ive has been in good
part a revulsion against a system of status. Where this is the case
the institution of the priesthood has broken down in the transition, at
least partially. The spokesman of such an organization is at the outset
a servant and representative of the organization, rather than a member
of a special priestly class and the spokesman of a divine master. And
it is only by a process of gradual specialization that, in succeeding
generations, this spokesman regains the position of priest, with a full
investiture of sacerdotal authority, and with its accompanying austere,
archaic and vicarious manner of life. The like is true of the breakdown
and redintegration of devout ritual after such a revulsion. The priestly
office, the scheme of sacerdotal life, and the schedule of devout
observances are rehabilitated only gradually, insensibly, and with more
or less variation in details, as a persistent human sense of devout
propriety reasserts its primacy in questions touching the interest in
the preternatural--and it may be added, as the organization increases
in wealth, and so acquires more of the point of view and the habits of
thought of a leisure class.

Beyond the priestly class, and ranged in an ascending hierarchy,
ordinarily comes a superhuman vicarious leisure class of saints, angels,
etc.--or their equivalents in the ethnic cults. These rise in grade, one
above another, according to elaborate system of status. The principle of
status runs through the entire hierarchical system, both visible and
invisible. The good fame of these several orders of the supernatural
hierarchy also commonly requires a certain tribute of vicarious
consumption and vicarious leisure. In many cases they accordingly have
devoted to their service sub-orders of attendants or dependents who
perform a vicarious leisure for them, after much the same fashion as was
found in an earlier chapter to be true of the dependent leisure class
under the patriarchal system.

It may not appear without reflection how these devout observances and
the peculiarity of temperament which they imply, or the consumption of
goods and services which is comprised in the cult, stand related to the
leisure class of a modern community, or to the economic motives of which
that class is the exponent in the modern scheme of life to this end a
summary review of certain facts bearing on this relation will be useful.
It appears from an earlier passage in this discussion t