superior status by pointing
the contrast between themselves and the lower-lying humanity in whom the
work of amelioration is to be wrought; as, for example, the university
settlement, which now has some vogue. But after all allowances and
deductions have been made, there is left some remainder of motives of
a non-emulative kind. The fact itself that distinction or a decent good
fame is sought by this method is evidence of a prevalent sense of
the legitimacy, and of the presumptive effectual presence, of a
non-emulative, non-invidious interest, as a consistent factor in the
habits of thought of modern communities.

In all this latter-day range of leisure-class activities that proceed
on the basis of a non-invidious and non-religious interest, it is to
be noted that the women participate more actively and more persistently
than the men--except, of course, in the case of such works as require
a large expenditure of means. The dependent pecuniary position of the
women disables them for work requiring large expenditure. As regards
the general range of ameliorative work, the members of the priesthood
or clergy of the less naively devout sects, or the secularized
denominations, are associated with the class of women. This is as the
theory would have it. In other economic relations, also, this clergy
stands in a somewhat equivocal position between the class of women and
that of the men engaged in economic pursuits. By tradition and by the
prevalent sense of the proprieties, both the clergy and the women of
the well-to-do classes are placed in the position of a vicarious leisure
class; with both classes the characteristic relation which goes to form
the habits of thought of the class is a relation of subservience--that
is to say, an economic relation conceived in personal terms; in both
classes there is consequently perceptible a special proneness to
construe phenomena in terms of personal relation rather than of causal
sequence; both classes are so inhibited by the canons of decency from
the ceremonially unclean processes of the lucrative or productive
occupations as to make participation in the industrial life process
of today a moral impossibility for them. The result of this ceremonial
exclusion from productive effort of the vulgar sort is to draft a
relatively large share of the energies of the modern feminine
and priestly classes into the service of other interests than the
self-regarding one. The code leaves no alternati