by many colleges of this section within the last few years; and it is safe to say that this could scarcely have occurred at a much earlier date, or until there had grown up a leisure-cla.s.s sentiment of sufficient volume in the community to support a strong movement of reversion towards an archaic view as to the legitimate end of education. This particular item of learned ritual, it may be noted, would not only commend itself to the leisure-cla.s.s sense of the fitness of things, as appealing to the archaic propensity for spectacular effect and the predilection for antique symbolism; but it at the same time fits into the leisure-cla.s.s scheme of life as involving a notable element of conspicuous waste. The precise date at which the reversion to cap and gown took place, as well as the fact that it affected so large a number of schools at about the same time, seems to have been due in some measure to a wave of atavistic sense of conformity and reputability that pa.s.sed over the community at that period.

It may not be entirely beside the point to note that in point of time this curious reversion seems to coincide with the culmination of a certain vogue of atavistic sentiment and tradition in other directions also. The wave of reversion seems to have received its initial impulse in the psychologically disintegrating effects of the Civil War.

Habituation to war entails a body of predatory habits of thought, whereby clannishness in some measure replaces the sense of solidarity, and a sense of invidious distinction supplants the impulse to equitable, everyday serviceability. As an outcome of the c.u.mulative action of these factors, the generation which follows a season of war is apt to witness a rehabilitation of the element of status, both in its social life and in its scheme of devout observances and other symbolic or ceremonial forms. Throughout the eighties, and less plainly traceable through the seventies also, there was perceptible a gradually advancing wave of sentiment favoring quasi-predatory business habits, insistence on status, anthropomorphism, and conservatism generally. The more direct and unmediated of these expressions of the barbarian temperament, such as the recrudescence of outlawry and the spectacular quasi-predatory careers of fraud run by certain "captains of industry", came to a head earlier and were appreciably on the decline by the close of the seventies. The recrudescence of anthropomorphic sentiment also seems to have pa.s.sed its most acute stage before the close of the eighties. But the learned ritual and paraphernalia here spoken of are a still remoter and more recondite expression of the barbarian animistic sense; and these, therefore, gained vogue and elaboration more slowly and reached their most effective development at a still later date. There is reason to believe that the culmination is now already past. Except for the new impetus given by a new war experience, and except for the support which the growth of a wealthy cla.s.s affords to all ritual, and especially to whatever ceremonial is wasteful and pointedly suggests gradations of status, it is probable that the late improvements and augmentation of scholastic insignia and ceremonial would gradually decline. But while it may be true that the cap and gown, and the more strenuous observance of scholastic proprieties which came with them, were floated in on this post-bellum tidal wave of reversion to barbarism, it is also no doubt true that such a ritualistic reversion could not have been effected in the college scheme of life until the acc.u.mulation of wealth in the hands of a propertied cla.s.s had gone far enough to afford the requisite pecuniary ground for a movement which should bring the colleges of the country up to the leisure-cla.s.s requirements in the higher learning. The adoption of the cap and gown is one of the striking atavistic features of modern college life, and at the same time it marks the fact that these colleges have definitely become leisure-cla.s.s establishments, either in actual achievement or in aspiration.

As further evidence of the close relation between the educational system and the cultural standards of the community, it may be remarked that there is some tendency latterly to subst.i.tute the captain of industry in place of the priest, as the head of seminaries of the higher learning.

The subst.i.tution is by no means complete or unequivocal. Those heads of inst.i.tutions are best accepted who combine the sacerdotal office with a high degree of pecuniary efficiency. There is a similar but less p.r.o.nounced tendency to intrust the work of instruction in the higher learning to men of some pecuniary qualification. Administrative ability and skill in advertising the enterprise count for rather more than they once did, as qualifications for the work of teaching. This applies especially in those sciences that have most to do with the everyday facts of life, and it is particularly true of schools in the economically single-minded communities. This partial subst.i.tution of pecuniary for sacerdotal efficiency is a concomitant of the modern transition from conspicuous leisure to conspicuous consumption, as the chief means of reputability. The correlation of the two facts is probably clear without further elaboration.

The att.i.tude of the schools and of the learned cla.s.s towards the education of women serves to show in what manner and to what extent learning has departed from its ancient station of priestly and leisure-cla.s.s prerogatives, and it indicates also what approach has been made by the truly learned to the modern, economic or industrial, matter-of-fact standpoint. The higher schools and the learned professions were until recently tabu to the women. These establishments were from the outset, and have in great measure continued to be, devoted to the education of the priestly and leisure cla.s.ses.

The women, as has been shown elsewhere, were the original subservient cla.s.s, and to some extent, especially so far as regards their nominal or ceremonial position, they have remained in that relation down to the present. There has prevailed a strong sense that the admission of women to the privileges of the higher learning (as to the Eleusianin mysteries) would be derogatory to the dignity of the learned craft. It is therefore only very recently, and almost solely in the industrially most advanced communities, that the higher grades of schools have been freely opened to women. And even under the urgent circ.u.mstances prevailing in the modern industrial communities, the highest and most reputable universities show an extreme reluctance in making the move.

The sense of cla.s.s worthiness, that is to say of status, of a honorific differentiation of the s.e.xes according to a distinction between superior and inferior intellectual dignity, survives in a vigorous form in these corporations of the aristocracy of learning. It is felt that the woman should, in all propriety, acquire only such knowledge as may be cla.s.sed under one or the other of two heads: (1) such knowledge as conduces immediately to a better performance of domestic service--the domestic sphere; (2) such accomplishments and dexterity, quasi-scholarly and quasi-artistic, as plainly come in under the head of a performance of vicarious leisure. Knowledge is felt to be unfeminine if it is knowledge which expresses the unfolding of the learner's own life, the acquisition of which proceeds on the learner's own cognitive interest, without prompting from the canons of propriety, and without reference back to a master whose comfort or good repute is to be enhanced by the employment or the exhibition of it. So, also, all knowledge which is useful as evidence of leisure, other than vicarious leisure, is scarcely feminine.