FOOTNOTES1Cf. Jacques Loeb,Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology, ch. i.2Cf. W. James,Principles of Psychology, ch. xxiv and xxv, where, however, the difference between tropism and instinct is not kept well in hand,—the tropisms having at that date not been subjected to inquiry and definition as has been true since then; William McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. i.3Loeb,Comparative Physiology of the Brain, pp. 177–178.4Cf. Graham Wallas,Human Nature in Politics, especially ch. i.5Cf., e. g., James,Principles of Psychology, ch. xxiv; William McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. iii.6Loeb,Comparative Physiology of the Brain, especially ch. xiii.7It is of course only as physiological traits that the tropisms are conceived not to overlap, blend or interfere, and it is likewise only in respect of their physiological discontinuity that the like argument would bear on the instincts. In respect of their expression, in the way of orientation, movement, growth, secretion, and the like, the tropismatic response to dissimilar stimuli is often so apparently identical that expert investigators have at times been at a loss to decide to which one of two or several recognised tropismatic sensibilities a given motor response should be ascribed. But in respect of their ultimate physiological character, the intimate physiological process by which the given sensibility takes effect, the response due to different tropismatic sensibilities appears in each case to be distinctive and not to blend with any other response to a different stimulus, with which it may happen to synchronise.8Cf., e. g., McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. i-iii.9Cf., e. g., Otto Ammon,Die Gesellschaftsordnung; G. Vacher de Lapouge,Les sélections sociales, andRace et milieu social, especially “Lois fondamentales de l’Anthroposociologie.”10The all-pervading modern institution of private property appears to have been of such an origin, having cumulatively grown out of the self-regarding bias of men in their oversight of the community’s material interests.11Cf. McDougall,Social Psychology, ch. x.12Latterly the question of instincts has been a subject of somewhat extensive discussion among students of animal behaviour, and throughout this discussion the argument has commonly been conducted on neurological, or at the most on physiological ground. This line of argument is well and lucidly presented in a volume recently published (The Science of Human Behavior, New York, 1913) by Mr. Maurice Parmalee. The book offers an incisive critical discussion of the Nature of Instinct (ch. xi) with a specific reference to the instinct of workmanship (p. 252). The discussion runs, faithfully and competently, on neurological ground and reaches the outcome to be expected in an endeavour to reduce instinct to neurological (or physiological) terms. As has commonly been true of similar endeavours, the outcome is essentially negative, in that “instinct” is not so much explained as explained away. The reason of this outcome is sufficiently evident; “instinct,” being not a neurological or physiological concept, is not statable in neurological or physiological terms. The instinct of workmanship no more than any other instinctive proclivity is an isolable, discrete neural function; which, however, does not touch the question of its status as a psychological element. The effect of such an analysis as is offered by Mr. Parmalee is not to give terminological precision to the concept of “instinct” in the sense assigned it in current usage, but to dispense with it; which is an untoward move in that it deprives the student of the free use of this familiar term in its familiar sense and therefore constrains him to bring the indispensable concept of instinct in again surreptitiously under cover of some unfamiliar term or some terminological circumlocution. The current mechanistic analyses of animal behaviour are of great and undoubted value to any inquiry into human conduct, but their value does not lie in an attempt to make them supersede those psychological phenomena which it is their purpose to explain. That such supersession of psychological phenomena by the mechanistic formulations need nowise follow and need not be entertained appears, e. g., in such work as that of Mr. Loeb, referred to above,Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology.13Endless in the sense that the effects of such concatenation do not run to a final term in any direction.14Many students of animal behaviour are still, as psychologists generally once were, inclined to contrast instinct with intelligence, and to confine the term typically to such automatically determinate action as takes effect without deliberation or intelligent oversight. This view would appear to be a remnant of an earlier theoretical position, according to which all the functions of intelligence were referred to a distinct immaterial entity, entelechy, associated in symbiosis with the physical organism. If all such preconceptions of a substantial dichotomy between physiological and psychological activity be abandoned it becomes a matter of course that intellectual functions themselves take effect only on the initiative of the instinctive dispositions and under their surveillance, and the antithesis between instinct and intelligence will consequently fall away. What expedients of terminology and discrimination may then be resorted to in the study of those animal instincts that involve a minimum of intellect is of course a question for the comparative psychologists. Cf., for instance, C. Lloyd Morgan,Introduction to Comparative Psychology(2nd edition, 1906) ch. xii, especially pp. 206–209, andHabit and Instinct, ch. i and vi.15Cf. H. S. Jennings,Behavior of the Lower Animals, ch. xii, xx, xxi.16See McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. iii and x.17Cf. M. F. Washburn,The Animal Mind, ch. x, xi, where the simpler facts of habituation are suggestively presented in conformity with current views of empirical psychology.18Cf., e. g., Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia; Seligmann,The Veddas.19Hutton Webster,Primitive Secret Societies, especially ch. iii and iv.20J. G. Frazer,Early History of the Kingship, ch. iv, p. 107.21E. g., some native tribes of Australia; cf. Spencer and Gillen,The Native Tribes of Central Australia, especially ch. i.22Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula.23J. Murdoch, “The Point Barrow Eskimo,”Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1887–1888; F. Boas, “The Central Eskimo,”Ibid, 1884–1885.24E. H. Man, “On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,”J. A. I., vol. xii.25Reports, Bureau of American Ethnology, numerous papers by different writers, perhaps especially Mrs. Stevenson, “The Sia,” 11th Report (1889–1890).26Current economic theory commonly proceeds on the “hedonistic calculus”, so called, (cf. Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to thePrinciples of Morals and Legislation) or the “hedonic principle”, as it has also been called, (cf. Pantaleoni,Pure Economics, ch. i). This “principle” affords the major premise of current theory. It postulates that individual self-seeking is the prime mover of all economic conduct. There is some uncertainty and disagreement among latterday economists as to the precise terms proper to be employed to designate this principle of conduct and its working-out; in the apprehension of later speculators Bentham’s “pleasure and pain” has seemed too bald and materialistic, and they have had recourse to such less precise and definable terms as “gratification,” “satisfactions,” “sacrifice,” “utility” and “disutility,” “psychic income,” etc., but hitherto without any conclusive revision of the terminology. These differences and suggested innovations do not touch the substance of the ancient postulate. Proceeding on this postulate the theoreticians have laid down the broad proposition that “present goods are preferred to future goods”; from which arise many meticulous difficulties of theory, particularly in any attempt to make the deliverances of theory square with workday facts. The modicum of truth contained in this proposition would appear to be better expressed in the formula: “Prospective security is preferred to prospective risk;” which seems to be nearly all that is required either as a generalisation of the human motives in the case or as a premise for the theoretical refinements aimed at, whereas the dictum that “present goods are preferred to future goods” must, on reflection, commend itself as substantially false. By and large, of course, goods are not wanted except for prospective use—beyond the measure of that urgent current consumption that plays no part in the theoretical refinements for which the dictum is invoked. It will immediately be apparent on reflection that even for the individual’s own advantage “present goods are preferred to future goods” only where and in so far as property rights are secure, and then only for future use. It is for productive use in the future, or more particularly for the sake of prospective revenue to be drawn from wealth so held, by lending or investing it, that such a preference becomes effective. Apart from this pecuniary advantage that attaches to property held over from the present to the future there appears to be no such preference even as a matter of individual self-seeking, and where such pecuniary considerations are not dominant there is no such preference for “present goods.” It is present “wealth,” not present “goods,” that is the object of desire; and present wealth is desired mainly for its prospective advantage. It is well known that in communities where there are habitually no businesslike credit extensions or investments for profit, savings take the form of hoarding, that is, accumulation for future use in preference to present consumption. There might be some division of opinion as to the character of the prospective use for which goods are sought, but there can be little question that much, if not most, of this prospective use is not of a self-regarding character and is not sought from motives of sensuous gain.27Traditionally a theoretical presumption has been held to the contrary. It has been taken for granted that the institutional outcome of men’s native dispositions will be sound and salutary; but this presumption overlooks the effects of complication and deflection among instincts, due to cumulative habit. The tradition has come down as an article of uncritical faith from the historic belief in a beneficent Order of Nature; which in turn runs back to the early-modern religious conception of a Providential Order instituted by a shrewd and benevolent Creator; which rests on an anthropomorphic imputation of parental solicitude and workmanship to an assumed metaphysical substratum of things. This traditional view therefore is substantially theological and has that degree of validity that may be derived from the putative characteristics of any anthropomorphic divinity.28Cf. e. g., F. H. Cushing, “A Study of Pueblo Pottery as illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth,”Report, Bureau of Ethnology, 1882–1883 (vol. iv); J. W. Fewkes, “Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895,” sections on “Pottery” and “Paleography of the Pottery,”ibid, 1896–1897 (vol. xviii); W. H. Holmes, “The Ancient Art of Chiriqui,”ibid, 1884–1885 (vol. vi).29The restrictions in this respect are mainly those which devote the “sacred” vessels, distinguished by peculiar shapes and decorations, to particular ceremonial uses.30Cf. E. B. Tylor,Primitive Culture, especially ch. xvii.31Cf. “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,”University of California Chronicle, Oct., 1908.32So, e. g., the proficiency of Bushmen, Veddas, Australians, American Indians, and other peoples of a low technological plane, in tracking game has been remarked on with great admiration by all observers; and the efficiency of these and others of their like is no less admirable as regards swimming, boating, riding, climbing, stalking, etc.33Cf. G. and A. de Mortillet,Le Préhistorique, especially the chapter “Données chronologiques,” pp. 662–664; W. G. Sollas,Ancient Hunters, ch. i and xiv.34Cf. Sophus Müller,L’Europe Préhistorique.35Cf., e. g.,Report of Bureau of American Ethnology, 1884–1885, Franz Boas, “The Central Eskimo;”ibid, 1887–1888, John Murdoch, “The Point Barrow Eskimo.”36What is assumed here is what is commonly held, viz. that the racial stocks that made up the late palæolithic population of Europe are still represented in a moderate way in the racial mixture that fills Europe today, and that these older racial types not only recur sporadically in the European population at large but are also present locally in sufficient force to give a particular character to the population of given localities. (See G. de Mortillet,Formation de la nation française, 4me partie, and Conclusions, pp. 275–329.) Great changes took place in the racial complexion of Europe in the beginning and early phases of the neolithic period, but since then no intrusion of new stocks has seriously disturbed the mixture of races, except in isolated areas, of secondary consequence to the cultural situation at large.See also W. G. Sollas, Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives.37These improved races are commonly, if not always, a product of hybridisation, though it is conceivable that such a race might arise as a “sport,” a Mendelian mutant. To establish such a race or “composite pure line” of hybrids and to propagate and improve it in the course of further breeding demands a degree of patient attention and consistent aim.38The late neolithic, or “æneolithic,” culture brought to light by Pumpelly at Anau in Transcaspia shows the synchronism of advance between the technology of the mechanic arts on the one hand and of tillage and cattle-breeding on the other hand in a remarkably lucid way. The site is held to date back to some 8000 B. C. or earlier and shows continuous occupation through a period of several thousand years. The settlers at Anau brought cereals (barley and wheat) when the settlement was made; so that the cultivation of these grains must date back some considerable distance farther into the stone age of Asia. In succeeding ages the people of Anau made some further advance in the use of crop plants; whether by improvement and innovation at home or by borrowing has not been determined. Presently, in the course of the next few thousand years, they brought into domestication and adapted to domestic use by selective breeding the greater number of those species of animals that have since made up the complement of live stock in the Western culture. In the mechanic arts the visible advance is slight as compared with the work in cattle-breeding, though it cannot be called insignificant taken by itself. The more notable improvements in this direction are believed to be due to borrowing. Perhaps the most characteristic trait of the mechanic technology at Anau is the total absence of weapons in the lower half of the deposits.—Raphael Pumpelly,Explorations in Turkestan: Prehistoric Civilizations of Anau. (Carnegie Publication No. 73.) Washington, 1908.39Cf. O. F. Cook, “Food Plants of Ancient America.”Report of Smithsonian Institution, 1903. E. J. Payne,History of the New World Called America, vol. i, (1892), pp. 336–427.40Cf. E. J. Payne, as above.41Cf., e. g., Lumholtz,Unknown Mexico, vol. i, ch. vi.42Cf., e. g., J. W. Powell, “Mythology of the North American Indians,” Report,Bureau of Eth., 1879–1880 (vol. i); F. H. Cushing, “Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths,”ibid, 1891–1892; J. O. Dorsey, “A Study of Siouan Cults,”ibid, 1889–1890.43Witness, again, the tales collected under the caption ofThe Day’s Work, where the anthropomorphic romance of mechanics is made the most of by the same master who told the tales of theJungle Bookand of “The Cat that Walked.”44Cf. Presidential Address by Francis Darwin at the Dublin meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; cf. also H. Bergson,Évolution créatrice, and particularly passages that deal with the élan de la vie.45Cf. G. J. Romanes,Animal Intelligence, especially the Introduction.46Cf. Jane E. Harrison,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, especially ch. iv; The same,Themis, especially ch. i, ii, iii and ix; with which compare the Pueblo cults referred to above.47Cf., e. g., Skeat,Malay Magic, perhaps especially ch. v, section on the cultivation of rice.48Hence animism, which applies its conceptions to inanimate rather than animate objects.49The like applies in the case of the seasonal and meteorological myths; where it happens rarely if at all that the phenomena of the seasons or the forces that come in evidence in meteorological changes are personified directly or unambiguously. It is always some god or dæmon that controls or uses the wind and the weather, some indwelling sprite or manlike giant that inhabits and watches over the hill or spring or river, and it is always the interests of the indwelling personality rather than that of the tangible objects in the case that are to be safeguarded by the superstitious practices with which the myth surrounds men’s intercourse with these features of the landscape.50As in the legends of Prometheus; compare legends and ritual of fire from various cultures in L. Frobenius,The Childhood of Man, ch. xxv-xxvii.51For an interesting illustration of this point see a paper by Duncan Mackenzie on “Cretan Palaces” in theAnnual of the British School at Athensfor 1907–1908, where the whole discussion hangs on the fact, unquestioned by any one of the disputants in a wide and warm controversy, that during some centuries of unwholesome nuisance from smoky fires in draughty rooms the great civilisation of the Mediterranean seaboard never hit on the ready solution of the difficulty by putting in a chimney.52Cf., e. g., W. James,Principles of Psychology, ch. xxiv; McDougall,Social Psychology, ch. iii.53Cf., e. g., M. F. Washburn,The Animal Mind, ch. xii, xiii.54For illustrations see Dudley Kidd,The Essential Kafir, especially ch. ii, on “Native Beliefs.”55Cf. “The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation,”Journal of Sociology, March, 1906, pp. 585–609; “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,”University of California Chronicle, vol. x, pp. 396–415.56Cf.Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. iv, v.57This technological blend of manual labour with magical practice is well seen, for instance, in the Malay ritual of rice culture.—W. W. Skeat,Malay Magic, various passages dealing with the ceremonial of the planting, growth and harvesting of the rice-crop.58Cf. J. E. Harrison,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, especially ch. iv; J. G. Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, bk. i, ch. iii.59Such seems to be the evidence, for instance, for Cybele, Astarte (Aphrodite, Ishtar), Mylitta, Isis, Demeter (Ceres), Artemis, and for such doubtfully late characters as Hera (Juno),—see Harrison,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion; Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, andThe Golden Bough. Quanon may be a doubtful case, as possibly also Amaterazu. The evidence from such American instances as the great mother goddesses of the Pueblos and other Indian tribes runs perhaps the other way, or at the best it may leave the point in doubt. See, for instance, Matilda C. Stevenson, “The Zuñi Indians,”Report Bureau of American Ethnology, 1901–1902, section on “Mythology;” The same,ibid, 1889–1890, “The Sia;” Frank H. Cushing,ibid, 1891–1892, “Zuñi Creation Myths.”60Cf., e. g., Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, bk. ii, ch. iii, bk. iii, ch. vi and xi.61Cf., e. g., Hutton Webster,Primitive Secret Societies, especially ch. iii, iv, v; Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, ch. vii, viii, ix, xvi.62Cf. for instance, Codrington,The Melanesians; Seligmann,The Melanesians of British New Guinea.63These considerations may of course imply nothing, directly, as to the size of the political organisation or of the national territory or population; though national boundaries are likely both to affect and to be affected by such changes in the industrial system. A community may be small, relatively to the industrial system in and by which it lives, and may yet, if conditions of peace permit it, stand in such a relation of complement or supplement to a larger complex of industrial groups as to make it in effect an integral part of a larger community, so far as regards its technology. So, for instance, Switzerland and Denmark are an integral part of the cultural and industrial community of the Western civilisation as effectually as they might be with an area and population equal to those of the United Kingdom or the German Empire, and they are doubtless each a more essential part in this community than Russia. At the same time, as things go within this Western culture, national boundaries have a very considerable obstructive effect in industrial affairs and in the growth of technology. It will probably be conceded on the one hand that any appreciable decline in the aggregate population of Christendom would result in some curtailment or retardation of the technological advance in which these peoples are jointly and severally engaged; and it is likewise to be conceded on the other hand that the like effect would follow on any marked degree of success from the efforts of those patriotic and dynastic statesmen who are endeavouring to set these peoples asunder in an armed estrangement and neutrality.64Cf., as an extreme case, Matilda C. Stevenson, “The Sia,”Report Bur. Eth., xi (1889–1890).The like decline is known to have occurred in many parts of Europe consequent on the decline of population due to the Black Death and the Plague.65On such native differences between the leading races of Europe, cf., e. g., G. V. de Lapouge,Les Sélections Sociales; andl’Aryen; O. Ammon,Die Gesellschaftsordnung; G. Sergi,Arii e Italici.66For instance, the Japanese and the Ainu, the Polynesians and the Melanesians, the Cinghalese and the Veddas. On the last named, cf. Seligmann,The Veddas.67Cf. W. Z. Ripley,The Races of Europe; G. Sergi,The Mediterranean Race; V. de Lapouge,L’Aryen; cf. also, J. Deniker,Les races européennes, and “Les six races composant la population de l’Europe,”Journal Anthropological Institute, vol. 34.68The available evidence indicates that the dolicho-blond race of northern Europe probably originated in a mutation (from the Mediterranean as its parent stock?) during the early neolithic period, that is to say about at the beginning of the neolithic in western Europe. There is less secure ground for conjecture as to the date and circumstances under which any one of the other European races originated, but the date and place of their origin seems to lie outside of Europe and earlier than the European neolithic period. Unfortunately there has been little direct or succinct discussion of this matter among anthropologists hitherto.—Cf. “The Mutation Theory and the Blond Race,”Journal of Race Development, April, 1913.69The Melanesians may be contrasted with the Baltic peoples in this respect, though the comparison is perhaps rather suggestive than convincing. The Melanesians are apparently endowed with a very respectable capacity for workmanship, as regards both insight and application, and with a relatively high sense of economic expediency. They are also possessed of an alert and enduring group solidarity. But they apparently lack that reasonable degree of “humanity” and congenital tolerance that has on the whole kept the peoples of the Baltic region from fatal extravagances of cruelty and sustained hatred between groups. Not that any excess of humanity has marked the course of culture in North Europe. But it seems at least admissible to say that mutual hatred, distrust and disparagement falls more readily into abeyance among these peoples than among the Melanesians; particularly when and in so far as the material interest of the several groups visibly suffers from a continued free run of extravagant animosity. The difference in point of native propensity may not be very marked, but such degree of it as there is has apparently thrown the balance in such a way that the Baltic peoples have, technologically, had the advantage of a wide and relatively easy contact and communication; whereas the Melanesians have during an equally protracted experience spent themselves largely on interstitial animosities—Cf. Codrington,The Melanesians; Seligmann,The Melanesians of British New Guinea.70These considerations apparently apply with peculiar force to the blond race, in that the evidence of early times goes to argue that this stock never lived in isolation from other, rival stocks. It began presumably as a small minority in a community made up chiefly of a different racial type, its parent stock, and in an environment at large in which at least one rival stock was present in force from near the outset; so that race competition, that is to say competition in terms of births and deaths, was instant and unremitting. And this competition the given conditions enforced in terms of group subsistence.71Cf., e. g., Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Stenalderen.”72It has not commonly been noted, though it will scarcely be questioned, that fighting capacity and the propensity to fight have rarely, if ever, been successful in the struggle between races and peoples when brought into competition with a diligent growing of crops and children, if success be counted in terms of race survival.73It is apparently an open question whether these spiritual traits are properly to be ascribed to the dolicho-blond as traits of that type taken by itself, rather than traits characteristic of the hybrid offspring of the blond stock crossed on one or other of the racial stocks associated with it in the populations of Europe. The evidence at large seems rather to bear out the view that any hybrid population is likely to be endowed with an exceptional degree of that restlessness and discontent that go to make up what is spoken of as a “spirit of enterprise” in the race.74As, e. g., the inhabitants of many Polynesian islands at the time of their discovery. See, also, Codrington,The Melanesians.75Not an unusual state of things among the Melanesians and Micronesians, and in a degree among the Australians.76See note,p. 120.77E. g., some Australian natives and some of the lower Malay cultures.78E. g., the Pueblo and the Eskimo.79Indeed, such as very suggestively to recall the ritual objects and observances of the Pueblo Indians.80For an extreme case of this among living communities, see Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. i, pp. 242–250, where the generalisation is set down (p. 248) that “the rudimentary stage of culture through which these tribes have passed, and in some cases are still passing, may perhaps be more accurately described as a wood and bone age than as an age of stone,” in as much as the evidence goes to show that before they began to get metals from the Malays their only implements of a more durable material were “the anvil and hammer (unwrought) ..., the whetstone, chips or flakes used as knives, and cooking stones.” From the different character of their environment this recourse to wood and bone could scarcely have been carried to such an extreme by the savages of the Baltic region.81Cf. Pumpelly,Explorations in Turkestan.82A casual visit to the Scandinavian museums will scarcely convey this impression. To meet the prepossessions of the public, and perhaps of the experts, the weapons are made much of in the showcases, as is to be expected; but they are relatively scarce in the store-rooms, where the tools on the other hand are rather to be estimated by the cubic yard than counted by the piece.83Seen, e. g., in the observance and sanction of tabu in many of the lower cultures.84The Eskimo are placed in circumstances that are in some respects similar to those presumed to have conditioned the life of the blond race and its hybrids during the early phases of its life-history, and among the traits that have made for the survival of the Eskimo is undoubtedly to be counted the somewhat genial good-fellowship of that race, coupled as it is with a notable disinclination to hostilities. So also the Indians of the North-West Coast, whose situation perhaps parallels that of the neolithic Baltic culture more closely even than the Eskimo, are not among the notably warlike peoples of the earth, although they undoubtedly show more of a predatory animus than their northern neighbours. In this case it is probably safe to say that their technological achievements have in no degree been furthered by such warlike enterprise as they have shown, and that their comfort and success as a race would have been even more marked if they had been gifted with less of the warlike spirit and had kept the peace more consistently throughout their habitat than they have done.