The like is true in a general way of the personal service
consumed under this head; such as priestly education, priestly
service, pilgrimages, fasts, holidays, household devotions, and
the like. At the same time the observances in the execution of
which this consumption takes place serve to extend and protract
the vogue of those habits of thought on which an anthropomorphic
cult rests. That is to say, they further the habits of thought
characteristic of the regime of status. They are in so far an
obstruction to the most effective organization of industry under
modern circumstances; and are, in the first instance,
antagonistic to the development of economic institutions in the
direction required by the situation of today. For the present
purpose, the indirect as well as the direct effects of this
consumption are of the nature of a curtailment of the community's
economic efficiency. In economic theory, then, and considered in
its proximate consequences, the consumption of goods and effort
in the service of an anthropomorphic divinity means a lowering of
the vitality of the community. What may be the remoter, indirect,
moral effects of this class of consumption does not admit of a
succinct answer, and it is a question which can not be taken up
here.
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