As seen from the economic point of view, leisure,
considered as an employment, is closely allied in kind with the
life of exploit; and the achievements which characterise a life
of leisure, and which remain as its decorous criteria, have much
in common with the trophies of exploit. But leisure in the
narrower sense, as distinct from exploit and from any ostensibly
productive employment of effort on objects which are of no
intrinsic use, does not commonly leave a material product. The
criteria of a past performance of leisure therefore commonly take
the form of "immaterial" goods. Such immaterial evidences of past
leisure are quasi-scholarly or quasi-artistic accomplishments and
a knowledge of processes and incidents which do not conduce
directly to the furtherance of human life. So, for instance, in
our time there is the knowledge of the dead languages and the
occult sciences; of correct spelling; of syntax and prosody; of
the various forms of domestic music and other household art; of
the latest properties of dress, furniture, and equipage; of
games, sports, and fancy-bred animals, such as dogs and
race-horses. In all these branches of knowledge the initial
motive from which their acquisition proceeded at the outset, and
through which they first came into vogue, may have been something
quite different from the wish to show that one's time had not
been spent in industrial employment; but unless these
accomplishments had approved themselves as serviceable evidence
of an unproductive expenditure of time, they would not have
survived and held their place as conventional accomplishments of
the leisure class.
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