is to be secured in
this way grows larger, more patent means are required to indicate the
imputation of merit for the leisure performed, and to this end uniforms,
badges, and liveries come into vogue. The wearing of uniforms or
liveries implies a considerable degree of dependence, and may even
be said to be a mark of servitude, real or ostensible. The wearers of
uniforms and liveries may be roughly divided into two classes-the free
and the servile, or the noble and the ignoble. The services performed
by them are likewise divisible into noble and ignoble. Of course the
distinction is not observed with strict consistency in practice; the
less debasing of the base services and the less honorific of the noble
functions are not infrequently merged in the same person. But the
general distinction is not on that account to be overlooked. What
may add some perplexity is the fact that this fundamental distinction
between noble and ignoble, which rests on the nature of the ostensible
service performed, is traversed by a secondary distinction into
honorific and humiliating, resting on the rank of the person for whom
the service is performed or whose livery is worn. So, those offices
which are by right the proper employment of the leisure class are
noble; such as government, fighting, hunting, the care of arms and
accoutrements, and the like--in short, those which may be classed as
ostensibly predatory employments. On the other hand, those employments
which properly fall to the industrious class are ignoble; such as
handicraft or other productive labor, menial services and the like. But
a base service performed for a person of very high degree may become a
very honorific office; as for instance the office of a Maid of Honor or
of a Lady in Waiting to the Queen, or the King's Master of the Horse or
his Keeper of the Hounds. The two offices last named suggest a principle
of some general bearing. Whenever, as in these cases, the menial service
in question has to do directly with the primary leisure employments
of fighting and hunting, it easily acquires a reflected honorific
character. In this way great honor may come to attach to an employment
which in its own nature belongs to the baser sort. In the later
development of peaceable industry, the usage of employing an idle corps
of uniformed men-at-arms gradually lapses. Vicarious consumption by
dependents bearing the insignia of their patron or master narrows down
to a corps of liveried