The instinct of workmanship, and the state of industrial artsVeblen, Thorstein
Philosophy
The instinct of workmanship, and the state of industrial arts
Veblen, Thorstein
Industrial arts -- History; Industries -- History; Technology -- History; Workmanship -- History
And since the other racial elements of the
European population, at least the two main ones, do not differ at all
radically from the blond in their native capacities, it is likewise to
be presumed that they also emerged from a mutation under circumstances
of culture, and especially of technology, not radically different in
degree from those that first surrounded the blond.
The difference between these three racial stocks is much more evident
in their physical traits than in their instinctive gifts or their
intellectual capacity; and yet the similarity of the three is so great
and distinctive even on the physical side that anthropologists are
inclined to class the three together as all and several distinctively
typical of a “white” or “caucasic” race, to which they are held
collectively to belong. Something to the like effect seems to hold
true for the distinctive groups of racial stocks that have made the
characteristic civilisations of the Far East on the one hand and of
southern Asia on the other hand; and something similar might, again,
be said for the group of stocks that were concerned in the ancient
civilisations of America.
It may be pertinent to add that, except for a long antecedent growth
of technology, that is to say a long continued cumulative experience
in workmanship, with the resultant accumulated knowledge of the ways
and means of life, none of the characteristic races of Europe could
have survived. In the absence of these antecedent technological gains,
together with the associated growth of institutions, such mutants, with
their characteristic gifts and limitations, must have perished.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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