edentary community which is at an
agricultural stage of industry, in which there is a considerable
subdivision of industry, and whose laws and customs secure to these
classes a more or less definite share of the product of their industry.
These lower classes can in any case not avoid labour, and the imputation
of labour is therefore not greatly derogatory to them, at least not
within their class. Rather, since labour is their recognised and
accepted mode of life, they take some emulative pride in a reputation
for efficiency in their work, this being often the only line of
emulation that is open to them. For those for whom acquisition and
emulation is possible only within the field of productive efficiency
and thrift, the struggle for pecuniary reputability will in some
measure work out in an increase of diligence and parsimony. But certain
secondary features of the emulative process, yet to be spoken of,
come in to very materially circumscribe and modify emulation in these
directions among the pecuniary inferior classes as well as among the
superior class.

But it is otherwise with the superior pecuniary class, with which we
are here immediately concerned. For this class also the incentive
to diligence and thrift is not absent; but its action is so greatly
qualified by the secondary demands of pecuniary emulation, that any
inclination in this direction is practically overborne and any incentive
to diligence tends to be of no effect. The most imperative of these
secondary demands of emulation, as well as the one of widest scope, is
the requirement of abstention from productive work. This is true in an
especial degree for the barbarian stage of culture. During the predatory
culture labour comes to be associated in men's habits of thought
with weakness and subjection to a master. It is therefore a mark of
inferiority, and therefore comes to be accounted unworthy of man in his
best estate. By virtue of this tradition labour is felt to be debasing,
and this tradition has never died out. On the contrary, with the advance
of social differentiation it has acquired the axiomatic force due to
ancient and unquestioned prescription.

In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient
merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in
evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence. And not only does the
evidence of wealth serve to impress one's importance on others and
to keep their sense of h