ion between noble and ignoble classes has been indicated in
an earlier chapter. In so far as it comes into conflict with the law of
conspicuous waste, the instinct of workmanship expresses itself not so
much in insistence on substantial usefulness as in an abiding sense of
the odiousness and aesthetic impossibility of what is obviously futile.
Being of the nature of an instinctive affection, its guidance touches
chiefly and immediately the obvious and apparent violations of its
requirements. It is only less promptly and with less constraining force
that it reaches such substantial violations of its requirements as are
appreciated only upon reflection.

So long as all labor continues to be performed exclusively or usually
by slaves, the baseness of all productive effort is too constantly
and deterrently present in the mind of men to allow the instinct of
workmanship seriously to take effect in the direction of industrial
usefulness; but when the quasi-peaceable stage (with slavery and status)
passes into the peaceable stage of industry (with wage labor and cash
payment) the instinct comes more effectively into play. It then begins
aggressively to shape men's views of what is meritorious, and asserts
itself at least as an auxiliary canon of self-complacency. All
extraneous considerations apart, those persons (adult) are but a
vanishing minority today who harbor no inclination to the accomplishment
of some end, or who are not impelled of their own motion to shape some
object or fact or relation for human use. The propensity may in large
measure be overborne by the more immediately constraining incentive to a
reputable leisure and an avoidance of indecorous usefulness, and it
may therefore work itself out in make-believe only; as for instance
in "social duties," and in quasi-artistic or quasi-scholarly
accomplishments, in the care and decoration of the house, in
sewing-circle activity or dress reform, in proficiency at dress, cards,
yachting, golf, and various sports. But the fact that it may under
stress of circumstances eventuate in inanities no more disproves the
presence of the instinct than the reality of the brooding instinct is
disproved by inducing a hen to sit on a nestful of china eggs.

This latter-day uneasy reaching-out for some form of purposeful activity
that shall at the same time not be indecorously productive of either
individual or collective gain marks a difference of attitude between
the modern leisure