—Cf. Franz Boas, “The Central Eskimo,”Bureau of American Ethnology, Report, 1884–1885; The same, “The Secret Societies and Social Organisation of the Kwakiutl Indians,”Report, National Museum, 1895; A. P. Niblack, “Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern British Columbia,”ibid, 1888.85Such loss by neglect of technological elements that have been superseded may have serious consequences in case a people of somewhat advanced attainments suffers a material set-back either in its industrial circumstances or in its cultural situation more at large,—as happened, e. g., in the Dark Ages of Europe. In such case it is likely to result that the community will be unable to fall back on a state of the industrial arts suited to the reduced circumstances into which it finds itself thrown, having lost the use of many of the technological elements familiar to earlier generations that lived under similar circumstances, and so the industrial community finds itself in many respects driven to make a virtually new beginning, from a more rudimentary starting point than the situation might otherwise call for. This in turn acts to throw the people back to a more archaic phase of technology and of institutions than the initial cultural loss sustained by the community would of itself appear to warrant.86Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Stenalderen,” sec. iii, “Tidsforhold i den ældre Stenalder;” O. Montelius,Les temps préhistoriques en Suède, ch. i, p. 20.87Compare the case of the Indians of the North-West Coast, who have occupied a region comparable to the neolithic Baltic area in the distribution of land and water as well as in the abundance of good timber.88Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Bronzealderen,” secs. xiii, xiv; Montelius,Les temps préhistoriques en Suède, ch. ii.89Cf., e. g., C. A. Haddon,Evolution in Art, section on “Magic and Religion.”90Except for species that habitually breed by parthenogenesis.91The caution is perhaps unnecessary that it is not hereby intended to suggest a doubt of Mr. Galton’s researches or to question the proposals of the Eugenicals, whose labours are no doubt to be taken for all they are worth.92See, e. g., Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. ii, part ii;Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1884–1885, F. Boas, “The Central Eskimo.”93Cf. Basil Thomson,The Diversions of a Prime Minister, andThe Figians.94The extent of this “quasi-personal fringe” of objects of intimate use varies considerably from one culture to another. It may often be inferred from the range of articles buried or destroyed with the dead among peoples on this level of culture.95A doubt may suggest itself in this connection touching such cultures and peoples as the pagan races of the Malay peninsula, the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, or (possibly) the Negritos of Luzon, but these conceivable exceptions to the rule evidently do not lessen its force.96It may be pertinent to take note of the bearing of these considerations on certain dogmatic concepts that have played a part in the theoretical and controversial speculations of the last century. Much importance has been given by economists of one school and another to the “productivity of labour,” particularly as affording a basis for a just and equitable distribution of the product; one school of controversialists having gone so far against the current of received economic doctrine as to allege that labour is the sole productive factor in industry and that the Labourer is on this ground entitled, in equity, to “the full product of his labor.” It is of course not conceived that the considerations here set forth will dispose of these doctrinal contentions; but they make it at least appear that the productivity of labor, or of any other conceivable factor in industry, is an imputed productivity—imputed on grounds of convention afforded by institutions that have grown up in the course of technological development and that have consequently only such validity as attaches to habits of thought induced by any given phase of collective life. These habits of thought (institutions and principles) are themselves the indirect product of the technological scheme. The controversy as to the productivity of labor should accordingly shift its ground from “the nature of things” to the exigencies of ingrained preconceptions, principles and expediencies as seen in the light of current technological requirements and the current drift of habituation.97See Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Stenalderen,” andAarböger for nordisk Oldkyndighed, 1906.98Cf. W. G. Sollas,Ancient Hunters.99See, e. g., Basil Thomson,The Figians, especially ch. iv, xiv, xxviii, xxxi.100The Pueblos offer a curious exception to this common rule of a parasitic priesthood. While they are much given to religious observances and have an extensive priestly organisation, comprising divers orders and sub-orders, this priesthood appears commonly to derive no income, or even appreciable perquisites, from their office.101The difference in importance and powers between the war chief of the peaceable Pueblos on the one hand and of the predatory Aztecs on the other hand shows how such an official’s status may changede factowithout a notable changede jure.—Cf. also Basil Thomson,The Figians, ch. iv, xxxi, on “Constitution of Society,” and “The Tenure of Land,” where the growth of custom is shown to throw pecuniary prerogative and control into the hands of the successful war chief.102For instance, somewhat generally in the island states of Polynesia. Something suggestively reminiscent of such a condition of things is visible in early feudal Europe, where feudal holdings changed hands with a change in the status of their holders in a way that suggests that ownership was in great measure a corollary following from the tenure of certain civil powers. So, also, in ecclesiastical holdings of the same period and later. And, again, in the doubtful and changing status of the servile classes of feudal Europe, where the distinction between mastery and ownership often seems something of a legal fiction or a distinction without a difference. Feudal Japan affords evidence to much the same effect.103Cf. J. G. Frazer,Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship. The drift of evidence for the North-European cultures of pagan antiquity appears to set strongly in this direction, though the term “priestly,” as applied to these pagan kings, is likely to convey too broad an implication of solemnity and vicariously divine power.104Witness the alleged dealings of Jahve with his chosen people and the laudation bestowed on Him by His priests for “conduct unbecoming a gentleman.”105As witness Pharaonic Egypt, Ancient Peru, Babylon, Assyria, Israel under Solomon and his nearer successors.106See F. B. Jevons,Introduction to the History of Religion, ch. x.107Cf., e. g., Basil Thomson,The Figians, ch. iv.108As shown, for instance, by the pottery and baskets made for trade by the American Indians where they come in trade contact with civilised men.109For a more detailed discussion of these secondary consequences of the institution of ownership, the irksomeness of labour and the conspicuous waste of goods, which cannot be pursued here, seeThe Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. ii-vi.110For some further analysis of the relation between ownership, earnings and the material equipment seeQuarterly Journal of Economics, August, 1908, “On the Nature of Capital;” as also a paper by H. J. Davenport in the same Journal for November, 1910, on “Social Productivity versus Private Acquisition.”111For a more detailed discussion of this disciplinary disparity between business and industrial occupations, cf.The Theory of Business Enterprise, ch. iv, viii and ix.112Cf., e. g., Harrington Emerson,Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages, ch. i, iv.113Such is tacitly assumed to be the nature of modern economic life in the current theoretical formulations of the economists, who make the theory of exchange value the central and controlling doctrine in their theoretical systems, and who with easy conviction trace this value back to an individualistic ground in the doctrines of differential utility—“marginal utility.”114Apart from scattered and progressively inconsequential manifestations of this canon of pecuniary equity in the European community at large, there occurs a quaint and well-defined application of it in the practice of “hólmgangr” in late pagan and early Christian times among the Scandinavian peoples. The “wager of battle” is probably of the same derivation, at least in part.115Cf. Frederic Barnard Hawley,Enterprise and the Productive Process, for an extreme, mature and consistent development of this tenet.116SeeThe Theory of Business Enterprise, ch. iv, vi, vii, for a more detailed discussion of this business traffic and the working principles which govern it. See also H. J. Davenport,The Economics of Enterprise(New York, 1913).117Cf., e. g., Ehrenberg,Das Zeitalter der Fugger; Sombart,Der Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i.118Cf.The Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. iv, v, vi.119Cf. Harrington Emerson,Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages.120Cf., e. g., Karl Bücher,Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, (3d ed.), ch. iv, “Die gewerblichen Betriebssysteme,” ch. v. “Der Niedergang des Handwerks;” W. J. Ashley,English Economic History and Theory, part ii, ch. i, sec. 25, ch. iii, especially sec. 44; W. Cunningham,The Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. ii, Introduction; Werner Sombart,Der Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i, especially ch. iv-xii.121To complete the sketch at this point, even in outline, it would be necessary to go extensively into the relations of ownership and control (largely indirect) in which the owners of land and natural resources, the Landed Interest, had stood to the industrial community of craftsmen before this transition to the business era got under way, as also into the further mutual relations subsisting between the landed interest, the craftsmen and the business community during this transition to a business régime. In the most summary terms the pertinent circumstances appear to have been that from the beginning of its technological era the handicraft community, with its workmanship and its technological attainments, was in an uncertain measure at the discretionary call of the landed interest, largely in an impersonal way through channels of trade and on the whole with decreasingly exacting effect as time went on; and the industrial community at large had by no means emancipated themselves from this control when the era of business enterprise set in; for the landed interest continued to draw its livelihood from the mixed agricultural and handicraft community, and the products of handicraft still continued to go chiefly as supplies to the landed interest in return for the means of subsistence controlled by the latter; and long after the businessmen had taken over the direction of industry the claims of the landed interest still continued paramount in the economic situation, and industry still continued to be carried on largely with a view to meeting the requirements of the landed interest.122“Handwerk (im engeren Sinne) ist diejenige Wirtschaftsform, die hervorwächst aus dem streben eines gewerblichen Arbeiters seine zwischen Kunst und gewöhnlicher Handarbeit die Mitte haltende Fertigkeit zur Herrichtung oder Bearbeitung gewerblicher Gebrauchsgegenstände in der Weise zu vertreten, dass er sich durch Austausch seiner Leistungen oder Erzeugnisse gegen entsprechende Äquivalente seinen Lebensunterhalt verschafft.”—Sombart,Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i, ch. iv.123Cf. Sombart,Der Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i; W. J. Ashley,English Economic History and Theory, bk. i, especially ch. iii; Karl Bücher,die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, ch. iv, v.124A classic passage of Adam Smith shows this handicraft conception of the mechanics of industry: “The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes....” “But this proportion [of the produce to the consumers] must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances; first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed.”—Wealth of Nations, Introduction, p. 1.Adam Smith consistently speaks of industry in terms of manual workmanship, as the traditions and the continued habitual outlook of that generation unavoidably led him to do; and the sweeping way in which his interpretation of economic life finds acceptance with his contemporaries shows that in so doing he is speaking in full consonance with the prevailing conceptions of his time. He writes during the opening passages of the machine era, but he speaks in terms of the past industrial era, from which his outlook on the economic situation and his conception of normal economic relations had been derived. It may be added that his conception of natural liberty in economic matters is similarly derived from the traditional situation, whose discipline during the later phases of the handicraft era inculcated freedom of ownership as applied to the workman’s product and freedom of bargain and sale as touches the traffic of the typical petty trader. And so thoroughly had this manner of conceiving industry and the economic situation been worked into the texture of men’s thinking, that the same line of interpretation continues to satisfy economic theory for a hundred years after Adam Smith had formulated this canon of economic doctrine, and after the situation to which it would apply had been put out by the machine industry and large business management.125The case of the treadle applied to the production of rotary motion is typical of what happens to a technological element of the general class here under discussion. Such a new technological expedient appears at the outset to be apprehended in terms of manual workmanship; but presently it comes, through habitual use, to take its place as a mechanical functioning of the tools in whose use it takes effect,—to be associated in current apprehension with the mechanical appliances employed in its production and, by so much, dissociated from the person of the workman. In a measure, therefore, it falls into the category of impersonal facts that are available as technological raw material with which to go about the work in hand. With further use, and particularly with the interjection of further mechanical expedients between the workman and this given technological element, it will be conceived in progressively more objective fashion, as a fact of the mechanics of brute matter rather than an extension of the workman’s manual reach; until it passes finally into the category of mechanical fact simply, obvious and commonplace through routine use; in which there remains but a vanishing residue of imputed personality, such as attaches to all conceptions of action. The given technological element in this way may be said to pass by degrees out of the workman’s “quasi-personal fringe” of manual effects, into the domain of raw material available for use in workmanship; where it will, in apprehension, be possessed of only such imputed quasi-personal or anthropomorphic characteristics as are necessarily imputed to external facts at large.Concretely, the concept of the treadle seems in its beginnings to be a variant of the same conception that leads to the use of the bow-drill. Both inventions comprise at least two distinct forms. In each the simpler and presumably more primitive form converts a reciprocating longitudinal motion into a reciprocating rotary motion; and it is apparently only after an interval of familiarity and externalisation of this mechanical achievement that the next move takes place in the direction of the perfected treadle, which converts a reciprocating longitudinal into a continuous rotary motion.126Cf. Sombart,Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i, Exkurs zu Kapitel 7, bk. ii, ch. xv.127The adventures of Charles I and James II sufficiently illustrate this insular temper of the industrial and commercial community as contrasted with the crown and the court party.128See ch.iiandiii, above.129The imputation of the feminine in this personification of Nature is probably nothing more than a carrying over of the Latin gender of the word, but there is commonly involved in this quasi-personal conception of Nature a notable imputation of kindliness and gentle solicitude that well comports with her putative womanhood. By extraordinarily easy gradationNatura naturanspasses over into Mother Nature. The contrast in this respect, simply on its sentimental side, between the conception of Nature, say in the eighteenth century, on the one hand, and the patriarchal Heavenly King, remote and austere, of the Mediæval cult on the other hand is striking enough. In point of sentimental content this conception of Nature is more nearly in touch with the mediæval Mother of God than with the Heavenly King.130This, of course, does not overlook the fact that in the course of scientific inquiry there has been an increasing use of statistical methods and results, and that this recourse to statistics has been of an increasingly objective character, both in its methods and in the items handled. It is also to be noted that from time to time serious and consequential attempts have been made to reduce scientific argument at large to similarly objective terms of quantity, quantivalence and concomitance. Karl Pearson’sGrammar of Science, for instance is a shrewd and somewhat popularly known endeavour of this kind. So, again, the philosophical views associated with the names of Leibnitz and of Berkely are of this nature, and there is not a little of the same line of scepticism in the speculations of Hume. But it is equally to be noted that except on the remote plane of generality that belongs to philosophical speculation, and except in the works of pure mathematics, this method of handling facts has not proved available for scientific ends. The “idle curiosity” which finds employment in scientific inquiry is not content with the vacant relation of concomitance alone among the facts which it seeks and systematises. In scientific theory no headway has been made hitherto without the use of this indispensable imputation of causality.—In this connection cf. a paper on “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,”University of California Chronicle, November, 1908, especially footnote, p. 396.131In this connection it is worth noting, for what it may be worth, that there is a similarly rough concomitance between the diffusion of the blond racial stock in Europe and the modern forms of protestantism and religious heresy. Whether this fact strengthens or weakens any argument that may be drawn from the concomitance of heresy and industry cited above may perhaps best be left an open question.132Seechapter v, above.133Cf. Ashley,English Economic History and Theory, bk. i, ch. i; Karl Bücher,Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, ch. iii.134Cf. R. Ehrenberg,Das Zeitalter der Fugger.135Seen, as indicated above, in the matter-of-course resort of the scientists to the conception of efficient cause as a solvent of problems touching material phenomena, as well as in the theologians’ and philosophers’ resistless drift toward creative efficiency as the ultimate term of their speculations.136Cf. Locke,Of Civil Government, ch. v, “Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has a right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”137Illustrative instances of such a customary code of “natural” rights and obligations are numerous in the late literature of ethnology. Good illustrations are afforded by various papers in theReports of the Am. Bureau of Ethnology, on the culture of the Pueblos, Eskimo, and the Indians of the North-West Coast; so also in Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, or in Seligmann,The Veddas.138Cf., e. g., C. Beard,The Industrial Revolution, ch. ii; Spencer Walpole,History of England from 1815, vol. i; C. W. Taylor,The Modern Factory System, ch. i, ii.139In a general way, the relation in which the skilled workman in the large industries stands to the machine process is analogous to that in which the primitive herdsman, shepherd or dairymaid stand to the domestic animals under their care, rather than to the relation of the craftsman to his tools. It is a work of attendance, furtherance and skilled interference rather than a forceful and dexterous use of an implement.140It follows also, among other secondary consequences, that the effective industrial life of the skilled workman will, in order to the best average effect, begin at an appreciably more advanced age, and will therefore be shortened by that much. The period of preparation becomes more protracted, more exacting and more costly, and the effective life cycle of the workman grows shorter. Although it does not, perhaps, belong in precisely this connection, it may not be out of place to recall that the increasingly exacting requirements of the machine industry, particularly in the way of accurate, alert and facile conformity to the requirements of the machine process, interrupt the industrial life of the skilled workman at an earlier point in the course of senile decay. So that the industrial life-cycle of the workman is shortened both at its beginning and at its close, at the same time that the commonplace preparation for work grows more costly and exacting.Child labour, which once may, industrially speaking, have been an economical method of consuming the available human material, is no longer compatible with the highest industrial efficiency, even apart from any question of hardship or deterioration incident to an excessive or abusive recourse to child labour; it is incompatible with the community’s material interests. Therefore the business community—the body of businessmen at large—for whose behoof the industries of the country are carried on, have a direct interest not only in extending the age of exemption from industrial employment but also in procuring an adequate schooling of the incoming generation of workmen. The business community is evidently coming to appreciate this state of the case, at least in some degree, as is evidenced by their inclination to favour instruction in the “practical” branches in the public schools, at the public expense, as well as by the wide-reaching movement that aims to equip private and state schools that shall prepare the youth for work in the various lines of industrial employment.141Cf.,e. g., Adam Smith’s reflections on the uses of an accurate watch,Theory of the Moral Sentiments, part iv, ch. 2.142On the other hand the aphorism often cited, that “Necessity is the Mother of Invention,” appears to be nothing better than a fragment of uncritical rationalism. It offers a rationalised,ex post factoaccount of changes that take place, and reflects that ancient preconception by help of which the spokesmen of edification were enabled to interpret all change as an improvement due to the achievement of some definitely foreknown end. It appears also to be consistently untrue, except so far as “invention” is to be taken as a euphemistic synonym for “prevarication.” Doubtless, the felt need of ways and means has brought on many changes in technology, but doubtless also the ulterior consequences of any one of the greater mechanical inventions have in the main been neither foreseen nor intended in the designing of them. The more serious consequences, especially such as have an institutional bearing, have been enforced by the inventions rather than designed by the inventors.143See pp.18–21, above.144Cf., however, what has been said above (pp. 21–23) of the variability and adaptability of a hybrid population and the possible selective establishment of a hybrid type more suitable to current conditions of life than any one of the racial stocks out of which the hybrid population is made up.145So,e. g., the modern technology has, directly and indirectly, brought on the growth of large cities and industrial towns, as well as an increasing density of population at large. This modern state of the industrial arts is a creation of the European community of nations, with the blond-hybrid populations leading. The population of these countries is drifting into these machine-made cities and towns, and this drift affects the blond-hybrids in a more pronounced degree than any other similarly distinguishable element in the population. At the same time the birth-rate is lower and the death-rate higher in these modern urban communities than in the open country, in spite of the fact that more attention is given to preventive sanitation in the urban than in the rural communities, and it is in the urban communities that medical attendance is most available at the same time that its most efficient practitioners congregate there. This accelerated death-rate strikes the blond-hybrids of the towns in an eminent degree; and infant mortality in the towns, particularly, runs at such a figure as to be viewed with the liveliest apprehension. In its summary effects on the viability of the modern peoples this modern technology appears to be as untoward as would their removal to an unsuitable climate. Indeed the hygienic measures that are taken or advocated as a remedy for these machine-made conditions of urban life are of much the same character and require much the same degree of meticulous attention to details that are required to preserve the life of Europeans under the precarious climatic conditions of the low latitudes. So that, for these Europeans at least, the hygienic situation created by their own technology has much of that character of a comprehensive clinic that attaches to the British occupation of India or the later European occupation of West Africa or the Philippines.146The statisticians of a hundred years ago,e. g., were content to work in round percentages where their latterday successors are doubtfully content with three-place decimals.147An eminently illustrative instance of the mechanistic bias in the moral sciences is afforded by the hedonistic conceptions of the early nineteenth century; and the deistic theology of that period and earlier is no less characteristic a symptom of the same animus.Cf.also, for a view running to a conclusion opposed to that spoken for above, H. Bergson,Creative Evolution(translation by Arthur Mitchell, New York, 1911), ch. i, especially pp. 16–23; where the mechanistic conception is construed as an instinctive metaphysical norm and contrasted with the deliverances of reason and experience, which are then held to inculcate an anthropomorphic interpretation of the same facts.148“Pragmatism” is the term that has been elected to cover this metaphysical postulate of efficiency conceived as the bench mark of actuality.149Of all these latterday revulsionary schemes of surcease from the void and irritation of the mechanistic conception, that spoken for by M. H. Bergson is doubtless the most felicitous, at the same time that it is, in its elements, the most engagingly naïve. Apart from, and without prejudice to, the (doubtless very substantial) merits of this system of speculative tenets, the vogue which it has achieved appears to be due in good part to its consonance with this archaic bent of civilised human nature, already spoken of. The immanent, or rather intrinsically dominant, creative bent inherent in matter and not objectively distinguishable from it, is sufficiently suggestive of that praeter-mechanical efficacy that seems so easy of comprehension to many of the peoples on the lower levels of culture, and that affords the substantial ground of magical practices and finds untroubled expression in the more naïve of their theoretical speculations. It would be a work of extreme difficulty, e. g., to set up a consistently tenable distinction between M. Bergson’sélan de la vie, on the one hand, and themanaof the Melanesians (Cf.Codrington,The Melanesians, esp. ch. vii and xii), thewakondaof the Sioux (Cf.A. C. Fletcher and F. la Flesche, “The Omaha Tribe,”Bureau of Ethnology, Report xxvii(1905–1906), esp. pp. 597–599), or even thehamingiaof Scandinavian paganism, on the other hand.In fact, the point of departure and support for M. Bergson’s speculations appears to be nothing else than a projection, into objective reality, of the same human trait that has here been spoken of as the instinct of workmanship; this norm of initiative and efficiency which so is imposed on objective facts being then worked out with great subtlety and sympathetic insight, to make a comprehensive, cosmological scheme. The like projection of workmanlike initiative and efficiency, and its imputation to objective reality, both at large—as with M. Bergson—and in concrete detail, with more or less of personalisation, is one of the main, though frequently misunderstood, factors in the cosmologies that do duty as a body of science and philosophy among savages and the lower barbarians.That the roots of this speculative scheme of “creative evolution” should reach so far into the background of human culture and draw on sources so close to the undisciplined prime-movers of human nature is, of course, in no degree derogatory to this system of theory; nor does it raise any presumption of unsoundness in the tenets that so are, in the course of elaboration, built up out of this metaphysical postulate. In point of fact, the characterisation here offered places M. Bergson’s thesis, and therefore his system, precisely where he has been at pains to explain that he wishes to take his initial position in advocating his view,—at an even break with the mechanistic conception; the merits of which, as contrasted with his own thesis, will then be made to appear in the course of the further argument that is to decide between their rival claims to primacy. In point of formal and provisional legitimation, such an imputation of workmanlike efficacy at large rests on ground precisely even with that on which the mechanistic conception also rests,—viz. imputation by force of metaphysical necessity, that is to say by force of an instinctive impulse. The main theorem of causation, as well as its several mechanistic corollaries, are, in the last resort, putative traits of matter only, not facts of observation; and the like is true—in M. Bergson’s argument admittedly so—of theélan de la vieas well. So far, therefore, as regards the formally determinable antecedent probability of the two rival conceptions, the one is as good as the other; but M. Bergson’s argument, running on ground of circumstantial evidence in the main, makes out at least a cogently attractive likelihood that the conception for which he speaks is to be accepted as the more fundamental, underlying the mechanistic conception, conditioning it and on occasion overruling its findings in matters that lie beyond its ascertained competence. Which would come, in a different phrasing, to saying that the imputation of creatively workmanlike efficiency rests on instinctive ground more indefeasibly intrinsic to human nature; presumably in virtue of its embodying the functioning of an instinctive proclivity less sophisticated and narrowed by special habituation, such special habituation, e. g., as that exercised by the technology of handicraft and the machine process in recent times.150All this, of course, neither ignores nor denies the substantial part which thejus gentiumand thejus naturaleof the Roman jurists and their commentators have played in the formulation of the system of Natural Rights. In point of pedigree the line of derivation of these legal principles is doubtless substantially as set forth authentically by the jurists who have spent their competent endeavors on that matter. So far as regards the English-speaking communities this pedigree runs back to Locke, and through Locke to the line of jurists and philosophers on whom that great scholar has drawn; while for the promulgation of the like system of principles more at large the names of Grotius, Pufendorf, Althusius doubtless have all the significance commonly assigned them. See pp.290–293above.151Unless the “Syndicalist” movement is to be taken as something sufficiently definite in its principles to make it an exception to the rule.152Cf., e. g., Anna Youngman,The Economic Causes of Great Fortunes, especially ch. vi; R. Ehrenburg,Grosse Vermögen; Ida Tarbell,History of the Standard Oil Company.153Cf. a paper “On the Nature of Capital” in theQuarterly Journal of Economics, November, 1908.154As late as Adam Smith’s time “manufacturer” still retained its etymological value and designated the workman who made the goods. But from about that time, that is to say since the machine process and the business control of industry have thoroughly taken effect, the term no longer has a technological connotation but has taken on a pecuniary (business) signification wholly; so that the term now designates a businessman who stands in none but a pecuniary relation to the processes of industry.
