this respect the American community should afford an exceptionally convincing illustration, since this community has been the least trammelled by external circumstances of any equally important industrial aggregate.
After making due allowance for exceptions and sporadic departures from the normal, the situation here at the present time may be summarised quite briefly. As a general rule the classes that are low in economic efficiency, or in intelligence, or both, are peculiarly devout,—as, for instance, the negro population of the South, much of the lower-class foreign population, much of the rural population, especially in those sections which are backward in education, in the stage of development of their industry, or in respect of their industrial contact with the rest of the community. So also such fragments as we possess of a specialised or hereditary indigent class, or of a segregated criminal or dissolute class; although among these latter the devout habit of mind is apt to take the form of a naïve animistic belief in luck and in the efficacy of shamanistic practices perhaps more frequently than it takes the form of formal adherence to any accredited creed. The artisan class, on the other hand, is notoriously falling away from the accredited anthropomorphic creeds and from all devout observances. This class is in an especial degree exposed to the characteristic intellectual and spiritual stress of modern organised industry, which requires a constant recognition of the undisguised phenomena of impersonal, matter-of-fact sequence and an unreserved conformity to the law cause and effect. This class is
