Toynbee: "shepherds of men"

I hit the mother lode in Arnold J. Toynbee's A Study of History. Expect one post per day for the next three days.

Three posts. Okay, so maybe not a mother lode.

From "A Study of History", because it's good:

... the ‘shepherds of men’ are always economically—though not always politically—superfluous and therefore parasitic. From the economic standpoint they have ceased to be shepherds keeping watch over their flocks and have turned into drones exploiting the worker-bees. They have become a non-productive ruling class maintained by the labour of a productive population which would be better off economically if they were not there.

 

I should point out that Toynbee wasn't offering a general statement. In the "..." part of the quote above, he was describing a particular environment and a particular type of society. But I still like the quote.