FOOTNOTES1Cf. Jacques Loeb,Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology, ch. i.2Cf. W. James,Principles of Psychology, ch. xxiv and xxv, where, however, the difference between tropism and instinct is not kept well in hand,—the tropisms having at that date not been subjected to inquiry and definition as has been true since then; William McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. i.3Loeb,Comparative Physiology of the Brain, pp. 177–178.4Cf. Graham Wallas,Human Nature in Politics, especially ch. i.5Cf., e. g., James,Principles of Psychology, ch. xxiv; William McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. iii.6Loeb,Comparative Physiology of the Brain, especially ch. xiii.7It is of course only as physiological traits that the tropisms are conceived not to overlap, blend or interfere, and it is likewise only in respect of their physiological discontinuity that the like argument would bear on the instincts. In respect of their expression, in the way of orientation, movement, growth, secretion, and the like, the tropismatic response to dissimilar stimuli is often so apparently identical that expert investigators have at times been at a loss to decide to which one of two or several recognised tropismatic sensibilities a given motor response should be ascribed. But in respect of their ultimate physiological character, the intimate physiological process by which the given sensibility takes effect, the response due to different tropismatic sensibilities appears in each case to be distinctive and not to blend with any other response to a different stimulus, with which it may happen to synchronise.8Cf., e. g., McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. i-iii.9Cf., e. g., Otto Ammon,Die Gesellschaftsordnung; G. Vacher de Lapouge,Les sélections sociales, andRace et milieu social, especially “Lois fondamentales de l’Anthroposociologie.”10The all-pervading modern institution of private property appears to have been of such an origin, having cumulatively grown out of the self-regarding bias of men in their oversight of the community’s material interests.11Cf. McDougall,Social Psychology, ch. x.12Latterly the question of instincts has been a subject of somewhat extensive discussion among students of animal behaviour, and throughout this discussion the argument has commonly been conducted on neurological, or at the most on physiological ground. This line of argument is well and lucidly presented in a volume recently published (The Science of Human Behavior, New York, 1913) by Mr. Maurice Parmalee. The book offers an incisive critical discussion of the Nature of Instinct (ch. xi) with a specific reference to the instinct of workmanship (p. 252). The discussion runs, faithfully and competently, on neurological ground and reaches the outcome to be expected in an endeavour to reduce instinct to neurological (or physiological) terms. As has commonly been true of similar endeavours, the outcome is essentially negative, in that “instinct” is not so much explained as explained away. The reason of this outcome is sufficiently evident; “instinct,” being not a neurological or physiological concept, is not statable in neurological or physiological terms. The instinct of workmanship no more than any other instinctive proclivity is an isolable, discrete neural function; which, however, does not touch the question of its status as a psychological element. The effect of such an analysis as is offered by Mr. Parmalee is not to give terminological precision to the concept of “instinct” in the sense assigned it in current usage, but to dispense with it; which is an untoward move in that it deprives the student of the free use of this familiar term in its familiar sense and therefore constrains him to bring the indispensable concept of instinct in again surreptitiously under cover of some unfamiliar term or some terminological circumlocution. The current mechanistic analyses of animal behaviour are of great and undoubted value to any inquiry into human conduct, but their value does not lie in an attempt to make them supersede those psychological phenomena which it is their purpose to explain. That such supersession of psychological phenomena by the mechanistic formulations need nowise follow and need not be entertained appears, e. g., in such work as that of Mr. Loeb, referred to above,Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology.13Endless in the sense that the effects of such concatenation do not run to a final term in any direction.14Many students of animal behaviour are still, as psychologists generally once were, inclined to contrast instinct with intelligence, and to confine the term typically to such automatically determinate action as takes effect without deliberation or intelligent oversight. This view would appear to be a remnant of an earlier theoretical position, according to which all the functions of intelligence were referred to a distinct immaterial entity, entelechy, associated in symbiosis with the physical organism. If all such preconceptions of a substantial dichotomy between physiological and psychological activity be abandoned it becomes a matter of course that intellectual functions themselves take effect only on the initiative of the instinctive dispositions and under their surveillance, and the antithesis between instinct and intelligence will consequently fall away. What expedients of terminology and discrimination may then be resorted to in the study of those animal instincts that involve a minimum of intellect is of course a question for the comparative psychologists. Cf., for instance, C. Lloyd Morgan,Introduction to Comparative Psychology(2nd edition, 1906) ch. xii, especially pp. 206–209, andHabit and Instinct, ch. i and vi.15Cf. H. S. Jennings,Behavior of the Lower Animals, ch. xii, xx, xxi.16See McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. iii and x.17Cf. M. F. Washburn,The Animal Mind, ch. x, xi, where the simpler facts of habituation are suggestively presented in conformity with current views of empirical psychology.18Cf., e. g., Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia; Seligmann,The Veddas.19Hutton Webster,Primitive Secret Societies, especially ch. iii and iv.20J. G. Frazer,Early History of the Kingship, ch. iv, p. 107.21E. g., some native tribes of Australia; cf. Spencer and Gillen,The Native Tribes of Central Australia, especially ch. i.22Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula.23J. Murdoch, “The Point Barrow Eskimo,”Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1887–1888; F. Boas, “The Central Eskimo,”Ibid, 1884–1885.24E. H. Man, “On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,”J. A. I., vol. xii.25Reports, Bureau of American Ethnology, numerous papers by different writers, perhaps especially Mrs. Stevenson, “The Sia,” 11th Report (1889–1890).26Current economic theory commonly proceeds on the “hedonistic calculus”, so called, (cf. Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to thePrinciples of Morals and Legislation) or the “hedonic principle”, as it has also been called, (cf. Pantaleoni,Pure Economics, ch. i). This “principle” affords the major premise of current theory. It postulates that individual self-seeking is the prime mover of all economic conduct. There is some uncertainty and disagreement among latterday economists as to the precise terms proper to be employed to designate this principle of conduct and its working-out; in the apprehension of later speculators Bentham’s “pleasure and pain” has seemed too bald and materialistic, and they have had recourse to such less precise and definable terms as “gratification,” “satisfactions,” “sacrifice,” “utility” and “disutility,” “psychic income,” etc., but hitherto without any conclusive revision of the terminology. These differences and suggested innovations do not touch the substance of the ancient postulate. Proceeding on this postulate the theoreticians have laid down the broad proposition that “present goods are preferred to future goods”; from which arise many meticulous difficulties of theory, particularly in any attempt to make the deliverances of theory square with workday facts. The modicum of truth contained in this proposition would appear to be better expressed in the formula: “Prospective security is preferred to prospective risk;” which seems to be nearly all that is required either as a generalisation of the human motives in the case or as a premise for the theoretical refinements aimed at, whereas the dictum that “present goods are preferred to future goods” must, on reflection, commend itself as substantially false. By and large, of course, goods are not wanted except for prospective use—beyond the measure of that urgent current consumption that plays no part in the theoretical refinements for which the dictum is invoked. It will immediately be apparent on reflection that even for the individual’s own advantage “present goods are preferred to future goods” only where and in so far as property rights are secure, and then only for future use. It is for productive use in the future, or more particularly for the sake of prospective revenue to be drawn from wealth so held, by lending or investing it, that such a preference becomes effective. Apart from this pecuniary advantage that attaches to property held over from the present to the future there appears to be no such preference even as a matter of individual self-seeking, and where such pecuniary considerations are not dominant there is no such preference for “present goods.” It is present “wealth,” not present “goods,” that is the object of desire; and present wealth is desired mainly for its prospective advantage. It is well known that in communities where there are habitually no businesslike credit extensions or investments for profit, savings take the form of hoarding, that is, accumulation for future use in preference to present consumption. There might be some division of opinion as to the character of the prospective use for which goods are sought, but there can be little question that much, if not most, of this prospective use is not of a self-regarding character and is not sought from motives of sensuous gain.27Traditionally a theoretical presumption has been held to the contrary. It has been taken for granted that the institutional outcome of men’s native dispositions will be sound and salutary; but this presumption overlooks the effects of complication and deflection among instincts, due to cumulative habit. The tradition has come down as an article of uncritical faith from the historic belief in a beneficent Order of Nature; which in turn runs back to the early-modern religious conception of a Providential Order instituted by a shrewd and benevolent Creator; which rests on an anthropomorphic imputation of parental solicitude and workmanship to an assumed metaphysical substratum of things. This traditional view therefore is substantially theological and has that degree of validity that may be derived from the putative characteristics of any anthropomorphic divinity.28Cf. e. g., F. H. Cushing, “A Study of Pueblo Pottery as illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth,”Report, Bureau of Ethnology, 1882–1883 (vol. iv); J. W. Fewkes, “Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895,” sections on “Pottery” and “Paleography of the Pottery,”ibid, 1896–1897 (vol. xviii); W. H. Holmes, “The Ancient Art of Chiriqui,”ibid, 1884–1885 (vol. vi).29The restrictions in this respect are mainly those which devote the “sacred” vessels, distinguished by peculiar shapes and decorations, to particular ceremonial uses.30Cf. E. B. Tylor,Primitive Culture, especially ch. xvii.31Cf. “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,”University of California Chronicle, Oct., 1908.32So, e. g., the proficiency of Bushmen, Veddas, Australians, American Indians, and other peoples of a low technological plane, in tracking game has been remarked on with great admiration by all observers; and the efficiency of these and others of their like is no less admirable as regards swimming, boating, riding, climbing, stalking, etc.33Cf. G. and A. de Mortillet,Le Préhistorique, especially the chapter “Données chronologiques,” pp. 662–664; W. G. Sollas,Ancient Hunters, ch. i and xiv.34Cf. Sophus Müller,L’Europe Préhistorique.35Cf., e. g.,Report of Bureau of American Ethnology, 1884–1885, Franz Boas, “The Central Eskimo;”ibid, 1887–1888, John Murdoch, “The Point Barrow Eskimo.”36What is assumed here is what is commonly held, viz. that the racial stocks that made up the late palæolithic population of Europe are still represented in a moderate way in the racial mixture that fills Europe today, and that these older racial types not only recur sporadically in the European population at large but are also present locally in sufficient force to give a particular character to the population of given localities. (See G. de Mortillet,Formation de la nation française, 4me partie, and Conclusions, pp. 275–329.) Great changes took place in the racial complexion of Europe in the beginning and early phases of the neolithic period, but since then no intrusion of new stocks has seriously disturbed the mixture of races, except in isolated areas, of secondary consequence to the cultural situation at large.See also W. G. Sollas, Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives.37These improved races are commonly, if not always, a product of hybridisation, though it is conceivable that such a race might arise as a “sport,” a Mendelian mutant. To establish such a race or “composite pure line” of hybrids and to propagate and improve it in the course of further breeding demands a degree of patient attention and consistent aim.38The late neolithic, or “æneolithic,” culture brought to light by Pumpelly at Anau in Transcaspia shows the synchronism of advance between the technology of the mechanic arts on the one hand and of tillage and cattle-breeding on the other hand in a remarkably lucid way. The site is held to date back to some 8000 B. C. or earlier and shows continuous occupation through a period of several thousand years. The settlers at Anau brought cereals (barley and wheat) when the settlement was made; so that the cultivation of these grains must date back some considerable distance farther into the stone age of Asia. In succeeding ages the people of Anau made some further advance in the use of crop plants; whether by improvement and innovation at home or by borrowing has not been determined. Presently, in the course of the next few thousand years, they brought into domestication and adapted to domestic use by selective breeding the greater number of those species of animals that have since made up the complement of live stock in the Western culture. In the mechanic arts the visible advance is slight as compared with the work in cattle-breeding, though it cannot be called insignificant taken by itself. The more notable improvements in this direction are believed to be due to borrowing. Perhaps the most characteristic trait of the mechanic technology at Anau is the total absence of weapons in the lower half of the deposits.—Raphael Pumpelly,Explorations in Turkestan: Prehistoric Civilizations of Anau. (Carnegie Publication No. 73.) Washington, 1908.39Cf. O. F. Cook, “Food Plants of Ancient America.”Report of Smithsonian Institution, 1903. E. J. Payne,History of the New World Called America, vol. i, (1892), pp. 336–427.40Cf. E. J. Payne, as above.41Cf., e. g., Lumholtz,Unknown Mexico, vol. i, ch. vi.42Cf., e. g., J. W. Powell, “Mythology of the North American Indians,” Report,Bureau of Eth., 1879–1880 (vol. i); F. H. Cushing, “Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths,”ibid, 1891–1892; J. O. Dorsey, “A Study of Siouan Cults,”ibid, 1889–1890.43Witness, again, the tales collected under the caption ofThe Day’s Work, where the anthropomorphic romance of mechanics is made the most of by the same master who told the tales of theJungle Bookand of “The Cat that Walked.”44Cf. Presidential Address by Francis Darwin at the Dublin meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; cf. also H. Bergson,Évolution créatrice, and particularly passages that deal with the élan de la vie.45Cf. G. J. Romanes,Animal Intelligence, especially the Introduction.46Cf. Jane E. Harrison,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, especially ch. iv; The same,Themis, especially ch. i, ii, iii and ix; with which compare the Pueblo cults referred to above.47Cf., e. g., Skeat,Malay Magic, perhaps especially ch. v, section on the cultivation of rice.48Hence animism, which applies its conceptions to inanimate rather than animate objects.49The like applies in the case of the seasonal and meteorological myths; where it happens rarely if at all that the phenomena of the seasons or the forces that come in evidence in meteorological changes are personified directly or unambiguously. It is always some god or dæmon that controls or uses the wind and the weather, some indwelling sprite or manlike giant that inhabits and watches over the hill or spring or river, and it is always the interests of the indwelling personality rather than that of the tangible objects in the case that are to be safeguarded by the superstitious practices with which the myth surrounds men’s intercourse with these features of the landscape.50As in the legends of Prometheus; compare legends and ritual of fire from various cultures in L. Frobenius,The Childhood of Man, ch. xxv-xxvii.51For an interesting illustration of this point see a paper by Duncan Mackenzie on “Cretan Palaces” in theAnnual of the British School at Athensfor 1907–1908, where the whole discussion hangs on the fact, unquestioned by any one of the disputants in a wide and warm controversy, that during some centuries of unwholesome nuisance from smoky fires in draughty rooms the great civilisation of the Mediterranean seaboard never hit on the ready solution of the difficulty by putting in a chimney.52Cf., e. g., W. James,Principles of Psychology, ch. xxiv; McDougall,Social Psychology, ch. iii.53Cf., e. g., M. F. Washburn,The Animal Mind, ch. xii, xiii.54For illustrations see Dudley Kidd,The Essential Kafir, especially ch. ii, on “Native Beliefs.”55Cf. “The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation,”Journal of Sociology, March, 1906, pp. 585–609; “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,”University of California Chronicle, vol. x, pp. 396–415.56Cf.Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. iv, v.57This technological blend of manual labour with magical practice is well seen, for instance, in the Malay ritual of rice culture.—W. W. Skeat,Malay Magic, various passages dealing with the ceremonial of the planting, growth and harvesting of the rice-crop.58Cf. J. E. Harrison,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, especially ch. iv; J. G. Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, bk. i, ch. iii.59Such seems to be the evidence, for instance, for Cybele, Astarte (Aphrodite, Ishtar), Mylitta, Isis, Demeter (Ceres), Artemis, and for such doubtfully late characters as Hera (Juno),—see Harrison,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion; Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, andThe Golden Bough. Quanon may be a doubtful case, as possibly also Amaterazu. The evidence from such American instances as the great mother goddesses of the Pueblos and other Indian tribes runs perhaps the other way, or at the best it may leave the point in doubt. See, for instance, Matilda C. Stevenson, “The Zuñi Indians,”Report Bureau of American Ethnology, 1901–1902, section on “Mythology;” The same,ibid, 1889–1890, “The Sia;” Frank H. Cushing,ibid, 1891–1892, “Zuñi Creation Myths.”60Cf., e. g., Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, bk. ii, ch. iii, bk. iii, ch. vi and xi.61Cf., e. g., Hutton Webster,Primitive Secret Societies, especially ch. iii, iv, v; Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, ch. vii, viii, ix, xvi.62Cf. for instance, Codrington,The Melanesians; Seligmann,The Melanesians of British New Guinea.63These considerations may of course imply nothing, directly, as to the size of the political organisation or of the national territory or population; though national boundaries are likely both to affect and to be affected by such changes in the industrial system. A community may be small, relatively to the industrial system in and by which it lives, and may yet, if conditions of peace permit it, stand in such a relation of complement or supplement to a larger complex of industrial groups as to make it in effect an integral part of a larger community, so far as regards its technology. So, for instance, Switzerland and Denmark are an integral part of the cultural and industrial community of the Western civilisation as effectually as they might be with an area and population equal to those of the United Kingdom or the German Empire, and they are doubtless each a more essential part in this community than Russia. At the same time, as things go within this Western culture, national boundaries have a very considerable obstructive effect in industrial affairs and in the growth of technology. It will probably be conceded on the one hand that any appreciable decline in the aggregate population of Christendom would result in some curtailment or retardation of the technological advance in which these peoples are jointly and severally engaged; and it is likewise to be conceded on the other hand that the like effect would follow on any marked degree of success from the efforts of those patriotic and dynastic statesmen who are endeavouring to set these peoples asunder in an armed estrangement and neutrality.64Cf., as an extreme case, Matilda C. Stevenson, “The Sia,”Report Bur. Eth., xi (1889–1890).The like decline is known to have occurred in many parts of Europe consequent on the decline of population due to the Black Death and the Plague.65On such native differences between the leading races of Europe, cf., e. g., G. V. de Lapouge,Les Sélections Sociales; andl’Aryen; O. Ammon,Die Gesellschaftsordnung; G. Sergi,Arii e Italici.66For instance, the Japanese and the Ainu, the Polynesians and the Melanesians, the Cinghalese and the Veddas. On the last named, cf. Seligmann,The Veddas.67Cf. W. Z. Ripley,The Races of Europe; G. Sergi,The Mediterranean Race; V. de Lapouge,L’Aryen; cf. also, J. Deniker,Les races européennes, and “Les six races composant la population de l’Europe,”Journal Anthropological Institute, vol. 34.68The available evidence indicates that the dolicho-blond race of northern Europe probably originated in a mutation (from the Mediterranean as its parent stock?) during the early neolithic period, that is to say about at the beginning of the neolithic in western Europe. There is less secure ground for conjecture as to the date and circumstances under which any one of the other European races originated, but the date and place of their origin seems to lie outside of Europe and earlier than the European neolithic period. Unfortunately there has been little direct or succinct discussion of this matter among anthropologists hitherto.