Besides  servants,  currently  recognised  as  such,  there
is  at  least  one  other  class  of  persons  whose  garb  assimi-
lates them  to  the  class  of  servants  and  shows  many  of
the  features  that  go  to  make  up  the  womanliness  of
woman's  dress.  This  is  the  priestly  class.  Priestly
vestments  show,  in  accentuated  form,  all  the  features
that  have  been  shown  to  be  evidence  of  a  servile  status
and  a  vicarious  life.  Even  more  strikingly  than  the
everyday  habit  of  the  priest,  the  vestments,  properly
so  called,  are  ornate,  grotesque,  inconvenient,  and,  at


Dress  as  an  Expression  of  the  Pecuniary  Culture    183

least  ostensibly,  comfortless  to  the  point  of  distress.
The  priest  is  at  the  same  time  expected  to  refrain  from
useful  effort  and,  when  before  the  public  eye,  to  present
an  impassively  disconsolate  countenance,  very  much
after  the  manner  of  a  well-trained  domestic  servant.
The  shaven  face  of  the  priest  is  a  further  item  to  the
same  effect.  This  assimilation  of  the  priestly  class  to
the  class  of  body  servants,  in  demeanour  and  apparel,
is  due  to  the  similarity  of  the  two  classes  as  regards
economic  function.  In  economic  theory,  the  priest  is
a  body  servant,  constructively  in  attendance  upon  the
person  of  the  divinity  whose  livery  he  wears.  His
livery  is  of  a  very  expensive  character,  as  it  should  be
in  order  to  set  forth  in  a  beseeming  manner  the  dignity
of  his  exalted  master ;  but  it  is  contrived  to  show  that
the  wearing  of  it  contributes  little  or  nothing  to  the
physical  comfort  of  the  wearer,  for  it  is  an  item  of
vicarious  consumption,  and  the  repute  which  accrues
from  its  consumption  is  to  be  imputed  to  the  absent
master,  not  to  the  servant.
