These occupations
are of the nature of predatory, not of productive, employment.
Something similar may be said of the chase, but with a
difference. As the community passes out of the hunting stage
proper, hunting gradually becomes differentiated into two
distinct employments. On the one hand it is a trade, carried on
chiefly for gain; and from this the element of exploit is
virtually absent, or it is at any rate not present in a
sufficient degree to clear the pursuit of the imputation of
gainful industry. On the other hand, the chase is also a sport
-- an exercise of the predatory impulse simply. As such it does
not afford any appreciable pecuniary incentive, but it contains a
more or less obvious element of exploit. It is this latter
development of the chase -- purged of all imputation of
handicraft -- that alone is meritorious and fairly belongs in the
scheme of life of the developed leisure class.
Abstention from labour is not only a honorific or meritorious
act, but it presently comes to be a requisite of decency. The
insistence on property as the basis of reputability is very naive
and very imperious during the early stages of the accumulation of
wealth. Abstention from labour is the convenient evidence of
wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing;
and this insistence on the meritoriousness of wealth leads to a
more strenuous insistence on leisure.
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