—Cf. “The Mutation Theory and the Blond Race,”Journal of Race Development, April, 1913.69The Melanesians may be contrasted with the Baltic peoples in this respect, though the comparison is perhaps rather suggestive than convincing. The Melanesians are apparently endowed with a very respectable capacity for workmanship, as regards both insight and application, and with a relatively high sense of economic expediency. They are also possessed of an alert and enduring group solidarity. But they apparently lack that reasonable degree of “humanity” and congenital tolerance that has on the whole kept the peoples of the Baltic region from fatal extravagances of cruelty and sustained hatred between groups. Not that any excess of humanity has marked the course of culture in North Europe. But it seems at least admissible to say that mutual hatred, distrust and disparagement falls more readily into abeyance among these peoples than among the Melanesians; particularly when and in so far as the material interest of the several groups visibly suffers from a continued free run of extravagant animosity. The difference in point of native propensity may not be very marked, but such degree of it as there is has apparently thrown the balance in such a way that the Baltic peoples have, technologically, had the advantage of a wide and relatively easy contact and communication; whereas the Melanesians have during an equally protracted experience spent themselves largely on interstitial animosities—Cf. Codrington,The Melanesians; Seligmann,The Melanesians of British New Guinea.70These considerations apparently apply with peculiar force to the blond race, in that the evidence of early times goes to argue that this stock never lived in isolation from other, rival stocks. It began presumably as a small minority in a community made up chiefly of a different racial type, its parent stock, and in an environment at large in which at least one rival stock was present in force from near the outset; so that race competition, that is to say competition in terms of births and deaths, was instant and unremitting. And this competition the given conditions enforced in terms of group subsistence.71Cf., e. g., Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Stenalderen.”72It has not commonly been noted, though it will scarcely be questioned, that fighting capacity and the propensity to fight have rarely, if ever, been successful in the struggle between races and peoples when brought into competition with a diligent growing of crops and children, if success be counted in terms of race survival.73It is apparently an open question whether these spiritual traits are properly to be ascribed to the dolicho-blond as traits of that type taken by itself, rather than traits characteristic of the hybrid offspring of the blond stock crossed on one or other of the racial stocks associated with it in the populations of Europe. The evidence at large seems rather to bear out the view that any hybrid population is likely to be endowed with an exceptional degree of that restlessness and discontent that go to make up what is spoken of as a “spirit of enterprise” in the race.74As, e. g., the inhabitants of many Polynesian islands at the time of their discovery. See, also, Codrington,The Melanesians.75Not an unusual state of things among the Melanesians and Micronesians, and in a degree among the Australians.76See note,p. 120.77E. g., some Australian natives and some of the lower Malay cultures.78E. g., the Pueblo and the Eskimo.79Indeed, such as very suggestively to recall the ritual objects and observances of the Pueblo Indians.80For an extreme case of this among living communities, see Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. i, pp. 242–250, where the generalisation is set down (p. 248) that “the rudimentary stage of culture through which these tribes have passed, and in some cases are still passing, may perhaps be more accurately described as a wood and bone age than as an age of stone,” in as much as the evidence goes to show that before they began to get metals from the Malays their only implements of a more durable material were “the anvil and hammer (unwrought) ..., the whetstone, chips or flakes used as knives, and cooking stones.” From the different character of their environment this recourse to wood and bone could scarcely have been carried to such an extreme by the savages of the Baltic region.81Cf. Pumpelly,Explorations in Turkestan.82A casual visit to the Scandinavian museums will scarcely convey this impression. To meet the prepossessions of the public, and perhaps of the experts, the weapons are made much of in the showcases, as is to be expected; but they are relatively scarce in the store-rooms, where the tools on the other hand are rather to be estimated by the cubic yard than counted by the piece.83Seen, e. g., in the observance and sanction of tabu in many of the lower cultures.84The Eskimo are placed in circumstances that are in some respects similar to those presumed to have conditioned the life of the blond race and its hybrids during the early phases of its life-history, and among the traits that have made for the survival of the Eskimo is undoubtedly to be counted the somewhat genial good-fellowship of that race, coupled as it is with a notable disinclination to hostilities. So also the Indians of the North-West Coast, whose situation perhaps parallels that of the neolithic Baltic culture more closely even than the Eskimo, are not among the notably warlike peoples of the earth, although they undoubtedly show more of a predatory animus than their northern neighbours. In this case it is probably safe to say that their technological achievements have in no degree been furthered by such warlike enterprise as they have shown, and that their comfort and success as a race would have been even more marked if they had been gifted with less of the warlike spirit and had kept the peace more consistently throughout their habitat than they have done.—Cf. Franz Boas, “The Central Eskimo,”Bureau of American Ethnology, Report, 1884–1885; The same, “The Secret Societies and Social Organisation of the Kwakiutl Indians,”Report, National Museum, 1895; A. P. Niblack, “Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern British Columbia,”ibid, 1888.85Such loss by neglect of technological elements that have been superseded may have serious consequences in case a people of somewhat advanced attainments suffers a material set-back either in its industrial circumstances or in its cultural situation more at large,—as happened, e. g., in the Dark Ages of Europe. In such case it is likely to result that the community will be unable to fall back on a state of the industrial arts suited to the reduced circumstances into which it finds itself thrown, having lost the use of many of the technological elements familiar to earlier generations that lived under similar circumstances, and so the industrial community finds itself in many respects driven to make a virtually new beginning, from a more rudimentary starting point than the situation might otherwise call for. This in turn acts to throw the people back to a more archaic phase of technology and of institutions than the initial cultural loss sustained by the community would of itself appear to warrant.86Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Stenalderen,” sec. iii, “Tidsforhold i den ældre Stenalder;” O. Montelius,Les temps préhistoriques en Suède, ch. i, p. 20.87Compare the case of the Indians of the North-West Coast, who have occupied a region comparable to the neolithic Baltic area in the distribution of land and water as well as in the abundance of good timber.88Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Bronzealderen,” secs. xiii, xiv; Montelius,Les temps préhistoriques en Suède, ch. ii.89Cf., e. g., C. A. Haddon,Evolution in Art, section on “Magic and Religion.”90Except for species that habitually breed by parthenogenesis.91The caution is perhaps unnecessary that it is not hereby intended to suggest a doubt of Mr. Galton’s researches or to question the proposals of the Eugenicals, whose labours are no doubt to be taken for all they are worth.92See, e. g., Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. ii, part ii;Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1884–1885, F. Boas, “The Central Eskimo.”93Cf. Basil Thomson,The Diversions of a Prime Minister, andThe Figians.94The extent of this “quasi-personal fringe” of objects of intimate use varies considerably from one culture to another. It may often be inferred from the range of articles buried or destroyed with the dead among peoples on this level of culture.95A doubt may suggest itself in this connection touching such cultures and peoples as the pagan races of the Malay peninsula, the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, or (possibly) the Negritos of Luzon, but these conceivable exceptions to the rule evidently do not lessen its force.96It may be pertinent to take note of the bearing of these considerations on certain dogmatic concepts that have played a part in the theoretical and controversial speculations of the last century. Much importance has been given by economists of one school and another to the “productivity of labour,” particularly as affording a basis for a just and equitable distribution of the product; one school of controversialists having gone so far against the current of received economic doctrine as to allege that labour is the sole productive factor in industry and that the Labourer is on this ground entitled, in equity, to “the full product of his labor.” It is of course not conceived that the considerations here set forth will dispose of these doctrinal contentions; but they make it at least appear that the productivity of labor, or of any other conceivable factor in industry, is an imputed productivity—imputed on grounds of convention afforded by institutions that have grown up in the course of technological development and that have consequently only such validity as attaches to habits of thought induced by any given phase of collective life. These habits of thought (institutions and principles) are themselves the indirect product of the technological scheme. The controversy as to the productivity of labor should accordingly shift its ground from “the nature of things” to the exigencies of ingrained preconceptions, principles and expediencies as seen in the light of current technological requirements and the current drift of habituation.97See Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Stenalderen,” andAarböger for nordisk Oldkyndighed, 1906.98Cf. W. G. Sollas,Ancient Hunters.99See, e. g., Basil Thomson,The Figians, especially ch. iv, xiv, xxviii, xxxi.100The Pueblos offer a curious exception to this common rule of a parasitic priesthood. While they are much given to religious observances and have an extensive priestly organisation, comprising divers orders and sub-orders, this priesthood appears commonly to derive no income, or even appreciable perquisites, from their office.101The difference in importance and powers between the war chief of the peaceable Pueblos on the one hand and of the predatory Aztecs on the other hand shows how such an official’s status may changede factowithout a notable changede jure.—Cf. also Basil Thomson,The Figians, ch. iv, xxxi, on “Constitution of Society,” and “The Tenure of Land,” where the growth of custom is shown to throw pecuniary prerogative and control into the hands of the successful war chief.102For instance, somewhat generally in the island states of Polynesia. Something suggestively reminiscent of such a condition of things is visible in early feudal Europe, where feudal holdings changed hands with a change in the status of their holders in a way that suggests that ownership was in great measure a corollary following from the tenure of certain civil powers. So, also, in ecclesiastical holdings of the same period and later. And, again, in the doubtful and changing status of the servile classes of feudal Europe, where the distinction between mastery and ownership often seems something of a legal fiction or a distinction without a difference. Feudal Japan affords evidence to much the same effect.103Cf. J. G. Frazer,Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship. The drift of evidence for the North-European cultures of pagan antiquity appears to set strongly in this direction, though the term “priestly,” as applied to these pagan kings, is likely to convey too broad an implication of solemnity and vicariously divine power.104Witness the alleged dealings of Jahve with his chosen people and the laudation bestowed on Him by His priests for “conduct unbecoming a gentleman.”105As witness Pharaonic Egypt, Ancient Peru, Babylon, Assyria, Israel under Solomon and his nearer successors.106See F. B. Jevons,Introduction to the History of Religion, ch. x.107Cf., e. g., Basil Thomson,The Figians, ch. iv.108As shown, for instance, by the pottery and baskets made for trade by the American Indians where they come in trade contact with civilised men.109For a more detailed discussion of these secondary consequences of the institution of ownership, the irksomeness of labour and the conspicuous waste of goods, which cannot be pursued here, seeThe Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. ii-vi.110For some further analysis of the relation between ownership, earnings and the material equipment seeQuarterly Journal of Economics, August, 1908, “On the Nature of Capital;” as also a paper by H. J. Davenport in the same Journal for November, 1910, on “Social Productivity versus Private Acquisition.”111For a more detailed discussion of this disciplinary disparity between business and industrial occupations, cf.The Theory of Business Enterprise, ch. iv, viii and ix.112Cf., e. g., Harrington Emerson,Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages, ch. i, iv.113Such is tacitly assumed to be the nature of modern economic life in the current theoretical formulations of the economists, who make the theory of exchange value the central and controlling doctrine in their theoretical systems, and who with easy conviction trace this value back to an individualistic ground in the doctrines of differential utility—“marginal utility.”114Apart from scattered and progressively inconsequential manifestations of this canon of pecuniary equity in the European community at large, there occurs a quaint and well-defined application of it in the practice of “hólmgangr” in late pagan and early Christian times among the Scandinavian peoples. The “wager of battle” is probably of the same derivation, at least in part.115Cf. Frederic Barnard Hawley,Enterprise and the Productive Process, for an extreme, mature and consistent development of this tenet.116SeeThe Theory of Business Enterprise, ch. iv, vi, vii, for a more detailed discussion of this business traffic and the working principles which govern it. See also H. J. Davenport,The Economics of Enterprise(New York, 1913).117Cf., e. g., Ehrenberg,Das Zeitalter der Fugger; Sombart,Der Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i.118Cf.The Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. iv, v, vi.119Cf. Harrington Emerson,Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages.120Cf., e. g., Karl Bücher,Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, (3d ed.), ch. iv, “Die gewerblichen Betriebssysteme,” ch. v. “Der Niedergang des Handwerks;” W. J. Ashley,English Economic History and Theory, part ii, ch. i, sec. 25, ch. iii, especially sec. 44; W. Cunningham,The Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. ii, Introduction; Werner Sombart,Der Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i, especially ch. iv-xii.121To complete the sketch at this point, even in outline, it would be necessary to go extensively into the relations of ownership and control (largely indirect) in which the owners of land and natural resources, the Landed Interest, had stood to the industrial community of craftsmen before this transition to the business era got under way, as also into the further mutual relations subsisting between the landed interest, the craftsmen and the business community during this transition to a business régime. In the most summary terms the pertinent circumstances appear to have been that from the beginning of its technological era the handicraft community, with its workmanship and its technological attainments, was in an uncertain measure at the discretionary call of the landed interest, largely in an impersonal way through channels of trade and on the whole with decreasingly exacting effect as time went on; and the industrial community at large had by no means emancipated themselves from this control when the era of business enterprise set in; for the landed interest continued to draw its livelihood from the mixed agricultural and handicraft community, and the products of handicraft still continued to go chiefly as supplies to the landed interest in return for the means of subsistence controlled by the latter; and long after the businessmen had taken over the direction of industry the claims of the landed interest still continued paramount in the economic situation, and industry still continued to be carried on largely with a view to meeting the requirements of the landed interest.122“Handwerk (im engeren Sinne) ist diejenige Wirtschaftsform, die hervorwächst aus dem streben eines gewerblichen Arbeiters seine zwischen Kunst und gewöhnlicher Handarbeit die Mitte haltende Fertigkeit zur Herrichtung oder Bearbeitung gewerblicher Gebrauchsgegenstände in der Weise zu vertreten, dass er sich durch Austausch seiner Leistungen oder Erzeugnisse gegen entsprechende Äquivalente seinen Lebensunterhalt verschafft.”—Sombart,Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i, ch. iv.123Cf. Sombart,Der Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i; W. J. Ashley,English Economic History and Theory, bk. i, especially ch. iii; Karl Bücher,die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, ch. iv, v.124A classic passage of Adam Smith shows this handicraft conception of the mechanics of industry: “The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes....” “But this proportion [of the produce to the consumers] must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances; first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed.”—Wealth of Nations, Introduction, p. 1.Adam Smith consistently speaks of industry in terms of manual workmanship, as the traditions and the continued habitual outlook of that generation unavoidably led him to do; and the sweeping way in which his interpretation of economic life finds acceptance with his contemporaries shows that in so doing he is speaking in full consonance with the prevailing conceptions of his time. He writes during the opening passages of the machine era, but he speaks in terms of the past industrial era, from which his outlook on the economic situation and his conception of normal economic relations had been derived. It may be added that his conception of natural liberty in economic matters is similarly derived from the traditional situation, whose discipline during the later phases of the handicraft era inculcated freedom of ownership as applied to the workman’s product and freedom of bargain and sale as touches the traffic of the typical petty trader. And so thoroughly had this manner of conceiving industry and the economic situation been worked into the texture of men’s thinking, that the same line of interpretation continues to satisfy economic theory for a hundred years after Adam Smith had formulated this canon of economic doctrine, and after the situation to which it would apply had been put out by the machine industry and large business management.125The case of the treadle applied to the production of rotary motion is typical of what happens to a technological element of the general class here under discussion. Such a new technological expedient appears at the outset to be apprehended in terms of manual workmanship; but presently it comes, through habitual use, to take its place as a mechanical functioning of the tools in whose use it takes effect,—to be associated in current apprehension with the mechanical appliances employed in its production and, by so much, dissociated from the person of the workman. In a measure, therefore, it falls into the category of impersonal facts that are available as technological raw material with which to go about the work in hand. With further use, and particularly with the interjection of further mechanical expedients between the workman and this given technological element, it will be conceived in progressively more objective fashion, as a fact of the mechanics of brute matter rather than an extension of the workman’s manual reach; until it passes finally into the category of mechanical fact simply, obvious and commonplace through routine use; in which there remains but a vanishing residue of imputed personality, such as attaches to all conceptions of action. The given technological element in this way may be said to pass by degrees out of the workman’s “quasi-personal fringe” of manual effects, into the domain of raw material available for use in workmanship; where it will, in apprehension, be possessed of only such imputed quasi-personal or anthropomorphic characteristics as are necessarily imputed to external facts at large.Concretely, the concept of the treadle seems in its beginnings to be a variant of the same conception that leads to the use of the bow-drill. Both inventions comprise at least two distinct forms. In each the simpler and presumably more primitive form converts a reciprocating longitudinal motion into a reciprocating rotary motion; and it is apparently only after an interval of familiarity and externalisation of this mechanical achievement that the next move takes place in the direction of the perfected treadle, which converts a reciprocating longitudinal into a continuous rotary motion.126Cf. Sombart,Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i, Exkurs zu Kapitel 7, bk. ii, ch. xv.127The adventures of Charles I and James II sufficiently illustrate this insular temper of the industrial and commercial community as contrasted with the crown and the court party.128See ch.iiandiii, above.129The imputation of the feminine in this personification of Nature is probably nothing more than a carrying over of the Latin gender of the word, but there is commonly involved in this quasi-personal conception of Nature a notable imputation of kindliness and gentle solicitude that well comports with her putative womanhood. By extraordinarily easy gradationNatura naturanspasses over into Mother Nature. The contrast in this respect, simply on its sentimental side, between the conception of Nature, say in the eighteenth century, on the one hand, and the patriarchal Heavenly King, remote and austere, of the Mediæval cult on the other hand is striking enough. In point of sentimental content this conception of Nature is more nearly in touch with the mediæval Mother of God than with the Heavenly King.130This, of course, does not overlook the fact that in the course of scientific inquiry there has been an increasing use of statistical methods and results, and that this recourse to statistics has been of an increasingly objective character, both in its methods and in the items handled. It is also to be noted that from time to time serious and consequential attempts have been made to reduce scientific argument at large to similarly objective terms of quantity, quantivalence and concomitance. Karl Pearson’sGrammar of Science, for instance is a shrewd and somewhat popularly known endeavour of this kind. So, again, the philosophical views associated with the names of Leibnitz and of Berkely are of this nature, and there is not a little of the same line of scepticism in the speculations of Hume. But it is equally to be noted that except on the remote plane of generality that belongs to philosophical speculation, and except in the works of pure mathematics, this method of handling facts has not proved available for scientific ends. The “idle curiosity” which finds employment in scientific inquiry is not content with the vacant relation of concomitance alone among the facts which it seeks and systematises. In scientific theory no headway has been made hitherto without the use of this indispensable imputation of causality.