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
The promptings of invidious self-respect commonly lead men to evade
or deny something of the breadth of their inheritance in respect of
human nature. “I am not as the publican yonder,” whether I have the
grace to thank God for this invidious distinction or more simply charge
it to the account of my reputable ancestors in the male line. With a
change of venue by which the cause is taken out of the jurisdiction of
interested parties, its complexion changes. So evident is the fact of
group heredity in the lower animals, for instance, that biologists have
no inclination to deny its pervading force, apart from any conceivably
parthenogenetic lines of descent,--and, to the inconvenience of the
eugenic pharisee, parthenogenetic descent never runs in the male line,
besides being of extremely rare occurrence in the human species. As a
matter of course the Darwinian biologists have the habit of appealing
to group heredity as the main factor in the stability of species, and
they are very curious about the special circumstances of any given
case in which it may appear not to be fully operative: and they have,
on the other hand, even looked hopefully to fortuitous isolation of
particular lines of descent as a possible factor in the differentiation
and fixation of specific types, being at a loss to account for such
differentiation or fixation so long as no insuperable mechanical
obstacle stands in the way of persistent crossing. The like force of
group heredity is visible in the characteristic differences of race.
The heredity of any given race of mankind is always sufficiently
homogeneous to allow all its individuals to be classed under the race.
And when an individual comes to light in a fairly pure-bred community
who shows physical traits that vary obviously from the common racial
type of the community, the question which suggests itself to the
anthropologists is not, How does this individual differ from others of
the same breed? but, What is the alien strain, and how has it come in?
And what is true of the physical characters of the race in this respect
is only less obviously true of its spiritual traits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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