Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interests
In an increasing proportion as time goes on, the anthropomorphic
cult, with its code of devout observations, suffers a progressive
disintegration through the stress of economic exigencies and the
decay of the system of status. As this disintegration proceeds,
there come to be associated and blended with the devout attitude
certain other motives and impulses that are not always of an anthropomorphic
origin, nor traceable to the habit of personal subservience. Not
all of these subsidiary impulses that blend with the habit of
devoutness in the later devotional life are altogether congruous
with the devout attitude or with the anthropomorphic apprehension
of the sequence of phenomena. The origin being not the same, their
action upon the scheme of devout life is also not in the same
direction. In many ways they traverse the underlying norm of subservience
or vicarious life to which the code of devout observations and
the ecclesiastical and sacerdotal institutions are to be traced
as their substantial basis. Through the presence of these alien
motives the social and industrial regime of status gradually disintegrates,
and the canon of personal subservience loses the support derived
from an unbroken tradition. Extraneous habits and proclivities
encroach upon the field of action occupied by this canon, and
it presently comes about that the ecclesiastical and sacerdotal
structures are partially converted to other uses, in some measure
alien to the purposes of the scheme of devout life as it stood
in the days of the most vigorous and characteristic development
of the priesthood.
Among these alien motives which affect the devout scheme in
its later growth, may be mentioned the motives of charity and
of social good-fellowship, or conviviality; or, in more general
terms, the various expressions of the sense of human solidarity
and sympathy. It may be added that these extraneous uses of the
ecclesiastical structure contribute materially to its survival
in name and form even among people who may be ready to give up
the substance of it. A still more characteristic and more pervasive
alien element in the motives which have gone to formally uphold
the scheme of devout life is that non-reverent sense of aesthetic
congruity with the environment, which is left as a residue of
the latter-day act of worship after elimination of its anthropomorphic
content. This has done good service for the maintenance of the
sacerdotal institution through blending with the motive of subservience.
This sense of impulse of aesthetic congruity is not primarily
of an economic character, but it has a considerable indirect effect
in shaping the habit of mind of the individual for economic purposes
in the later stages of industrial development; its most perceptible
effect in this regard goes in the direction of mitigating the
somewhat pronounced self-regarding bias that has been transmitted
by tradition from the earlier, more competent phases of the regime
of status. The economic bearing of this impulse is therefore seen
to transverse that of the devout attitude; the former goes to
qualify, if not eliminate, the self-regarding bias, through sublation
of the antithesis or antagonism of self and not-self; while the
latter, being and expression of the sense of personal subservience
and mastery, goes to accentuate this antithesis and to insist
upon the divergence between the self-regarding interest and the
interests of the generically human life process.
This non-invidious residue of the religious life -- the sense
of communion with the environment, or with the generic life process
-- as well as the impulse of charity or of sociability, act in
a pervasive way to shape men's habits of thought for the economic
purpose. But the action of all this class of proclivities is somewhat
vague, and their effects are difficult to trace in detail. So
much seems clear, however, as that the action of this entire class
of motives or aptitudes tends in a direction contrary to the underlying
principles of the institution of the leisure class as already
formulated. The basis of that institution, as well as of the anthropomorphic
cults associated with it in the cultural development, is the habit
of invidious comparison; and this habit is incongruous with the
exercise of the aptitudes now in question. The substantial canons
of the leisure-class scheme of life are a conspicuous waste of
time and substance and a withdrawal from the industrial process;
while the particular aptitudes here in question assert themselves,
on the economic side, in a deprecation of waste and of a futile
manner of life, and in an impulse to participation in or identification
with the life process, whether it be on the economic side or in
any other of its phases or aspects.