—In this connection cf. a paper on “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,”University of California Chronicle, November, 1908, especially footnote, p. 396.131In this connection it is worth noting, for what it may be worth, that there is a similarly rough concomitance between the diffusion of the blond racial stock in Europe and the modern forms of protestantism and religious heresy. Whether this fact strengthens or weakens any argument that may be drawn from the concomitance of heresy and industry cited above may perhaps best be left an open question.132Seechapter v, above.133Cf. Ashley,English Economic History and Theory, bk. i, ch. i; Karl Bücher,Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, ch. iii.134Cf. R. Ehrenberg,Das Zeitalter der Fugger.135Seen, as indicated above, in the matter-of-course resort of the scientists to the conception of efficient cause as a solvent of problems touching material phenomena, as well as in the theologians’ and philosophers’ resistless drift toward creative efficiency as the ultimate term of their speculations.136Cf. Locke,Of Civil Government, ch. v, “Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has a right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”137Illustrative instances of such a customary code of “natural” rights and obligations are numerous in the late literature of ethnology. Good illustrations are afforded by various papers in theReports of the Am. Bureau of Ethnology, on the culture of the Pueblos, Eskimo, and the Indians of the North-West Coast; so also in Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, or in Seligmann,The Veddas.138Cf., e. g., C. Beard,The Industrial Revolution, ch. ii; Spencer Walpole,History of England from 1815, vol. i; C. W. Taylor,The Modern Factory System, ch. i, ii.139In a general way, the relation in which the skilled workman in the large industries stands to the machine process is analogous to that in which the primitive herdsman, shepherd or dairymaid stand to the domestic animals under their care, rather than to the relation of the craftsman to his tools. It is a work of attendance, furtherance and skilled interference rather than a forceful and dexterous use of an implement.140It follows also, among other secondary consequences, that the effective industrial life of the skilled workman will, in order to the best average effect, begin at an appreciably more advanced age, and will therefore be shortened by that much. The period of preparation becomes more protracted, more exacting and more costly, and the effective life cycle of the workman grows shorter. Although it does not, perhaps, belong in precisely this connection, it may not be out of place to recall that the increasingly exacting requirements of the machine industry, particularly in the way of accurate, alert and facile conformity to the requirements of the machine process, interrupt the industrial life of the skilled workman at an earlier point in the course of senile decay. So that the industrial life-cycle of the workman is shortened both at its beginning and at its close, at the same time that the commonplace preparation for work grows more costly and exacting.Child labour, which once may, industrially speaking, have been an economical method of consuming the available human material, is no longer compatible with the highest industrial efficiency, even apart from any question of hardship or deterioration incident to an excessive or abusive recourse to child labour; it is incompatible with the community’s material interests. Therefore the business community—the body of businessmen at large—for whose behoof the industries of the country are carried on, have a direct interest not only in extending the age of exemption from industrial employment but also in procuring an adequate schooling of the incoming generation of workmen. The business community is evidently coming to appreciate this state of the case, at least in some degree, as is evidenced by their inclination to favour instruction in the “practical” branches in the public schools, at the public expense, as well as by the wide-reaching movement that aims to equip private and state schools that shall prepare the youth for work in the various lines of industrial employment.141Cf.,e. g., Adam Smith’s reflections on the uses of an accurate watch,Theory of the Moral Sentiments, part iv, ch. 2.142On the other hand the aphorism often cited, that “Necessity is the Mother of Invention,” appears to be nothing better than a fragment of uncritical rationalism. It offers a rationalised,ex post factoaccount of changes that take place, and reflects that ancient preconception by help of which the spokesmen of edification were enabled to interpret all change as an improvement due to the achievement of some definitely foreknown end. It appears also to be consistently untrue, except so far as “invention” is to be taken as a euphemistic synonym for “prevarication.” Doubtless, the felt need of ways and means has brought on many changes in technology, but doubtless also the ulterior consequences of any one of the greater mechanical inventions have in the main been neither foreseen nor intended in the designing of them. The more serious consequences, especially such as have an institutional bearing, have been enforced by the inventions rather than designed by the inventors.143See pp.18–21, above.144Cf., however, what has been said above (pp. 21–23) of the variability and adaptability of a hybrid population and the possible selective establishment of a hybrid type more suitable to current conditions of life than any one of the racial stocks out of which the hybrid population is made up.145So,e. g., the modern technology has, directly and indirectly, brought on the growth of large cities and industrial towns, as well as an increasing density of population at large. This modern state of the industrial arts is a creation of the European community of nations, with the blond-hybrid populations leading. The population of these countries is drifting into these machine-made cities and towns, and this drift affects the blond-hybrids in a more pronounced degree than any other similarly distinguishable element in the population. At the same time the birth-rate is lower and the death-rate higher in these modern urban communities than in the open country, in spite of the fact that more attention is given to preventive sanitation in the urban than in the rural communities, and it is in the urban communities that medical attendance is most available at the same time that its most efficient practitioners congregate there. This accelerated death-rate strikes the blond-hybrids of the towns in an eminent degree; and infant mortality in the towns, particularly, runs at such a figure as to be viewed with the liveliest apprehension. In its summary effects on the viability of the modern peoples this modern technology appears to be as untoward as would their removal to an unsuitable climate. Indeed the hygienic measures that are taken or advocated as a remedy for these machine-made conditions of urban life are of much the same character and require much the same degree of meticulous attention to details that are required to preserve the life of Europeans under the precarious climatic conditions of the low latitudes. So that, for these Europeans at least, the hygienic situation created by their own technology has much of that character of a comprehensive clinic that attaches to the British occupation of India or the later European occupation of West Africa or the Philippines.146The statisticians of a hundred years ago,e. g., were content to work in round percentages where their latterday successors are doubtfully content with three-place decimals.147An eminently illustrative instance of the mechanistic bias in the moral sciences is afforded by the hedonistic conceptions of the early nineteenth century; and the deistic theology of that period and earlier is no less characteristic a symptom of the same animus.Cf.also, for a view running to a conclusion opposed to that spoken for above, H. Bergson,Creative Evolution(translation by Arthur Mitchell, New York, 1911), ch. i, especially pp. 16–23; where the mechanistic conception is construed as an instinctive metaphysical norm and contrasted with the deliverances of reason and experience, which are then held to inculcate an anthropomorphic interpretation of the same facts.148“Pragmatism” is the term that has been elected to cover this metaphysical postulate of efficiency conceived as the bench mark of actuality.149Of all these latterday revulsionary schemes of surcease from the void and irritation of the mechanistic conception, that spoken for by M. H. Bergson is doubtless the most felicitous, at the same time that it is, in its elements, the most engagingly naïve. Apart from, and without prejudice to, the (doubtless very substantial) merits of this system of speculative tenets, the vogue which it has achieved appears to be due in good part to its consonance with this archaic bent of civilised human nature, already spoken of. The immanent, or rather intrinsically dominant, creative bent inherent in matter and not objectively distinguishable from it, is sufficiently suggestive of that praeter-mechanical efficacy that seems so easy of comprehension to many of the peoples on the lower levels of culture, and that affords the substantial ground of magical practices and finds untroubled expression in the more naïve of their theoretical speculations. It would be a work of extreme difficulty, e. g., to set up a consistently tenable distinction between M. Bergson’sélan de la vie, on the one hand, and themanaof the Melanesians (Cf.Codrington,The Melanesians, esp. ch. vii and xii), thewakondaof the Sioux (Cf.A. C. Fletcher and F. la Flesche, “The Omaha Tribe,”Bureau of Ethnology, Report xxvii(1905–1906), esp. pp. 597–599), or even thehamingiaof Scandinavian paganism, on the other hand.In fact, the point of departure and support for M. Bergson’s speculations appears to be nothing else than a projection, into objective reality, of the same human trait that has here been spoken of as the instinct of workmanship; this norm of initiative and efficiency which so is imposed on objective facts being then worked out with great subtlety and sympathetic insight, to make a comprehensive, cosmological scheme. The like projection of workmanlike initiative and efficiency, and its imputation to objective reality, both at large—as with M. Bergson—and in concrete detail, with more or less of personalisation, is one of the main, though frequently misunderstood, factors in the cosmologies that do duty as a body of science and philosophy among savages and the lower barbarians.That the roots of this speculative scheme of “creative evolution” should reach so far into the background of human culture and draw on sources so close to the undisciplined prime-movers of human nature is, of course, in no degree derogatory to this system of theory; nor does it raise any presumption of unsoundness in the tenets that so are, in the course of elaboration, built up out of this metaphysical postulate. In point of fact, the characterisation here offered places M. Bergson’s thesis, and therefore his system, precisely where he has been at pains to explain that he wishes to take his initial position in advocating his view,—at an even break with the mechanistic conception; the merits of which, as contrasted with his own thesis, will then be made to appear in the course of the further argument that is to decide between their rival claims to primacy. In point of formal and provisional legitimation, such an imputation of workmanlike efficacy at large rests on ground precisely even with that on which the mechanistic conception also rests,—viz. imputation by force of metaphysical necessity, that is to say by force of an instinctive impulse. The main theorem of causation, as well as its several mechanistic corollaries, are, in the last resort, putative traits of matter only, not facts of observation; and the like is true—in M. Bergson’s argument admittedly so—of theélan de la vieas well. So far, therefore, as regards the formally determinable antecedent probability of the two rival conceptions, the one is as good as the other; but M. Bergson’s argument, running on ground of circumstantial evidence in the main, makes out at least a cogently attractive likelihood that the conception for which he speaks is to be accepted as the more fundamental, underlying the mechanistic conception, conditioning it and on occasion overruling its findings in matters that lie beyond its ascertained competence. Which would come, in a different phrasing, to saying that the imputation of creatively workmanlike efficiency rests on instinctive ground more indefeasibly intrinsic to human nature; presumably in virtue of its embodying the functioning of an instinctive proclivity less sophisticated and narrowed by special habituation, such special habituation, e. g., as that exercised by the technology of handicraft and the machine process in recent times.150All this, of course, neither ignores nor denies the substantial part which thejus gentiumand thejus naturaleof the Roman jurists and their commentators have played in the formulation of the system of Natural Rights. In point of pedigree the line of derivation of these legal principles is doubtless substantially as set forth authentically by the jurists who have spent their competent endeavors on that matter. So far as regards the English-speaking communities this pedigree runs back to Locke, and through Locke to the line of jurists and philosophers on whom that great scholar has drawn; while for the promulgation of the like system of principles more at large the names of Grotius, Pufendorf, Althusius doubtless have all the significance commonly assigned them. See pp.290–293above.151Unless the “Syndicalist” movement is to be taken as something sufficiently definite in its principles to make it an exception to the rule.152Cf., e. g., Anna Youngman,The Economic Causes of Great Fortunes, especially ch. vi; R. Ehrenburg,Grosse Vermögen; Ida Tarbell,History of the Standard Oil Company.153Cf. a paper “On the Nature of Capital” in theQuarterly Journal of Economics, November, 1908.154As late as Adam Smith’s time “manufacturer” still retained its etymological value and designated the workman who made the goods. But from about that time, that is to say since the machine process and the business control of industry have thoroughly taken effect, the term no longer has a technological connotation but has taken on a pecuniary (business) signification wholly; so that the term now designates a businessman who stands in none but a pecuniary relation to the processes of industry.
1Cf. Jacques Loeb,Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology, ch. i.
1Cf. Jacques Loeb,Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology, ch. i.
2Cf. W. James,Principles of Psychology, ch. xxiv and xxv, where, however, the difference between tropism and instinct is not kept well in hand,—the tropisms having at that date not been subjected to inquiry and definition as has been true since then; William McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. i.
2Cf. W. James,Principles of Psychology, ch. xxiv and xxv, where, however, the difference between tropism and instinct is not kept well in hand,—the tropisms having at that date not been subjected to inquiry and definition as has been true since then; William McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. i.
3Loeb,Comparative Physiology of the Brain, pp. 177–178.
3Loeb,Comparative Physiology of the Brain, pp. 177–178.
4Cf. Graham Wallas,Human Nature in Politics, especially ch. i.
4Cf. Graham Wallas,Human Nature in Politics, especially ch. i.
5Cf., e. g., James,Principles of Psychology, ch. xxiv; William McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. iii.
5Cf., e. g., James,Principles of Psychology, ch. xxiv; William McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. iii.
6Loeb,Comparative Physiology of the Brain, especially ch. xiii.
6Loeb,Comparative Physiology of the Brain, especially ch. xiii.
7It is of course only as physiological traits that the tropisms are conceived not to overlap, blend or interfere, and it is likewise only in respect of their physiological discontinuity that the like argument would bear on the instincts. In respect of their expression, in the way of orientation, movement, growth, secretion, and the like, the tropismatic response to dissimilar stimuli is often so apparently identical that expert investigators have at times been at a loss to decide to which one of two or several recognised tropismatic sensibilities a given motor response should be ascribed. But in respect of their ultimate physiological character, the intimate physiological process by which the given sensibility takes effect, the response due to different tropismatic sensibilities appears in each case to be distinctive and not to blend with any other response to a different stimulus, with which it may happen to synchronise.
7It is of course only as physiological traits that the tropisms are conceived not to overlap, blend or interfere, and it is likewise only in respect of their physiological discontinuity that the like argument would bear on the instincts. In respect of their expression, in the way of orientation, movement, growth, secretion, and the like, the tropismatic response to dissimilar stimuli is often so apparently identical that expert investigators have at times been at a loss to decide to which one of two or several recognised tropismatic sensibilities a given motor response should be ascribed. But in respect of their ultimate physiological character, the intimate physiological process by which the given sensibility takes effect, the response due to different tropismatic sensibilities appears in each case to be distinctive and not to blend with any other response to a different stimulus, with which it may happen to synchronise.
8Cf., e. g., McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. i-iii.
8Cf., e. g., McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. i-iii.
9Cf., e. g., Otto Ammon,Die Gesellschaftsordnung; G. Vacher de Lapouge,Les sélections sociales, andRace et milieu social, especially “Lois fondamentales de l’Anthroposociologie.”
9Cf., e. g., Otto Ammon,Die Gesellschaftsordnung; G. Vacher de Lapouge,Les sélections sociales, andRace et milieu social, especially “Lois fondamentales de l’Anthroposociologie.”
10The all-pervading modern institution of private property appears to have been of such an origin, having cumulatively grown out of the self-regarding bias of men in their oversight of the community’s material interests.
10The all-pervading modern institution of private property appears to have been of such an origin, having cumulatively grown out of the self-regarding bias of men in their oversight of the community’s material interests.
11Cf. McDougall,Social Psychology, ch. x.
11Cf. McDougall,Social Psychology, ch. x.
12Latterly the question of instincts has been a subject of somewhat extensive discussion among students of animal behaviour, and throughout this discussion the argument has commonly been conducted on neurological, or at the most on physiological ground. This line of argument is well and lucidly presented in a volume recently published (The Science of Human Behavior, New York, 1913) by Mr. Maurice Parmalee. The book offers an incisive critical discussion of the Nature of Instinct (ch. xi) with a specific reference to the instinct of workmanship (p. 252). The discussion runs, faithfully and competently, on neurological ground and reaches the outcome to be expected in an endeavour to reduce instinct to neurological (or physiological) terms. As has commonly been true of similar endeavours, the outcome is essentially negative, in that “instinct” is not so much explained as explained away. The reason of this outcome is sufficiently evident; “instinct,” being not a neurological or physiological concept, is not statable in neurological or physiological terms. The instinct of workmanship no more than any other instinctive proclivity is an isolable, discrete neural function; which, however, does not touch the question of its status as a psychological element. The effect of such an analysis as is offered by Mr. Parmalee is not to give terminological precision to the concept of “instinct” in the sense assigned it in current usage, but to dispense with it; which is an untoward move in that it deprives the student of the free use of this familiar term in its familiar sense and therefore constrains him to bring the indispensable concept of instinct in again surreptitiously under cover of some unfamiliar term or some terminological circumlocution. The current mechanistic analyses of animal behaviour are of great and undoubted value to any inquiry into human conduct, but their value does not lie in an attempt to make them supersede those psychological phenomena which it is their purpose to explain. That such supersession of psychological phenomena by the mechanistic formulations need nowise follow and need not be entertained appears, e. g., in such work as that of Mr. Loeb, referred to above,Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology.
12Latterly the question of instincts has been a subject of somewhat extensive discussion among students of animal behaviour, and throughout this discussion the argument has commonly been conducted on neurological, or at the most on physiological ground. This line of argument is well and lucidly presented in a volume recently published (The Science of Human Behavior, New York, 1913) by Mr. Maurice Parmalee. The book offers an incisive critical discussion of the Nature of Instinct (ch. xi) with a specific reference to the instinct of workmanship (p. 252). The discussion runs, faithfully and competently, on neurological ground and reaches the outcome to be expected in an endeavour to reduce instinct to neurological (or physiological) terms. As has commonly been true of similar endeavours, the outcome is essentially negative, in that “instinct” is not so much explained as explained away. The reason of this outcome is sufficiently evident; “instinct,” being not a neurological or physiological concept, is not statable in neurological or physiological terms. The instinct of workmanship no more than any other instinctive proclivity is an isolable, discrete neural function; which, however, does not touch the question of its status as a psychological element. The effect of such an analysis as is offered by Mr. Parmalee is not to give terminological precision to the concept of “instinct” in the sense assigned it in current usage, but to dispense with it; which is an untoward move in that it deprives the student of the free use of this familiar term in its familiar sense and therefore constrains him to bring the indispensable concept of instinct in again surreptitiously under cover of some unfamiliar term or some terminological circumlocution. The current mechanistic analyses of animal behaviour are of great and undoubted value to any inquiry into human conduct, but their value does not lie in an attempt to make them supersede those psychological phenomena which it is their purpose to explain. That such supersession of psychological phenomena by the mechanistic formulations need nowise follow and need not be entertained appears, e. g., in such work as that of Mr. Loeb, referred to above,Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology.
13Endless in the sense that the effects of such concatenation do not run to a final term in any direction.
13Endless in the sense that the effects of such concatenation do not run to a final term in any direction.
14Many students of animal behaviour are still, as psychologists generally once were, inclined to contrast instinct with intelligence, and to confine the term typically to such automatically determinate action as takes effect without deliberation or intelligent oversight. This view would appear to be a remnant of an earlier theoretical position, according to which all the functions of intelligence were referred to a distinct immaterial entity, entelechy, associated in symbiosis with the physical organism. If all such preconceptions of a substantial dichotomy between physiological and psychological activity be abandoned it becomes a matter of course that intellectual functions themselves take effect only on the initiative of the instinctive dispositions and under their surveillance, and the antithesis between instinct and intelligence will consequently fall away. What expedients of terminology and discrimination may then be resorted to in the study of those animal instincts that involve a minimum of intellect is of course a question for the comparative psychologists. Cf., for instance, C. Lloyd Morgan,Introduction to Comparative Psychology(2nd edition, 1906) ch. xii, especially pp. 206–209, andHabit and Instinct, ch. i and vi.
14Many students of animal behaviour are still, as psychologists generally once were, inclined to contrast instinct with intelligence, and to confine the term typically to such automatically determinate action as takes effect without deliberation or intelligent oversight. This view would appear to be a remnant of an earlier theoretical position, according to which all the functions of intelligence were referred to a distinct immaterial entity, entelechy, associated in symbiosis with the physical organism. If all such preconceptions of a substantial dichotomy between physiological and psychological activity be abandoned it becomes a matter of course that intellectual functions themselves take effect only on the initiative of the instinctive dispositions and under their surveillance, and the antithesis between instinct and intelligence will consequently fall away. What expedients of terminology and discrimination may then be resorted to in the study of those animal instincts that involve a minimum of intellect is of course a question for the comparative psychologists. Cf., for instance, C. Lloyd Morgan,Introduction to Comparative Psychology(2nd edition, 1906) ch. xii, especially pp. 206–209, andHabit and Instinct, ch. i and vi.
15Cf. H. S. Jennings,Behavior of the Lower Animals, ch. xii, xx, xxi.
