de
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.

When the community passes from peaceable savagery to a predatory phase
of life, the conditions of emulation change. The opportunity and the
incentive to emulate increase greatly in scope and urgency. The activity
of the men more and more takes on the character of exploit; and an
invidious comparison of one hunter or warrior with another grows
continually easier and more habitual. Tangible evidences of
prowess--trophies--find a place in men's habits of thought as an
essential feature of the paraphernalia of life. Booty, trophies of
the chase or of the raid, come to be prized as evidence of pre-eminent
force. Aggression becomes the accredited form of action, and booty
serves as prima facie evidence of successful aggression. As accepted at
this cultural stage, the accredited, worthy form of self-assertion
is contest; and useful articles or services obtained by seizure or
compulsion, serve as a conventional evidence of successful contest.
Therefore, by contrast, the obtaining of goods by other methods than
seizure comes to be accounted unworthy of man in his best estate. The
performance of productive work, or employment in personal service, falls
under the sa