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)