15Cf. H. S. Jennings,Behavior of the Lower Animals, ch. xii, xx, xxi.
16See McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. iii and x.
16See McDougall,Introduction to Social Psychology, ch. iii and x.
17Cf. M. F. Washburn,The Animal Mind, ch. x, xi, where the simpler facts of habituation are suggestively presented in conformity with current views of empirical psychology.
17Cf. M. F. Washburn,The Animal Mind, ch. x, xi, where the simpler facts of habituation are suggestively presented in conformity with current views of empirical psychology.
18Cf., e. g., Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia; Seligmann,The Veddas.
18Cf., e. g., Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia; Seligmann,The Veddas.
19Hutton Webster,Primitive Secret Societies, especially ch. iii and iv.
19Hutton Webster,Primitive Secret Societies, especially ch. iii and iv.
20J. G. Frazer,Early History of the Kingship, ch. iv, p. 107.
20J. G. Frazer,Early History of the Kingship, ch. iv, p. 107.
21E. g., some native tribes of Australia; cf. Spencer and Gillen,The Native Tribes of Central Australia, especially ch. i.
21E. g., some native tribes of Australia; cf. Spencer and Gillen,The Native Tribes of Central Australia, especially ch. i.
22Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula.
22Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula.
23J. Murdoch, “The Point Barrow Eskimo,”Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1887–1888; F. Boas, “The Central Eskimo,”Ibid, 1884–1885.
23J. Murdoch, “The Point Barrow Eskimo,”Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1887–1888; F. Boas, “The Central Eskimo,”Ibid, 1884–1885.
24E. H. Man, “On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,”J. A. I., vol. xii.
24E. H. Man, “On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,”J. A. I., vol. xii.
25Reports, Bureau of American Ethnology, numerous papers by different writers, perhaps especially Mrs. Stevenson, “The Sia,” 11th Report (1889–1890).
25Reports, Bureau of American Ethnology, numerous papers by different writers, perhaps especially Mrs. Stevenson, “The Sia,” 11th Report (1889–1890).
26Current economic theory commonly proceeds on the “hedonistic calculus”, so called, (cf. Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to thePrinciples of Morals and Legislation) or the “hedonic principle”, as it has also been called, (cf. Pantaleoni,Pure Economics, ch. i). This “principle” affords the major premise of current theory. It postulates that individual self-seeking is the prime mover of all economic conduct. There is some uncertainty and disagreement among latterday economists as to the precise terms proper to be employed to designate this principle of conduct and its working-out; in the apprehension of later speculators Bentham’s “pleasure and pain” has seemed too bald and materialistic, and they have had recourse to such less precise and definable terms as “gratification,” “satisfactions,” “sacrifice,” “utility” and “disutility,” “psychic income,” etc., but hitherto without any conclusive revision of the terminology. These differences and suggested innovations do not touch the substance of the ancient postulate. Proceeding on this postulate the theoreticians have laid down the broad proposition that “present goods are preferred to future goods”; from which arise many meticulous difficulties of theory, particularly in any attempt to make the deliverances of theory square with workday facts. The modicum of truth contained in this proposition would appear to be better expressed in the formula: “Prospective security is preferred to prospective risk;” which seems to be nearly all that is required either as a generalisation of the human motives in the case or as a premise for the theoretical refinements aimed at, whereas the dictum that “present goods are preferred to future goods” must, on reflection, commend itself as substantially false. By and large, of course, goods are not wanted except for prospective use—beyond the measure of that urgent current consumption that plays no part in the theoretical refinements for which the dictum is invoked. It will immediately be apparent on reflection that even for the individual’s own advantage “present goods are preferred to future goods” only where and in so far as property rights are secure, and then only for future use. It is for productive use in the future, or more particularly for the sake of prospective revenue to be drawn from wealth so held, by lending or investing it, that such a preference becomes effective. Apart from this pecuniary advantage that attaches to property held over from the present to the future there appears to be no such preference even as a matter of individual self-seeking, and where such pecuniary considerations are not dominant there is no such preference for “present goods.” It is present “wealth,” not present “goods,” that is the object of desire; and present wealth is desired mainly for its prospective advantage. It is well known that in communities where there are habitually no businesslike credit extensions or investments for profit, savings take the form of hoarding, that is, accumulation for future use in preference to present consumption. There might be some division of opinion as to the character of the prospective use for which goods are sought, but there can be little question that much, if not most, of this prospective use is not of a self-regarding character and is not sought from motives of sensuous gain.
26Current economic theory commonly proceeds on the “hedonistic calculus”, so called, (cf. Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to thePrinciples of Morals and Legislation) or the “hedonic principle”, as it has also been called, (cf. Pantaleoni,Pure Economics, ch. i). This “principle” affords the major premise of current theory. It postulates that individual self-seeking is the prime mover of all economic conduct. There is some uncertainty and disagreement among latterday economists as to the precise terms proper to be employed to designate this principle of conduct and its working-out; in the apprehension of later speculators Bentham’s “pleasure and pain” has seemed too bald and materialistic, and they have had recourse to such less precise and definable terms as “gratification,” “satisfactions,” “sacrifice,” “utility” and “disutility,” “psychic income,” etc., but hitherto without any conclusive revision of the terminology. These differences and suggested innovations do not touch the substance of the ancient postulate. Proceeding on this postulate the theoreticians have laid down the broad proposition that “present goods are preferred to future goods”; from which arise many meticulous difficulties of theory, particularly in any attempt to make the deliverances of theory square with workday facts. The modicum of truth contained in this proposition would appear to be better expressed in the formula: “Prospective security is preferred to prospective risk;” which seems to be nearly all that is required either as a generalisation of the human motives in the case or as a premise for the theoretical refinements aimed at, whereas the dictum that “present goods are preferred to future goods” must, on reflection, commend itself as substantially false. By and large, of course, goods are not wanted except for prospective use—beyond the measure of that urgent current consumption that plays no part in the theoretical refinements for which the dictum is invoked. It will immediately be apparent on reflection that even for the individual’s own advantage “present goods are preferred to future goods” only where and in so far as property rights are secure, and then only for future use. It is for productive use in the future, or more particularly for the sake of prospective revenue to be drawn from wealth so held, by lending or investing it, that such a preference becomes effective. Apart from this pecuniary advantage that attaches to property held over from the present to the future there appears to be no such preference even as a matter of individual self-seeking, and where such pecuniary considerations are not dominant there is no such preference for “present goods.” It is present “wealth,” not present “goods,” that is the object of desire; and present wealth is desired mainly for its prospective advantage. It is well known that in communities where there are habitually no businesslike credit extensions or investments for profit, savings take the form of hoarding, that is, accumulation for future use in preference to present consumption. There might be some division of opinion as to the character of the prospective use for which goods are sought, but there can be little question that much, if not most, of this prospective use is not of a self-regarding character and is not sought from motives of sensuous gain.
27Traditionally a theoretical presumption has been held to the contrary. It has been taken for granted that the institutional outcome of men’s native dispositions will be sound and salutary; but this presumption overlooks the effects of complication and deflection among instincts, due to cumulative habit. The tradition has come down as an article of uncritical faith from the historic belief in a beneficent Order of Nature; which in turn runs back to the early-modern religious conception of a Providential Order instituted by a shrewd and benevolent Creator; which rests on an anthropomorphic imputation of parental solicitude and workmanship to an assumed metaphysical substratum of things. This traditional view therefore is substantially theological and has that degree of validity that may be derived from the putative characteristics of any anthropomorphic divinity.
27Traditionally a theoretical presumption has been held to the contrary. It has been taken for granted that the institutional outcome of men’s native dispositions will be sound and salutary; but this presumption overlooks the effects of complication and deflection among instincts, due to cumulative habit. The tradition has come down as an article of uncritical faith from the historic belief in a beneficent Order of Nature; which in turn runs back to the early-modern religious conception of a Providential Order instituted by a shrewd and benevolent Creator; which rests on an anthropomorphic imputation of parental solicitude and workmanship to an assumed metaphysical substratum of things. This traditional view therefore is substantially theological and has that degree of validity that may be derived from the putative characteristics of any anthropomorphic divinity.
28Cf. e. g., F. H. Cushing, “A Study of Pueblo Pottery as illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth,”Report, Bureau of Ethnology, 1882–1883 (vol. iv); J. W. Fewkes, “Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895,” sections on “Pottery” and “Paleography of the Pottery,”ibid, 1896–1897 (vol. xviii); W. H. Holmes, “The Ancient Art of Chiriqui,”ibid, 1884–1885 (vol. vi).
28Cf. e. g., F. H. Cushing, “A Study of Pueblo Pottery as illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth,”Report, Bureau of Ethnology, 1882–1883 (vol. iv); J. W. Fewkes, “Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895,” sections on “Pottery” and “Paleography of the Pottery,”ibid, 1896–1897 (vol. xviii); W. H. Holmes, “The Ancient Art of Chiriqui,”ibid, 1884–1885 (vol. vi).
29The restrictions in this respect are mainly those which devote the “sacred” vessels, distinguished by peculiar shapes and decorations, to particular ceremonial uses.
29The restrictions in this respect are mainly those which devote the “sacred” vessels, distinguished by peculiar shapes and decorations, to particular ceremonial uses.
30Cf. E. B. Tylor,Primitive Culture, especially ch. xvii.
30Cf. E. B. Tylor,Primitive Culture, especially ch. xvii.
31Cf. “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,”University of California Chronicle, Oct., 1908.
31Cf. “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,”University of California Chronicle, Oct., 1908.
32So, e. g., the proficiency of Bushmen, Veddas, Australians, American Indians, and other peoples of a low technological plane, in tracking game has been remarked on with great admiration by all observers; and the efficiency of these and others of their like is no less admirable as regards swimming, boating, riding, climbing, stalking, etc.
32So, e. g., the proficiency of Bushmen, Veddas, Australians, American Indians, and other peoples of a low technological plane, in tracking game has been remarked on with great admiration by all observers; and the efficiency of these and others of their like is no less admirable as regards swimming, boating, riding, climbing, stalking, etc.
33Cf. G. and A. de Mortillet,Le Préhistorique, especially the chapter “Données chronologiques,” pp. 662–664; W. G. Sollas,Ancient Hunters, ch. i and xiv.
33Cf. G. and A. de Mortillet,Le Préhistorique, especially the chapter “Données chronologiques,” pp. 662–664; W. G. Sollas,Ancient Hunters, ch. i and xiv.
34Cf. Sophus Müller,L’Europe Préhistorique.
34Cf. Sophus Müller,L’Europe Préhistorique.
35Cf., e. g.,Report of Bureau of American Ethnology, 1884–1885, Franz Boas, “The Central Eskimo;”ibid, 1887–1888, John Murdoch, “The Point Barrow Eskimo.”
35Cf., e. g.,Report of Bureau of American Ethnology, 1884–1885, Franz Boas, “The Central Eskimo;”ibid, 1887–1888, John Murdoch, “The Point Barrow Eskimo.”
36What is assumed here is what is commonly held, viz. that the racial stocks that made up the late palæolithic population of Europe are still represented in a moderate way in the racial mixture that fills Europe today, and that these older racial types not only recur sporadically in the European population at large but are also present locally in sufficient force to give a particular character to the population of given localities. (See G. de Mortillet,Formation de la nation française, 4me partie, and Conclusions, pp. 275–329.) Great changes took place in the racial complexion of Europe in the beginning and early phases of the neolithic period, but since then no intrusion of new stocks has seriously disturbed the mixture of races, except in isolated areas, of secondary consequence to the cultural situation at large.See also W. G. Sollas, Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives.
36What is assumed here is what is commonly held, viz. that the racial stocks that made up the late palæolithic population of Europe are still represented in a moderate way in the racial mixture that fills Europe today, and that these older racial types not only recur sporadically in the European population at large but are also present locally in sufficient force to give a particular character to the population of given localities. (See G. de Mortillet,Formation de la nation française, 4me partie, and Conclusions, pp. 275–329.) Great changes took place in the racial complexion of Europe in the beginning and early phases of the neolithic period, but since then no intrusion of new stocks has seriously disturbed the mixture of races, except in isolated areas, of secondary consequence to the cultural situation at large.
See also W. G. Sollas, Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives.
37These improved races are commonly, if not always, a product of hybridisation, though it is conceivable that such a race might arise as a “sport,” a Mendelian mutant. To establish such a race or “composite pure line” of hybrids and to propagate and improve it in the course of further breeding demands a degree of patient attention and consistent aim.
37These improved races are commonly, if not always, a product of hybridisation, though it is conceivable that such a race might arise as a “sport,” a Mendelian mutant. To establish such a race or “composite pure line” of hybrids and to propagate and improve it in the course of further breeding demands a degree of patient attention and consistent aim.
38The late neolithic, or “æneolithic,” culture brought to light by Pumpelly at Anau in Transcaspia shows the synchronism of advance between the technology of the mechanic arts on the one hand and of tillage and cattle-breeding on the other hand in a remarkably lucid way. The site is held to date back to some 8000 B. C. or earlier and shows continuous occupation through a period of several thousand years. The settlers at Anau brought cereals (barley and wheat) when the settlement was made; so that the cultivation of these grains must date back some considerable distance farther into the stone age of Asia. In succeeding ages the people of Anau made some further advance in the use of crop plants; whether by improvement and innovation at home or by borrowing has not been determined. Presently, in the course of the next few thousand years, they brought into domestication and adapted to domestic use by selective breeding the greater number of those species of animals that have since made up the complement of live stock in the Western culture. In the mechanic arts the visible advance is slight as compared with the work in cattle-breeding, though it cannot be called insignificant taken by itself. The more notable improvements in this direction are believed to be due to borrowing. Perhaps the most characteristic trait of the mechanic technology at Anau is the total absence of weapons in the lower half of the deposits.—Raphael Pumpelly,Explorations in Turkestan: Prehistoric Civilizations of Anau. (Carnegie Publication No. 73.) Washington, 1908.
38The late neolithic, or “æneolithic,” culture brought to light by Pumpelly at Anau in Transcaspia shows the synchronism of advance between the technology of the mechanic arts on the one hand and of tillage and cattle-breeding on the other hand in a remarkably lucid way. The site is held to date back to some 8000 B. C. or earlier and shows continuous occupation through a period of several thousand years. The settlers at Anau brought cereals (barley and wheat) when the settlement was made; so that the cultivation of these grains must date back some considerable distance farther into the stone age of Asia. In succeeding ages the people of Anau made some further advance in the use of crop plants; whether by improvement and innovation at home or by borrowing has not been determined. Presently, in the course of the next few thousand years, they brought into domestication and adapted to domestic use by selective breeding the greater number of those species of animals that have since made up the complement of live stock in the Western culture. In the mechanic arts the visible advance is slight as compared with the work in cattle-breeding, though it cannot be called insignificant taken by itself. The more notable improvements in this direction are believed to be due to borrowing. Perhaps the most characteristic trait of the mechanic technology at Anau is the total absence of weapons in the lower half of the deposits.—Raphael Pumpelly,Explorations in Turkestan: Prehistoric Civilizations of Anau. (Carnegie Publication No. 73.) Washington, 1908.
39Cf. O. F. Cook, “Food Plants of Ancient America.”Report of Smithsonian Institution, 1903. E. J. Payne,History of the New World Called America, vol. i, (1892), pp. 336–427.
39Cf. O. F. Cook, “Food Plants of Ancient America.”Report of Smithsonian Institution, 1903. E. J. Payne,History of the New World Called America, vol. i, (1892), pp. 336–427.
40Cf. E. J. Payne, as above.
40Cf. E. J. Payne, as above.
41Cf., e. g., Lumholtz,Unknown Mexico, vol. i, ch. vi.
41Cf., e. g., Lumholtz,Unknown Mexico, vol. i, ch. vi.
42Cf., e. g., J. W. Powell, “Mythology of the North American Indians,” Report,Bureau of Eth., 1879–1880 (vol. i); F. H. Cushing, “Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths,”ibid, 1891–1892; J. O. Dorsey, “A Study of Siouan Cults,”ibid, 1889–1890.
42Cf., e. g., J. W. Powell, “Mythology of the North American Indians,” Report,Bureau of Eth., 1879–1880 (vol. i); F. H. Cushing, “Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths,”ibid, 1891–1892; J. O. Dorsey, “A Study of Siouan Cults,”ibid, 1889–1890.
43Witness, again, the tales collected under the caption ofThe Day’s Work, where the anthropomorphic romance of mechanics is made the most of by the same master who told the tales of theJungle Bookand of “The Cat that Walked.”
43Witness, again, the tales collected under the caption ofThe Day’s Work, where the anthropomorphic romance of mechanics is made the most of by the same master who told the tales of theJungle Bookand of “The Cat that Walked.”
44Cf. Presidential Address by Francis Darwin at the Dublin meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; cf. also H. Bergson,Évolution créatrice, and particularly passages that deal with the élan de la vie.
44Cf. Presidential Address by Francis Darwin at the Dublin meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; cf. also H. Bergson,Évolution créatrice, and particularly passages that deal with the élan de la vie.
45Cf. G. J. Romanes,Animal Intelligence, especially the Introduction.
45Cf. G. J. Romanes,Animal Intelligence, especially the Introduction.
46Cf. Jane E. Harrison,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, especially ch. iv; The same,Themis, especially ch. i, ii, iii and ix; with which compare the Pueblo cults referred to above.
46Cf. Jane E. Harrison,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, especially ch. iv; The same,Themis, especially ch. i, ii, iii and ix; with which compare the Pueblo cults referred to above.
47Cf., e. g., Skeat,Malay Magic, perhaps especially ch. v, section on the cultivation of rice.
47Cf., e. g., Skeat,Malay Magic, perhaps especially ch. v, section on the cultivation of rice.
48Hence animism, which applies its conceptions to inanimate rather than animate objects.
48Hence animism, which applies its conceptions to inanimate rather than animate objects.
49The like applies in the case of the seasonal and meteorological myths; where it happens rarely if at all that the phenomena of the seasons or the forces that come in evidence in meteorological changes are personified directly or unambiguously. It is always some god or dæmon that controls or uses the wind and the weather, some indwelling sprite or manlike giant that inhabits and watches over the hill or spring or river, and it is always the interests of the indwelling personality rather than that of the tangible objects in the case that are to be safeguarded by the superstitious practices with which the myth surrounds men’s intercourse with these features of the landscape.
49The like applies in the case of the seasonal and meteorological myths; where it happens rarely if at all that the phenomena of the seasons or the forces that come in evidence in meteorological changes are personified directly or unambiguously. It is always some god or dæmon that controls or uses the wind and the weather, some indwelling sprite or manlike giant that inhabits and watches over the hill or spring or river, and it is always the interests of the indwelling personality rather than that of the tangible objects in the case that are to be safeguarded by the superstitious practices with which the myth surrounds men’s intercourse with these features of the landscape.
50As in the legends of Prometheus; compare legends and ritual of fire from various cultures in L. Frobenius,The Childhood of Man, ch. xxv-xxvii.
50As in the legends of Prometheus; compare legends and ritual of fire from various cultures in L. Frobenius,The Childhood of Man, ch. xxv-xxvii.
51For an interesting illustration of this point see a paper by Duncan Mackenzie on “Cretan Palaces” in theAnnual of the British School at Athensfor 1907–1908, where the whole discussion hangs on the fact, unquestioned by any one of the disputants in a wide and warm controversy, that during some centuries of unwholesome nuisance from smoky fires in draughty rooms the great civilisation of the Mediterranean seaboard never hit on the ready solution of the difficulty by putting in a chimney.
51For an interesting illustration of this point see a paper by Duncan Mackenzie on “Cretan Palaces” in theAnnual of the British School at Athensfor 1907–1908, where the whole discussion hangs on the fact, unquestioned by any one of the disputants in a wide and warm controversy, that during some centuries of unwholesome nuisance from smoky fires in draughty rooms the great civilisation of the Mediterranean seaboard never hit on the ready solution of the difficulty by putting in a chimney.
52Cf., e. g., W. James,Principles of Psychology, ch. xxiv; McDougall,Social Psychology, ch. iii.
52Cf., e. g., W. James,Principles of Psychology, ch. xxiv; McDougall,Social Psychology, ch. iii.
53Cf., e. g., M. F. Washburn,The Animal Mind, ch. xii, xiii.
53Cf., e. g., M. F. Washburn,The Animal Mind, ch. xii, xiii.
54For illustrations see Dudley Kidd,The Essential Kafir, especially ch. ii, on “Native Beliefs.”
54For illustrations see Dudley Kidd,The Essential Kafir, especially ch. ii, on “Native Beliefs.”
55Cf. “The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation,”Journal of Sociology, March, 1906, pp. 585–609; “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,”University of California Chronicle, vol. x, pp. 396–415.
55Cf. “The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation,”Journal of Sociology, March, 1906, pp. 585–609; “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,”University of California Chronicle, vol. x, pp. 396–415.
56Cf.Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. iv, v.
56Cf.Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. iv, v.
57This technological blend of manual labour with magical practice is well seen, for instance, in the Malay ritual of rice culture.—W. W. Skeat,Malay Magic, various passages dealing with the ceremonial of the planting, growth and harvesting of the rice-crop.
