and class antagonism
to be called peaceable in the full sense of the word. For many purposes,
and from another point of view than the economic one, it might as well
be named the stage of status. The method of human relation during this
stage, and the spiritual attitude of men at this level of culture, is
well summed up under the term. But as a descriptive term to characterise
the prevailing methods of industry, as well as to indicate the trend
of industrial development at this point in economic evolution, the term
"quasi-peaceable" seems preferable. So far as concerns the communities
of the Western culture, this phase of economic development probably
lies in the past; except for a numerically small though very conspicuous
fraction of the community in whom the habits of thought peculiar to the
barbarian culture have suffered but a relatively slight disintegration.

Personal service is still an element of great economic importance,
especially as regards the distribution and consumption of goods; but its
relative importance even in this direction is no doubt less than it once
was. The best development of this vicarious leisure lies in the past
rather than in the present; and its best expression in the present is to
be found in the scheme of life of the upper leisure class. To this
class the modern culture owes much in the way of the conservation of
traditions, usages, and habits of thought which belong on a more archaic
cultural plane, so far as regards their widest acceptance and their most
effective development.

In the modern industrial communities the mechanical contrivances
available for the comfort and convenience of everyday life are highly
developed. So much so that body servants, or, indeed, domestic servants
of any kind, would now scarcely be employed by anybody except on the
ground of a canon of reputability carried over by tradition from earlier
usage. The only exception would be servants employed to attend on the
persons of the infirm and the feeble-minded. But such servants properly
come under the head of trained nurses rather than under that of domestic
servants, and they are, therefore, an apparent rather than a real
exception to the rule.

The proximate reason for keeping domestic servants, for instance, in
the moderately well-to-do household of to-day, is (ostensibly) that the
members of the household are unable without discomfort to compass the
work required by such a modern establishment. And the reas