In the older communities of the European culture, the hereditary
leisure class, together with the mass of the indigent population,
are given to devout observances in an appreciably higher degree
than the average of the industrious middle class, wherever a
considerable class of the latter character exists. But in some of
these countries, the two categories of conservative humanity
named above comprise virtually the whole population. Where these
two classes greatly preponderate, their bent shapes popular
sentiment to such an extent as to bear down any possible
divergent tendency in the inconsiderable middle class, and
imposes a devout attitude upon the whole community.
This must, of course, not be construed to say that such
communities or such classes as are exceptionally prone to devout
observances tend to conform in any exceptional degree to the
specifications of any code of morals that we may be accustomed to
associate with this or that confession of faith. A large measure
of the devout habit of mind need not carry with it a strict
observance of the injunctions of the Decalogue or of the common
law. Indeed, it is becoming somewhat of a commonplace with
observers of criminal life in European communities that the
criminal and dissolute classes are, if anything, rather more
devout, and more naively so, than the average of the population.
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