57This technological blend of manual labour with magical practice is well seen, for instance, in the Malay ritual of rice culture.—W. W. Skeat,Malay Magic, various passages dealing with the ceremonial of the planting, growth and harvesting of the rice-crop.
58Cf. J. E. Harrison,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, especially ch. iv; J. G. Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, bk. i, ch. iii.
58Cf. J. E. Harrison,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, especially ch. iv; J. G. Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, bk. i, ch. iii.
59Such seems to be the evidence, for instance, for Cybele, Astarte (Aphrodite, Ishtar), Mylitta, Isis, Demeter (Ceres), Artemis, and for such doubtfully late characters as Hera (Juno),—see Harrison,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion; Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, andThe Golden Bough. Quanon may be a doubtful case, as possibly also Amaterazu. The evidence from such American instances as the great mother goddesses of the Pueblos and other Indian tribes runs perhaps the other way, or at the best it may leave the point in doubt. See, for instance, Matilda C. Stevenson, “The Zuñi Indians,”Report Bureau of American Ethnology, 1901–1902, section on “Mythology;” The same,ibid, 1889–1890, “The Sia;” Frank H. Cushing,ibid, 1891–1892, “Zuñi Creation Myths.”
59Such seems to be the evidence, for instance, for Cybele, Astarte (Aphrodite, Ishtar), Mylitta, Isis, Demeter (Ceres), Artemis, and for such doubtfully late characters as Hera (Juno),—see Harrison,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion; Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, andThe Golden Bough. Quanon may be a doubtful case, as possibly also Amaterazu. The evidence from such American instances as the great mother goddesses of the Pueblos and other Indian tribes runs perhaps the other way, or at the best it may leave the point in doubt. See, for instance, Matilda C. Stevenson, “The Zuñi Indians,”Report Bureau of American Ethnology, 1901–1902, section on “Mythology;” The same,ibid, 1889–1890, “The Sia;” Frank H. Cushing,ibid, 1891–1892, “Zuñi Creation Myths.”
60Cf., e. g., Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, bk. ii, ch. iii, bk. iii, ch. vi and xi.
60Cf., e. g., Frazer,Adonis, Attis, Osiris, bk. ii, ch. iii, bk. iii, ch. vi and xi.
61Cf., e. g., Hutton Webster,Primitive Secret Societies, especially ch. iii, iv, v; Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, ch. vii, viii, ix, xvi.
61Cf., e. g., Hutton Webster,Primitive Secret Societies, especially ch. iii, iv, v; Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, ch. vii, viii, ix, xvi.
62Cf. for instance, Codrington,The Melanesians; Seligmann,The Melanesians of British New Guinea.
62Cf. for instance, Codrington,The Melanesians; Seligmann,The Melanesians of British New Guinea.
63These considerations may of course imply nothing, directly, as to the size of the political organisation or of the national territory or population; though national boundaries are likely both to affect and to be affected by such changes in the industrial system. A community may be small, relatively to the industrial system in and by which it lives, and may yet, if conditions of peace permit it, stand in such a relation of complement or supplement to a larger complex of industrial groups as to make it in effect an integral part of a larger community, so far as regards its technology. So, for instance, Switzerland and Denmark are an integral part of the cultural and industrial community of the Western civilisation as effectually as they might be with an area and population equal to those of the United Kingdom or the German Empire, and they are doubtless each a more essential part in this community than Russia. At the same time, as things go within this Western culture, national boundaries have a very considerable obstructive effect in industrial affairs and in the growth of technology. It will probably be conceded on the one hand that any appreciable decline in the aggregate population of Christendom would result in some curtailment or retardation of the technological advance in which these peoples are jointly and severally engaged; and it is likewise to be conceded on the other hand that the like effect would follow on any marked degree of success from the efforts of those patriotic and dynastic statesmen who are endeavouring to set these peoples asunder in an armed estrangement and neutrality.
63These considerations may of course imply nothing, directly, as to the size of the political organisation or of the national territory or population; though national boundaries are likely both to affect and to be affected by such changes in the industrial system. A community may be small, relatively to the industrial system in and by which it lives, and may yet, if conditions of peace permit it, stand in such a relation of complement or supplement to a larger complex of industrial groups as to make it in effect an integral part of a larger community, so far as regards its technology. So, for instance, Switzerland and Denmark are an integral part of the cultural and industrial community of the Western civilisation as effectually as they might be with an area and population equal to those of the United Kingdom or the German Empire, and they are doubtless each a more essential part in this community than Russia. At the same time, as things go within this Western culture, national boundaries have a very considerable obstructive effect in industrial affairs and in the growth of technology. It will probably be conceded on the one hand that any appreciable decline in the aggregate population of Christendom would result in some curtailment or retardation of the technological advance in which these peoples are jointly and severally engaged; and it is likewise to be conceded on the other hand that the like effect would follow on any marked degree of success from the efforts of those patriotic and dynastic statesmen who are endeavouring to set these peoples asunder in an armed estrangement and neutrality.
64Cf., as an extreme case, Matilda C. Stevenson, “The Sia,”Report Bur. Eth., xi (1889–1890).The like decline is known to have occurred in many parts of Europe consequent on the decline of population due to the Black Death and the Plague.
64Cf., as an extreme case, Matilda C. Stevenson, “The Sia,”Report Bur. Eth., xi (1889–1890).
The like decline is known to have occurred in many parts of Europe consequent on the decline of population due to the Black Death and the Plague.
65On such native differences between the leading races of Europe, cf., e. g., G. V. de Lapouge,Les Sélections Sociales; andl’Aryen; O. Ammon,Die Gesellschaftsordnung; G. Sergi,Arii e Italici.
65On such native differences between the leading races of Europe, cf., e. g., G. V. de Lapouge,Les Sélections Sociales; andl’Aryen; O. Ammon,Die Gesellschaftsordnung; G. Sergi,Arii e Italici.
66For instance, the Japanese and the Ainu, the Polynesians and the Melanesians, the Cinghalese and the Veddas. On the last named, cf. Seligmann,The Veddas.
66For instance, the Japanese and the Ainu, the Polynesians and the Melanesians, the Cinghalese and the Veddas. On the last named, cf. Seligmann,The Veddas.
67Cf. W. Z. Ripley,The Races of Europe; G. Sergi,The Mediterranean Race; V. de Lapouge,L’Aryen; cf. also, J. Deniker,Les races européennes, and “Les six races composant la population de l’Europe,”Journal Anthropological Institute, vol. 34.
67Cf. W. Z. Ripley,The Races of Europe; G. Sergi,The Mediterranean Race; V. de Lapouge,L’Aryen; cf. also, J. Deniker,Les races européennes, and “Les six races composant la population de l’Europe,”Journal Anthropological Institute, vol. 34.
68The available evidence indicates that the dolicho-blond race of northern Europe probably originated in a mutation (from the Mediterranean as its parent stock?) during the early neolithic period, that is to say about at the beginning of the neolithic in western Europe. There is less secure ground for conjecture as to the date and circumstances under which any one of the other European races originated, but the date and place of their origin seems to lie outside of Europe and earlier than the European neolithic period. Unfortunately there has been little direct or succinct discussion of this matter among anthropologists hitherto.—Cf. “The Mutation Theory and the Blond Race,”Journal of Race Development, April, 1913.
68The available evidence indicates that the dolicho-blond race of northern Europe probably originated in a mutation (from the Mediterranean as its parent stock?) during the early neolithic period, that is to say about at the beginning of the neolithic in western Europe. There is less secure ground for conjecture as to the date and circumstances under which any one of the other European races originated, but the date and place of their origin seems to lie outside of Europe and earlier than the European neolithic period. Unfortunately there has been little direct or succinct discussion of this matter among anthropologists hitherto.—Cf. “The Mutation Theory and the Blond Race,”Journal of Race Development, April, 1913.
69The Melanesians may be contrasted with the Baltic peoples in this respect, though the comparison is perhaps rather suggestive than convincing. The Melanesians are apparently endowed with a very respectable capacity for workmanship, as regards both insight and application, and with a relatively high sense of economic expediency. They are also possessed of an alert and enduring group solidarity. But they apparently lack that reasonable degree of “humanity” and congenital tolerance that has on the whole kept the peoples of the Baltic region from fatal extravagances of cruelty and sustained hatred between groups. Not that any excess of humanity has marked the course of culture in North Europe. But it seems at least admissible to say that mutual hatred, distrust and disparagement falls more readily into abeyance among these peoples than among the Melanesians; particularly when and in so far as the material interest of the several groups visibly suffers from a continued free run of extravagant animosity. The difference in point of native propensity may not be very marked, but such degree of it as there is has apparently thrown the balance in such a way that the Baltic peoples have, technologically, had the advantage of a wide and relatively easy contact and communication; whereas the Melanesians have during an equally protracted experience spent themselves largely on interstitial animosities—Cf. Codrington,The Melanesians; Seligmann,The Melanesians of British New Guinea.
69The Melanesians may be contrasted with the Baltic peoples in this respect, though the comparison is perhaps rather suggestive than convincing. The Melanesians are apparently endowed with a very respectable capacity for workmanship, as regards both insight and application, and with a relatively high sense of economic expediency. They are also possessed of an alert and enduring group solidarity. But they apparently lack that reasonable degree of “humanity” and congenital tolerance that has on the whole kept the peoples of the Baltic region from fatal extravagances of cruelty and sustained hatred between groups. Not that any excess of humanity has marked the course of culture in North Europe. But it seems at least admissible to say that mutual hatred, distrust and disparagement falls more readily into abeyance among these peoples than among the Melanesians; particularly when and in so far as the material interest of the several groups visibly suffers from a continued free run of extravagant animosity. The difference in point of native propensity may not be very marked, but such degree of it as there is has apparently thrown the balance in such a way that the Baltic peoples have, technologically, had the advantage of a wide and relatively easy contact and communication; whereas the Melanesians have during an equally protracted experience spent themselves largely on interstitial animosities—Cf. Codrington,The Melanesians; Seligmann,The Melanesians of British New Guinea.
70These considerations apparently apply with peculiar force to the blond race, in that the evidence of early times goes to argue that this stock never lived in isolation from other, rival stocks. It began presumably as a small minority in a community made up chiefly of a different racial type, its parent stock, and in an environment at large in which at least one rival stock was present in force from near the outset; so that race competition, that is to say competition in terms of births and deaths, was instant and unremitting. And this competition the given conditions enforced in terms of group subsistence.
70These considerations apparently apply with peculiar force to the blond race, in that the evidence of early times goes to argue that this stock never lived in isolation from other, rival stocks. It began presumably as a small minority in a community made up chiefly of a different racial type, its parent stock, and in an environment at large in which at least one rival stock was present in force from near the outset; so that race competition, that is to say competition in terms of births and deaths, was instant and unremitting. And this competition the given conditions enforced in terms of group subsistence.
71Cf., e. g., Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Stenalderen.”
71Cf., e. g., Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Stenalderen.”
72It has not commonly been noted, though it will scarcely be questioned, that fighting capacity and the propensity to fight have rarely, if ever, been successful in the struggle between races and peoples when brought into competition with a diligent growing of crops and children, if success be counted in terms of race survival.
72It has not commonly been noted, though it will scarcely be questioned, that fighting capacity and the propensity to fight have rarely, if ever, been successful in the struggle between races and peoples when brought into competition with a diligent growing of crops and children, if success be counted in terms of race survival.
73It is apparently an open question whether these spiritual traits are properly to be ascribed to the dolicho-blond as traits of that type taken by itself, rather than traits characteristic of the hybrid offspring of the blond stock crossed on one or other of the racial stocks associated with it in the populations of Europe. The evidence at large seems rather to bear out the view that any hybrid population is likely to be endowed with an exceptional degree of that restlessness and discontent that go to make up what is spoken of as a “spirit of enterprise” in the race.
73It is apparently an open question whether these spiritual traits are properly to be ascribed to the dolicho-blond as traits of that type taken by itself, rather than traits characteristic of the hybrid offspring of the blond stock crossed on one or other of the racial stocks associated with it in the populations of Europe. The evidence at large seems rather to bear out the view that any hybrid population is likely to be endowed with an exceptional degree of that restlessness and discontent that go to make up what is spoken of as a “spirit of enterprise” in the race.
74As, e. g., the inhabitants of many Polynesian islands at the time of their discovery. See, also, Codrington,The Melanesians.
74As, e. g., the inhabitants of many Polynesian islands at the time of their discovery. See, also, Codrington,The Melanesians.
75Not an unusual state of things among the Melanesians and Micronesians, and in a degree among the Australians.
75Not an unusual state of things among the Melanesians and Micronesians, and in a degree among the Australians.
76See note,p. 120.
76See note,p. 120.
77E. g., some Australian natives and some of the lower Malay cultures.
77E. g., some Australian natives and some of the lower Malay cultures.
78E. g., the Pueblo and the Eskimo.
78E. g., the Pueblo and the Eskimo.
79Indeed, such as very suggestively to recall the ritual objects and observances of the Pueblo Indians.
79Indeed, such as very suggestively to recall the ritual objects and observances of the Pueblo Indians.
80For an extreme case of this among living communities, see Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. i, pp. 242–250, where the generalisation is set down (p. 248) that “the rudimentary stage of culture through which these tribes have passed, and in some cases are still passing, may perhaps be more accurately described as a wood and bone age than as an age of stone,” in as much as the evidence goes to show that before they began to get metals from the Malays their only implements of a more durable material were “the anvil and hammer (unwrought) ..., the whetstone, chips or flakes used as knives, and cooking stones.” From the different character of their environment this recourse to wood and bone could scarcely have been carried to such an extreme by the savages of the Baltic region.
80For an extreme case of this among living communities, see Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. i, pp. 242–250, where the generalisation is set down (p. 248) that “the rudimentary stage of culture through which these tribes have passed, and in some cases are still passing, may perhaps be more accurately described as a wood and bone age than as an age of stone,” in as much as the evidence goes to show that before they began to get metals from the Malays their only implements of a more durable material were “the anvil and hammer (unwrought) ..., the whetstone, chips or flakes used as knives, and cooking stones.” From the different character of their environment this recourse to wood and bone could scarcely have been carried to such an extreme by the savages of the Baltic region.
81Cf. Pumpelly,Explorations in Turkestan.
81Cf. Pumpelly,Explorations in Turkestan.
82A casual visit to the Scandinavian museums will scarcely convey this impression. To meet the prepossessions of the public, and perhaps of the experts, the weapons are made much of in the showcases, as is to be expected; but they are relatively scarce in the store-rooms, where the tools on the other hand are rather to be estimated by the cubic yard than counted by the piece.
82A casual visit to the Scandinavian museums will scarcely convey this impression. To meet the prepossessions of the public, and perhaps of the experts, the weapons are made much of in the showcases, as is to be expected; but they are relatively scarce in the store-rooms, where the tools on the other hand are rather to be estimated by the cubic yard than counted by the piece.
83Seen, e. g., in the observance and sanction of tabu in many of the lower cultures.
83Seen, e. g., in the observance and sanction of tabu in many of the lower cultures.
84The Eskimo are placed in circumstances that are in some respects similar to those presumed to have conditioned the life of the blond race and its hybrids during the early phases of its life-history, and among the traits that have made for the survival of the Eskimo is undoubtedly to be counted the somewhat genial good-fellowship of that race, coupled as it is with a notable disinclination to hostilities. So also the Indians of the North-West Coast, whose situation perhaps parallels that of the neolithic Baltic culture more closely even than the Eskimo, are not among the notably warlike peoples of the earth, although they undoubtedly show more of a predatory animus than their northern neighbours. In this case it is probably safe to say that their technological achievements have in no degree been furthered by such warlike enterprise as they have shown, and that their comfort and success as a race would have been even more marked if they had been gifted with less of the warlike spirit and had kept the peace more consistently throughout their habitat than they have done.—Cf. Franz Boas, “The Central Eskimo,”Bureau of American Ethnology, Report, 1884–1885; The same, “The Secret Societies and Social Organisation of the Kwakiutl Indians,”Report, National Museum, 1895; A. P. Niblack, “Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern British Columbia,”ibid, 1888.
84The Eskimo are placed in circumstances that are in some respects similar to those presumed to have conditioned the life of the blond race and its hybrids during the early phases of its life-history, and among the traits that have made for the survival of the Eskimo is undoubtedly to be counted the somewhat genial good-fellowship of that race, coupled as it is with a notable disinclination to hostilities. So also the Indians of the North-West Coast, whose situation perhaps parallels that of the neolithic Baltic culture more closely even than the Eskimo, are not among the notably warlike peoples of the earth, although they undoubtedly show more of a predatory animus than their northern neighbours. In this case it is probably safe to say that their technological achievements have in no degree been furthered by such warlike enterprise as they have shown, and that their comfort and success as a race would have been even more marked if they had been gifted with less of the warlike spirit and had kept the peace more consistently throughout their habitat than they have done.—Cf. Franz Boas, “The Central Eskimo,”Bureau of American Ethnology, Report, 1884–1885; The same, “The Secret Societies and Social Organisation of the Kwakiutl Indians,”Report, National Museum, 1895; A. P. Niblack, “Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern British Columbia,”ibid, 1888.
85Such loss by neglect of technological elements that have been superseded may have serious consequences in case a people of somewhat advanced attainments suffers a material set-back either in its industrial circumstances or in its cultural situation more at large,—as happened, e. g., in the Dark Ages of Europe. In such case it is likely to result that the community will be unable to fall back on a state of the industrial arts suited to the reduced circumstances into which it finds itself thrown, having lost the use of many of the technological elements familiar to earlier generations that lived under similar circumstances, and so the industrial community finds itself in many respects driven to make a virtually new beginning, from a more rudimentary starting point than the situation might otherwise call for. This in turn acts to throw the people back to a more archaic phase of technology and of institutions than the initial cultural loss sustained by the community would of itself appear to warrant.
85Such loss by neglect of technological elements that have been superseded may have serious consequences in case a people of somewhat advanced attainments suffers a material set-back either in its industrial circumstances or in its cultural situation more at large,—as happened, e. g., in the Dark Ages of Europe. In such case it is likely to result that the community will be unable to fall back on a state of the industrial arts suited to the reduced circumstances into which it finds itself thrown, having lost the use of many of the technological elements familiar to earlier generations that lived under similar circumstances, and so the industrial community finds itself in many respects driven to make a virtually new beginning, from a more rudimentary starting point than the situation might otherwise call for. This in turn acts to throw the people back to a more archaic phase of technology and of institutions than the initial cultural loss sustained by the community would of itself appear to warrant.
86Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Stenalderen,” sec. iii, “Tidsforhold i den ældre Stenalder;” O. Montelius,Les temps préhistoriques en Suède, ch. i, p. 20.
86Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Stenalderen,” sec. iii, “Tidsforhold i den ældre Stenalder;” O. Montelius,Les temps préhistoriques en Suède, ch. i, p. 20.
87Compare the case of the Indians of the North-West Coast, who have occupied a region comparable to the neolithic Baltic area in the distribution of land and water as well as in the abundance of good timber.
87Compare the case of the Indians of the North-West Coast, who have occupied a region comparable to the neolithic Baltic area in the distribution of land and water as well as in the abundance of good timber.
88Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Bronzealderen,” secs. xiii, xiv; Montelius,Les temps préhistoriques en Suède, ch. ii.
88Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Bronzealderen,” secs. xiii, xiv; Montelius,Les temps préhistoriques en Suède, ch. ii.
89Cf., e. g., C. A. Haddon,Evolution in Art, section on “Magic and Religion.”
89Cf., e. g., C. A. Haddon,Evolution in Art, section on “Magic and Religion.”
90Except for species that habitually breed by parthenogenesis.
90Except for species that habitually breed by parthenogenesis.
91The caution is perhaps unnecessary that it is not hereby intended to suggest a doubt of Mr. Galton’s researches or to question the proposals of the Eugenicals, whose labours are no doubt to be taken for all they are worth.
91The caution is perhaps unnecessary that it is not hereby intended to suggest a doubt of Mr. Galton’s researches or to question the proposals of the Eugenicals, whose labours are no doubt to be taken for all they are worth.
92See, e. g., Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. ii, part ii;Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1884–1885, F. Boas, “The Central Eskimo.”
92See, e. g., Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. ii, part ii;Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1884–1885, F. Boas, “The Central Eskimo.”
93Cf. Basil Thomson,The Diversions of a Prime Minister, andThe Figians.
93Cf. Basil Thomson,The Diversions of a Prime Minister, andThe Figians.
94The extent of this “quasi-personal fringe” of objects of intimate use varies considerably from one culture to another. It may often be inferred from the range of articles buried or destroyed with the dead among peoples on this level of culture.
94The extent of this “quasi-personal fringe” of objects of intimate use varies considerably from one culture to another. It may often be inferred from the range of articles buried or destroyed with the dead among peoples on this level of culture.
