servile class of herdsmen and
shepherds; industry has advanced so far that the community is no longer
dependent for its livelihood on the chase or on any other form of
activity that can fairly be classed as exploit. From this point on, the
characteristic feature of leisure class life is a conspicuous exemption
from all useful employment.

The normal and characteristic occupations of the class in this mature
phase of its life history are in form very much the same as in its
earlier days. These occupations are government, war, sports, and devout
observances. Persons unduly given to difficult theoretical niceties
may hold that these occupations are still incidentally and indirectly
"productive"; but it is to be noted as decisive of the question in hand
that the ordinary and ostensible motive of the leisure class in
engaging in these occupations is assuredly not an increase of wealth by
productive effort. At this as at any other cultural stage, government
and war are, at least in part, carried on for the pecuniary gain of
those who engage in them; but it is gain obtained by the honourable
method of seizure and conversion. These occupations are of the nature of
predatory, not of productive, employment. Something similar may be said
of the chase, but with a difference. As the community passes out of the
hunting stage proper, hunting gradually becomes differentiated into two
distinct employments. On the one hand it is a trade, carried on chiefly
for gain; and from this the element of exploit is virtually absent,
or it is at any rate not present in a sufficient degree to clear the
pursuit of the imputation of gainful industry. On the other hand, the
chase is also a sport--an exercise of the predatory impulse simply.
As such it does not afford any appreciable pecuniary incentive, but it
contains a more or less obvious element of exploit. It is this latter
development of the chase--purged of all imputation of handicraft--that
alone is meritorious and fairly belongs in the scheme of life of the
developed leisure class.

Abstention from labour is not only a honorific or meritorious act,
but it presently comes to be a requisite of decency. The insistence on
property as the basis of reputability is very naive and very imperious
during the early stages of the accumulation of wealth. Abstention
from labour is the convenient evidence of wealth and is therefore
the conventional mark of social standing; and this insistence on the
merito