Leisure in the Light of History

Abstract

The line between leisure and labor is tenuous and shifting. Never theless, from the rise of the earliest great civilizations of the East and West to the nineteenth century, there was a certain stability in that leisure was always the prerogative of a small free fraction of society. Christian idealism did not alter this. Asceticism opposed customary leisure activities, but the nobility of church and state generally enjoyed sports which doctrine condemned. The decay of feudalism, the rise of science and technology, a naturalistic philosophy of educa tion, political changes in the direction of self-government, and new agencies of communication have brought leisure enjoyments to the masses.