As a matter of selective necessity, man is an agent. He is, in his own
apprehension, a centre of unfolding impulsive activity--"teleological"
activity. He is an agent seeking in every act the accomplishment of some
concrete, objective, impersonal end. By force of his being such an agent
he is possessed of a taste for effective work, and a distaste for futile
effort. He has a sense of the merit of serviceability or efficiency
and of the demerit of futility, waste, or incapacity. This aptitude
or propensity may be called the instinct of workmanship. Wherever the
circumstances or traditions of life lead to an habitual comparison
of one person with another in point of efficiency, the instinct of
workmanship works out in an emulative or invidious comparison of
persons. The extent to which this result follows depends in some
considerable degree on the temperament of the population. In any
community where such an invidious comparison of persons is habitually
made, visible success becomes an end sought for its own utility as a
basis of esteem. Esteem is gained and dispraise is avoided by putting
one's efficiency in evidence. The result is that the instinct of
workmanship works out in an emulative demonstration of force.
During that primitive phase of social development, when the community is
still habitually peaceable, perhaps sedentary, and without a developed
system of individual ownership, the efficiency of the individual can
be shown chiefly and most consistently in some employment that goes to
further the life of the group. What emulation of an economic kind there
is between the members of such a group will be chiefly emulation in
industrial serviceability. At the same time the incentive to emulation
is not strong, nor is the scope for emulation large.
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