Nota notae est nota rei
ipsius. According to well established laws of human nature,
prescription presently seizes upon this conventional evidence of
wealth and fixes it in men's habits of thought as something that
is in itself substantially meritorious and ennobling; while
productive labour at the same time and by a like process becomes
in a double sense intrinsically unworthy. Prescription ends by
making labour not only disreputable in the eyes of the community,
but morally impossible to the noble, freeborn man, and
incompatible with a worthy life.
This tabu on labour has a further consequence in the industrial
differentiation of classes. As the population increases in
density and the predatory group grows into a settled industrial
community, the constituted authorities and the customs governing
ownership gain in scope and consistency. It then presently
becomes impracticable to accumulate wealth by simple seizure,
and, in logical consistency, acquisition by industry is equally
impossible for high minded and impecunious men. The alternative
open to them is beggary or privation. Wherever the canon of
conspicuous leisure has a chance undisturbed to work out its
tendency, there will therefore emerge a secondary, and in a sense
spurious, leisure class -- abjectly poor and living in a
precarious life of want and discomfort, but morally unable to
stoop to gainful pursuits.
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