in terms of quantitative, dispassionate
force and sequence.

As seen from the point of view of the later economic exigencies,
devoutness is, perhaps in all cases, to be looked upon as a survival
from an earlier phase of associated life--a mark of arrested spiritual
development. Of course it remains true that in a community where the
economic structure is still substantially a system of status; where
the attitude of the average of persons in the community is consequently
shaped by and adapted to the relation of personal dominance and
personal subservience; or where for any other reason--of tradition or
of inherited aptitude--the population as a whole is strongly inclined to
devout observances; there a devout habit of mind in any individual, not
in excess of the average of the community, must be taken simply as
a detail of the prevalent habit of life. In this light, a devout
individual in a devout community can not be called a case of reversion,
since he is abreast of the average of the community. But as seen from
the point of view of the modern industrial situation, exceptional
devoutness--devotional zeal that rises appreciably above the average
pitch of devoutness in the community--may safely be set down as in all
cases an atavistic trait.

It is, of course, equally legitimate to consider these phenomena from
a different point of view. They may be appreciated for a different
purpose, and the characterization here offered may be turned about.
In speaking from the point of view of the devotional interest, or the
interest of devout taste, it may, with equal cogency, be said that
the spiritual attitude bred in men by the modern industrial life is
unfavorable to a free development of the life of faith. It might fairly
be objected to the later development of the industrial process that its
discipline tends to "materialism," to the elimination of filial piety.
From the aesthetic point of view, again, something to a similar purport
might be said. But, however legitimate and valuable these and the like
reflections may be for their purpose, they would not be in place in the
present inquiry, which is exclusively concerned with the valuation of
these phenomena from the economic point of view.

The grave economic significance of the anthropomorphic habit of mind
and of the addiction to devout observances must serve as apology for
speaking further on a topic which it can not but be distasteful to
discuss at all as an economic phen