It is plain that these aptitudes and habits of life to which
they give rise where circumstances favor their expression, or
where they assert themselves in a dominant way, run counter to
the leisure-class scheme of life; but it is not clear that life
under the leisure-class scheme, as seen in the later stages of
its development, tends consistently to the repression of these
aptitudes or to exemption from the habits of thought in which
they express themselves. The positive discipline of the leisureªclass
scheme of life goes pretty much all the other way. In its positive
discipline, by prescription and by selective elimination, the
leisure-class scheme favors the all-pervading and all-dominating
primacy of the canons of waste and invidious comparison at every
conjuncture of life. But in its negative effects the tendency
of the leisure-class discipline is not so unequivocally true to
the fundamental canons of the scheme. In its regulation of human
activity for the purpose of pecuniary decency the leisure-class
canon insists on withdrawal from the industrial process. That
is to say, it inhibits activity in the directions in which the
impecunious members of the community habitually put forth their
efforts. Especially in the case of women, and more particularly
as regards the upper-class and upper-middle-class women of advanced
industrial communities, this inhibition goes so far as to insist
on withdrawal even from the emulative process of accumulation
by the quasi-predator methods of the pecuniary occupations.
The pecuniary or the leisure-class culture, which set out as
an emulative variant of the impulse of workmanship, is in its
latest development beginning to neutralize its own ground, by
eliminating the habit of invidious comparison in respect of efficiency,
or even of pecuniary standing. On the other hand, the fact that
members of the leisure class, both men and women, are to some
extent exempt from the necessity of finding a livelihood in a
competitive struggle with their fellows, makes it possible for
members of this class not only to survive, but even, within bounds,
to follow their bent in case they are not gifted with the aptitudes
which make for success in the competitive struggle. That is to
say, in the latest and fullest development of the institution,
the livelihood of members of this class does not depend on the
possession and the unremitting exercise of those aptitudes are
therefore greater in the higher grades of the leisure class than
in the general average of a population living under the competitive
system.
In an earlier chapter, in discussing the conditions of survival
of archaic traits, it has appeared that the peculiar position
of the leisure class affords exceptionally favorable chances for
the survival of traits which characterize the type of human nature
proper to an earlier and obsolete cultural stage. The class is
sheltered from the stress of economic exigencies, and is in this
sense withdrawn from the rude impact of forces which make for
adaptation to the economic situation. The survival in the leisure
class, and under the leisure-class scheme of life, of traits and
types that are reminiscent of the predatory culture has already
been discussed. These aptitudes and habits have an exceptionally
favorable chance of survival under the leisureªclass regime. Not
only does the sheltered pecuniary position of the leisure class
afford a situation favorable to the survival of such individuals
as are not gifted with the complement of aptitudes required for
serviceability in the modern industrial process; but the leisure-class
canons of reputability at the same time enjoin the conspicuous
exercise of certain predatory aptitudes. The employments in which
the predatory aptitudes find exercise serve as an evidence of
wealth, birth, and withdrawal from the industrial process. The
survival of the predatory traits under the leisure-class culture
is furthered both negatively, through the industrial exemption
of the class, and positively, through the sanction of the leisure-class
canons of decency.
With respect to the survival of traits characteristic of the
ante-predatory savage culture the case is in some degree different.
The sheltered position of the leisure class favors the survival
also of these traits; but the exercise of the aptitudes for peace
and good-will does not have the affirmative sanction of the code
of proprieties. Individuals gifted with a temperament that is
reminiscent of the ante-predatory culture are placed at something
of an advantage within the leisure class, as compared with similarly
gifted individuals outside the class, in that they are not under
a pecuniary necessity to thwart these aptitudes that make for
a non-competitive life; but such individuals are still exposed
to something of a moral constraint which urges them to disregard
these inclinations, in that the code of proprieties enjoins upon
them habits of life based on the predatory aptitudes. So long
as the system of status remains intact, and so long as the leisure
class has other lines of nonªindustrial activity to take to than
obvious killing of time in aimless and wasteful fatigation, so
long no considerable departure from the leisure-class scheme of
reputable life is to be looked for. The occurrence of non-predatory
temperament with the class at that stage is to be looked upon
as a case of sporadic reversion. But the reputable non-industrial
outlets for the human propensity to action presently fail, through
the advance of economic development, the disappearance of large
game, the decline of war, the obsolescence of proprietary government,
and the decay of the priestly office. When this happens, the situation
begins to change. Human life must seek expression in one direction
if it may not in another; and if the predatory outlet fails, relief
is sought elsewhere.
