This condition of things has
obviously lasted well down into the present in some communities.
It continues to hold to a different extent for different
individuals, varying with the vividness of the sense of status
and with the feebleness of the impulse to workmanship with which
the individual is endowed. But where the economic structure of
the community has so far outgrown the scheme of life based on
status that the relation of personal subservience is no longer
felt to be the sole "natural" human relation; there the ancient
habit of purposeful activity will begin to assert itself in the
less conformable individuals against the more recent, relatively
superficial, relatively ephemeral habits and views which the
predatory and the pecuniary culture have contributed to our
scheme of life. These habits and views begin to lose their
coercive force for the community or the class in question so soon
as the habit of mind and the views of life due to the predatory
and the quasi-peaceable discipline cease to be in fairly close
accord with the later-developed economic situation. This is
evident in the case of the industrious classes of modern
communities; for them the leisure-class scheme of life has lost
much of its binding force, especially as regards the element of
status.
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