As indicated above, the exemption from pecuniary stress has
been carried farther in the case of the leisure-class 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 pronounced reversion to a non-invidious temperament
than the men. But there is also among men of the leisure class
a perceptible increase in the range and scope of activities that
proceed from aptitudes which are not to be classed 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 multitude 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 participated 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 Association 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 amusement,
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 selfªregarding 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 circumstances 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 class 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 participation 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-class activities that
proceed on the basis of a non-invidious and non-religious interest,
it is to be noted that the women participate 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 associated
with the class 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 class 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 classes are placed in the position of a vicarious leisure
class; with both classes the characteristic relation which goes
to form the habits of thought of the class is a relation of subservience
-- that is to say, an economic relation conceived in personal
terms; in both classes there is consequently perceptible a special
proneness to construe phenomena in terms of personal relation
rather than of causal sequence; both classes are so inhibited
by the canons of decency from the ceremonially unclean processes
of the lucrative or productive occupations as to make participation
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 classes 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-class
women shows itself in a restless assertion of the impulse to workmanship
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 attitude survives in a better state of preservation among
these classes 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 classes 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 he 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
class 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 workmanship. 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 class of enterprises is of
an altogether dubious economic value -- as measured in terms of
the fullness or facility of life of the individuals or classes
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-class culture find acceptance in the everyday scheme of
life of the lower classes. 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-class 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 circumstances 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 substitution of costlier
or less efficient methods of accomplishing 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-class scheme of life under
the guidance of the leisure-class formulation of the principles
of status and pecuniary decency. This new schedule of proprieties
is intruded into the lower-class 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 classes
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 substituted 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 class 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 quantitative 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
circumstances of vulgar life, or of the habits of thought of the
vulgar classes, 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-class 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 cumulative 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 classes 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-class 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 class 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 massive
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 he 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 classes 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 surreptitiously
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 illustration;
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 circumstances of the sheltered situation in which
the leisure class 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 workmanship and the proclivity to indolence and good-fellowship.
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 aptitudes
as is to be classed under the instinct of workmanship; but its
presence does not preclude the transmission of those aptitudes
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 assertion 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-class women than to any other class, 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 class of
women than for the men of the same pecuniary and social grade
lies in their being not only an upper-grade leisure class but
also at the same time a vicarious leisure class. 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 class 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 assigned 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 circumstances of an earlier
phase of development, and which have been but partially adapted
to the existing economic circumstances, 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 institutions
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 workmanship than is the position
of the men of the same classes. 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 circumstance 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 circumstances
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 ownership 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 passing 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 associated.
The good and beautiful scheme of life, then -- that is to say
the scheme to which we are habituated -- assigns to the woman
a "sphere" ancillary to the activity of the man; and it is felt
that any departure from the traditions of her assigned 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
participation 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 'emancipating
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 sexes 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 analysis, 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-class
women to whose dispassionate, matronly sense of the traditional
proprieties this relation of status commends itself as fundamentally
and eternally right-even these, whose attitude 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 workmanship -- 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, "Emancipation" 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 classes, 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 emancipation from
all relation of status, tutelage, or vicarious life; and the revulsion
asserts itself especially among the class 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 circumstances
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 workmanship, 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 assertion
of such human propensity to self-direction as she has inherited.
And after the stage of universal female drudgery is passed, and
a vicarious leisure without strenuous application becomes the
accredited employment of the women of the well-to-do classes,
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 class is still in great measure a predatory
activity, an active assertion 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 workmanship 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 assert 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 class
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 classes
of modern communities; for them the leisure-class 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 classes, 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 classed 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 attitude 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 passes an opinion on them. It may even be said that in the
modern industrial communities the average, dispassionate 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 class 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 class favors its members directly by
withdrawing them from the pecuniary struggle; but indirectly,
through the leisure-class canons of conspicuous waste of goods
and effort, the institution of a leisure class 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 attitude.