95A doubt may suggest itself in this connection touching such cultures and peoples as the pagan races of the Malay peninsula, the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, or (possibly) the Negritos of Luzon, but these conceivable exceptions to the rule evidently do not lessen its force.
95A doubt may suggest itself in this connection touching such cultures and peoples as the pagan races of the Malay peninsula, the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, or (possibly) the Negritos of Luzon, but these conceivable exceptions to the rule evidently do not lessen its force.
96It may be pertinent to take note of the bearing of these considerations on certain dogmatic concepts that have played a part in the theoretical and controversial speculations of the last century. Much importance has been given by economists of one school and another to the “productivity of labour,” particularly as affording a basis for a just and equitable distribution of the product; one school of controversialists having gone so far against the current of received economic doctrine as to allege that labour is the sole productive factor in industry and that the Labourer is on this ground entitled, in equity, to “the full product of his labor.” It is of course not conceived that the considerations here set forth will dispose of these doctrinal contentions; but they make it at least appear that the productivity of labor, or of any other conceivable factor in industry, is an imputed productivity—imputed on grounds of convention afforded by institutions that have grown up in the course of technological development and that have consequently only such validity as attaches to habits of thought induced by any given phase of collective life. These habits of thought (institutions and principles) are themselves the indirect product of the technological scheme. The controversy as to the productivity of labor should accordingly shift its ground from “the nature of things” to the exigencies of ingrained preconceptions, principles and expediencies as seen in the light of current technological requirements and the current drift of habituation.
96It may be pertinent to take note of the bearing of these considerations on certain dogmatic concepts that have played a part in the theoretical and controversial speculations of the last century. Much importance has been given by economists of one school and another to the “productivity of labour,” particularly as affording a basis for a just and equitable distribution of the product; one school of controversialists having gone so far against the current of received economic doctrine as to allege that labour is the sole productive factor in industry and that the Labourer is on this ground entitled, in equity, to “the full product of his labor.” It is of course not conceived that the considerations here set forth will dispose of these doctrinal contentions; but they make it at least appear that the productivity of labor, or of any other conceivable factor in industry, is an imputed productivity—imputed on grounds of convention afforded by institutions that have grown up in the course of technological development and that have consequently only such validity as attaches to habits of thought induced by any given phase of collective life. These habits of thought (institutions and principles) are themselves the indirect product of the technological scheme. The controversy as to the productivity of labor should accordingly shift its ground from “the nature of things” to the exigencies of ingrained preconceptions, principles and expediencies as seen in the light of current technological requirements and the current drift of habituation.
97See Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Stenalderen,” andAarböger for nordisk Oldkyndighed, 1906.
97See Sophus Müller,Vor Oldtid, “Stenalderen,” andAarböger for nordisk Oldkyndighed, 1906.
98Cf. W. G. Sollas,Ancient Hunters.
98Cf. W. G. Sollas,Ancient Hunters.
99See, e. g., Basil Thomson,The Figians, especially ch. iv, xiv, xxviii, xxxi.
99See, e. g., Basil Thomson,The Figians, especially ch. iv, xiv, xxviii, xxxi.
100The Pueblos offer a curious exception to this common rule of a parasitic priesthood. While they are much given to religious observances and have an extensive priestly organisation, comprising divers orders and sub-orders, this priesthood appears commonly to derive no income, or even appreciable perquisites, from their office.
100The Pueblos offer a curious exception to this common rule of a parasitic priesthood. While they are much given to religious observances and have an extensive priestly organisation, comprising divers orders and sub-orders, this priesthood appears commonly to derive no income, or even appreciable perquisites, from their office.
101The difference in importance and powers between the war chief of the peaceable Pueblos on the one hand and of the predatory Aztecs on the other hand shows how such an official’s status may changede factowithout a notable changede jure.—Cf. also Basil Thomson,The Figians, ch. iv, xxxi, on “Constitution of Society,” and “The Tenure of Land,” where the growth of custom is shown to throw pecuniary prerogative and control into the hands of the successful war chief.
101The difference in importance and powers between the war chief of the peaceable Pueblos on the one hand and of the predatory Aztecs on the other hand shows how such an official’s status may changede factowithout a notable changede jure.—Cf. also Basil Thomson,The Figians, ch. iv, xxxi, on “Constitution of Society,” and “The Tenure of Land,” where the growth of custom is shown to throw pecuniary prerogative and control into the hands of the successful war chief.
102For instance, somewhat generally in the island states of Polynesia. Something suggestively reminiscent of such a condition of things is visible in early feudal Europe, where feudal holdings changed hands with a change in the status of their holders in a way that suggests that ownership was in great measure a corollary following from the tenure of certain civil powers. So, also, in ecclesiastical holdings of the same period and later. And, again, in the doubtful and changing status of the servile classes of feudal Europe, where the distinction between mastery and ownership often seems something of a legal fiction or a distinction without a difference. Feudal Japan affords evidence to much the same effect.
102For instance, somewhat generally in the island states of Polynesia. Something suggestively reminiscent of such a condition of things is visible in early feudal Europe, where feudal holdings changed hands with a change in the status of their holders in a way that suggests that ownership was in great measure a corollary following from the tenure of certain civil powers. So, also, in ecclesiastical holdings of the same period and later. And, again, in the doubtful and changing status of the servile classes of feudal Europe, where the distinction between mastery and ownership often seems something of a legal fiction or a distinction without a difference. Feudal Japan affords evidence to much the same effect.
103Cf. J. G. Frazer,Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship. The drift of evidence for the North-European cultures of pagan antiquity appears to set strongly in this direction, though the term “priestly,” as applied to these pagan kings, is likely to convey too broad an implication of solemnity and vicariously divine power.
103Cf. J. G. Frazer,Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship. The drift of evidence for the North-European cultures of pagan antiquity appears to set strongly in this direction, though the term “priestly,” as applied to these pagan kings, is likely to convey too broad an implication of solemnity and vicariously divine power.
104Witness the alleged dealings of Jahve with his chosen people and the laudation bestowed on Him by His priests for “conduct unbecoming a gentleman.”
104Witness the alleged dealings of Jahve with his chosen people and the laudation bestowed on Him by His priests for “conduct unbecoming a gentleman.”
105As witness Pharaonic Egypt, Ancient Peru, Babylon, Assyria, Israel under Solomon and his nearer successors.
105As witness Pharaonic Egypt, Ancient Peru, Babylon, Assyria, Israel under Solomon and his nearer successors.
106See F. B. Jevons,Introduction to the History of Religion, ch. x.
106See F. B. Jevons,Introduction to the History of Religion, ch. x.
107Cf., e. g., Basil Thomson,The Figians, ch. iv.
107Cf., e. g., Basil Thomson,The Figians, ch. iv.
108As shown, for instance, by the pottery and baskets made for trade by the American Indians where they come in trade contact with civilised men.
108As shown, for instance, by the pottery and baskets made for trade by the American Indians where they come in trade contact with civilised men.
109For a more detailed discussion of these secondary consequences of the institution of ownership, the irksomeness of labour and the conspicuous waste of goods, which cannot be pursued here, seeThe Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. ii-vi.
109For a more detailed discussion of these secondary consequences of the institution of ownership, the irksomeness of labour and the conspicuous waste of goods, which cannot be pursued here, seeThe Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. ii-vi.
110For some further analysis of the relation between ownership, earnings and the material equipment seeQuarterly Journal of Economics, August, 1908, “On the Nature of Capital;” as also a paper by H. J. Davenport in the same Journal for November, 1910, on “Social Productivity versus Private Acquisition.”
110For some further analysis of the relation between ownership, earnings and the material equipment seeQuarterly Journal of Economics, August, 1908, “On the Nature of Capital;” as also a paper by H. J. Davenport in the same Journal for November, 1910, on “Social Productivity versus Private Acquisition.”
111For a more detailed discussion of this disciplinary disparity between business and industrial occupations, cf.The Theory of Business Enterprise, ch. iv, viii and ix.
111For a more detailed discussion of this disciplinary disparity between business and industrial occupations, cf.The Theory of Business Enterprise, ch. iv, viii and ix.
112Cf., e. g., Harrington Emerson,Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages, ch. i, iv.
112Cf., e. g., Harrington Emerson,Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages, ch. i, iv.
113Such is tacitly assumed to be the nature of modern economic life in the current theoretical formulations of the economists, who make the theory of exchange value the central and controlling doctrine in their theoretical systems, and who with easy conviction trace this value back to an individualistic ground in the doctrines of differential utility—“marginal utility.”
113Such is tacitly assumed to be the nature of modern economic life in the current theoretical formulations of the economists, who make the theory of exchange value the central and controlling doctrine in their theoretical systems, and who with easy conviction trace this value back to an individualistic ground in the doctrines of differential utility—“marginal utility.”
114Apart from scattered and progressively inconsequential manifestations of this canon of pecuniary equity in the European community at large, there occurs a quaint and well-defined application of it in the practice of “hólmgangr” in late pagan and early Christian times among the Scandinavian peoples. The “wager of battle” is probably of the same derivation, at least in part.
114Apart from scattered and progressively inconsequential manifestations of this canon of pecuniary equity in the European community at large, there occurs a quaint and well-defined application of it in the practice of “hólmgangr” in late pagan and early Christian times among the Scandinavian peoples. The “wager of battle” is probably of the same derivation, at least in part.
115Cf. Frederic Barnard Hawley,Enterprise and the Productive Process, for an extreme, mature and consistent development of this tenet.
115Cf. Frederic Barnard Hawley,Enterprise and the Productive Process, for an extreme, mature and consistent development of this tenet.
116SeeThe Theory of Business Enterprise, ch. iv, vi, vii, for a more detailed discussion of this business traffic and the working principles which govern it. See also H. J. Davenport,The Economics of Enterprise(New York, 1913).
116SeeThe Theory of Business Enterprise, ch. iv, vi, vii, for a more detailed discussion of this business traffic and the working principles which govern it. See also H. J. Davenport,The Economics of Enterprise(New York, 1913).
117Cf., e. g., Ehrenberg,Das Zeitalter der Fugger; Sombart,Der Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i.
117Cf., e. g., Ehrenberg,Das Zeitalter der Fugger; Sombart,Der Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i.
118Cf.The Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. iv, v, vi.
118Cf.The Theory of the Leisure Class, ch. iv, v, vi.
119Cf. Harrington Emerson,Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages.
119Cf. Harrington Emerson,Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages.
120Cf., e. g., Karl Bücher,Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, (3d ed.), ch. iv, “Die gewerblichen Betriebssysteme,” ch. v. “Der Niedergang des Handwerks;” W. J. Ashley,English Economic History and Theory, part ii, ch. i, sec. 25, ch. iii, especially sec. 44; W. Cunningham,The Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. ii, Introduction; Werner Sombart,Der Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i, especially ch. iv-xii.
120Cf., e. g., Karl Bücher,Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, (3d ed.), ch. iv, “Die gewerblichen Betriebssysteme,” ch. v. “Der Niedergang des Handwerks;” W. J. Ashley,English Economic History and Theory, part ii, ch. i, sec. 25, ch. iii, especially sec. 44; W. Cunningham,The Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. ii, Introduction; Werner Sombart,Der Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i, especially ch. iv-xii.
121To complete the sketch at this point, even in outline, it would be necessary to go extensively into the relations of ownership and control (largely indirect) in which the owners of land and natural resources, the Landed Interest, had stood to the industrial community of craftsmen before this transition to the business era got under way, as also into the further mutual relations subsisting between the landed interest, the craftsmen and the business community during this transition to a business régime. In the most summary terms the pertinent circumstances appear to have been that from the beginning of its technological era the handicraft community, with its workmanship and its technological attainments, was in an uncertain measure at the discretionary call of the landed interest, largely in an impersonal way through channels of trade and on the whole with decreasingly exacting effect as time went on; and the industrial community at large had by no means emancipated themselves from this control when the era of business enterprise set in; for the landed interest continued to draw its livelihood from the mixed agricultural and handicraft community, and the products of handicraft still continued to go chiefly as supplies to the landed interest in return for the means of subsistence controlled by the latter; and long after the businessmen had taken over the direction of industry the claims of the landed interest still continued paramount in the economic situation, and industry still continued to be carried on largely with a view to meeting the requirements of the landed interest.
121To complete the sketch at this point, even in outline, it would be necessary to go extensively into the relations of ownership and control (largely indirect) in which the owners of land and natural resources, the Landed Interest, had stood to the industrial community of craftsmen before this transition to the business era got under way, as also into the further mutual relations subsisting between the landed interest, the craftsmen and the business community during this transition to a business régime. In the most summary terms the pertinent circumstances appear to have been that from the beginning of its technological era the handicraft community, with its workmanship and its technological attainments, was in an uncertain measure at the discretionary call of the landed interest, largely in an impersonal way through channels of trade and on the whole with decreasingly exacting effect as time went on; and the industrial community at large had by no means emancipated themselves from this control when the era of business enterprise set in; for the landed interest continued to draw its livelihood from the mixed agricultural and handicraft community, and the products of handicraft still continued to go chiefly as supplies to the landed interest in return for the means of subsistence controlled by the latter; and long after the businessmen had taken over the direction of industry the claims of the landed interest still continued paramount in the economic situation, and industry still continued to be carried on largely with a view to meeting the requirements of the landed interest.
122“Handwerk (im engeren Sinne) ist diejenige Wirtschaftsform, die hervorwächst aus dem streben eines gewerblichen Arbeiters seine zwischen Kunst und gewöhnlicher Handarbeit die Mitte haltende Fertigkeit zur Herrichtung oder Bearbeitung gewerblicher Gebrauchsgegenstände in der Weise zu vertreten, dass er sich durch Austausch seiner Leistungen oder Erzeugnisse gegen entsprechende Äquivalente seinen Lebensunterhalt verschafft.”—Sombart,Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i, ch. iv.
122“Handwerk (im engeren Sinne) ist diejenige Wirtschaftsform, die hervorwächst aus dem streben eines gewerblichen Arbeiters seine zwischen Kunst und gewöhnlicher Handarbeit die Mitte haltende Fertigkeit zur Herrichtung oder Bearbeitung gewerblicher Gebrauchsgegenstände in der Weise zu vertreten, dass er sich durch Austausch seiner Leistungen oder Erzeugnisse gegen entsprechende Äquivalente seinen Lebensunterhalt verschafft.”—Sombart,Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i, ch. iv.
123Cf. Sombart,Der Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i; W. J. Ashley,English Economic History and Theory, bk. i, especially ch. iii; Karl Bücher,die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, ch. iv, v.
123Cf. Sombart,Der Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i; W. J. Ashley,English Economic History and Theory, bk. i, especially ch. iii; Karl Bücher,die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, ch. iv, v.
124A classic passage of Adam Smith shows this handicraft conception of the mechanics of industry: “The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes....” “But this proportion [of the produce to the consumers] must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances; first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed.”—Wealth of Nations, Introduction, p. 1.Adam Smith consistently speaks of industry in terms of manual workmanship, as the traditions and the continued habitual outlook of that generation unavoidably led him to do; and the sweeping way in which his interpretation of economic life finds acceptance with his contemporaries shows that in so doing he is speaking in full consonance with the prevailing conceptions of his time. He writes during the opening passages of the machine era, but he speaks in terms of the past industrial era, from which his outlook on the economic situation and his conception of normal economic relations had been derived. It may be added that his conception of natural liberty in economic matters is similarly derived from the traditional situation, whose discipline during the later phases of the handicraft era inculcated freedom of ownership as applied to the workman’s product and freedom of bargain and sale as touches the traffic of the typical petty trader. And so thoroughly had this manner of conceiving industry and the economic situation been worked into the texture of men’s thinking, that the same line of interpretation continues to satisfy economic theory for a hundred years after Adam Smith had formulated this canon of economic doctrine, and after the situation to which it would apply had been put out by the machine industry and large business management.
124A classic passage of Adam Smith shows this handicraft conception of the mechanics of industry: “The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes....” “But this proportion [of the produce to the consumers] must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances; first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed.”—Wealth of Nations, Introduction, p. 1.
Adam Smith consistently speaks of industry in terms of manual workmanship, as the traditions and the continued habitual outlook of that generation unavoidably led him to do; and the sweeping way in which his interpretation of economic life finds acceptance with his contemporaries shows that in so doing he is speaking in full consonance with the prevailing conceptions of his time. He writes during the opening passages of the machine era, but he speaks in terms of the past industrial era, from which his outlook on the economic situation and his conception of normal economic relations had been derived. It may be added that his conception of natural liberty in economic matters is similarly derived from the traditional situation, whose discipline during the later phases of the handicraft era inculcated freedom of ownership as applied to the workman’s product and freedom of bargain and sale as touches the traffic of the typical petty trader. And so thoroughly had this manner of conceiving industry and the economic situation been worked into the texture of men’s thinking, that the same line of interpretation continues to satisfy economic theory for a hundred years after Adam Smith had formulated this canon of economic doctrine, and after the situation to which it would apply had been put out by the machine industry and large business management.
125The case of the treadle applied to the production of rotary motion is typical of what happens to a technological element of the general class here under discussion. Such a new technological expedient appears at the outset to be apprehended in terms of manual workmanship; but presently it comes, through habitual use, to take its place as a mechanical functioning of the tools in whose use it takes effect,—to be associated in current apprehension with the mechanical appliances employed in its production and, by so much, dissociated from the person of the workman. In a measure, therefore, it falls into the category of impersonal facts that are available as technological raw material with which to go about the work in hand. With further use, and particularly with the interjection of further mechanical expedients between the workman and this given technological element, it will be conceived in progressively more objective fashion, as a fact of the mechanics of brute matter rather than an extension of the workman’s manual reach; until it passes finally into the category of mechanical fact simply, obvious and commonplace through routine use; in which there remains but a vanishing residue of imputed personality, such as attaches to all conceptions of action. The given technological element in this way may be said to pass by degrees out of the workman’s “quasi-personal fringe” of manual effects, into the domain of raw material available for use in workmanship; where it will, in apprehension, be possessed of only such imputed quasi-personal or anthropomorphic characteristics as are necessarily imputed to external facts at large.Concretely, the concept of the treadle seems in its beginnings to be a variant of the same conception that leads to the use of the bow-drill. Both inventions comprise at least two distinct forms. In each the simpler and presumably more primitive form converts a reciprocating longitudinal motion into a reciprocating rotary motion; and it is apparently only after an interval of familiarity and externalisation of this mechanical achievement that the next move takes place in the direction of the perfected treadle, which converts a reciprocating longitudinal into a continuous rotary motion.
125The case of the treadle applied to the production of rotary motion is typical of what happens to a technological element of the general class here under discussion. Such a new technological expedient appears at the outset to be apprehended in terms of manual workmanship; but presently it comes, through habitual use, to take its place as a mechanical functioning of the tools in whose use it takes effect,—to be associated in current apprehension with the mechanical appliances employed in its production and, by so much, dissociated from the person of the workman. In a measure, therefore, it falls into the category of impersonal facts that are available as technological raw material with which to go about the work in hand. With further use, and particularly with the interjection of further mechanical expedients between the workman and this given technological element, it will be conceived in progressively more objective fashion, as a fact of the mechanics of brute matter rather than an extension of the workman’s manual reach; until it passes finally into the category of mechanical fact simply, obvious and commonplace through routine use; in which there remains but a vanishing residue of imputed personality, such as attaches to all conceptions of action. The given technological element in this way may be said to pass by degrees out of the workman’s “quasi-personal fringe” of manual effects, into the domain of raw material available for use in workmanship; where it will, in apprehension, be possessed of only such imputed quasi-personal or anthropomorphic characteristics as are necessarily imputed to external facts at large.
Concretely, the concept of the treadle seems in its beginnings to be a variant of the same conception that leads to the use of the bow-drill. Both inventions comprise at least two distinct forms. In each the simpler and presumably more primitive form converts a reciprocating longitudinal motion into a reciprocating rotary motion; and it is apparently only after an interval of familiarity and externalisation of this mechanical achievement that the next move takes place in the direction of the perfected treadle, which converts a reciprocating longitudinal into a continuous rotary motion.
126Cf. Sombart,Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i, Exkurs zu Kapitel 7, bk. ii, ch. xv.
126Cf. Sombart,Moderne Kapitalismus, bk. i, Exkurs zu Kapitel 7, bk. ii, ch. xv.
127The adventures of Charles I and James II sufficiently illustrate this insular temper of the industrial and commercial community as contrasted with the crown and the court party.
127The adventures of Charles I and James II sufficiently illustrate this insular temper of the industrial and commercial community as contrasted with the crown and the court party.
128See ch.iiandiii, above.
128See ch.iiandiii, above.
129The imputation of the feminine in this personification of Nature is probably nothing more than a carrying over of the Latin gender of the word, but there is commonly involved in this quasi-personal conception of Nature a notable imputation of kindliness and gentle solicitude that well comports with her putative womanhood. By extraordinarily easy gradationNatura naturanspasses over into Mother Nature. The contrast in this respect, simply on its sentimental side, between the conception of Nature, say in the eighteenth century, on the one hand, and the patriarchal Heavenly King, remote and austere, of the Mediæval cult on the other hand is striking enough. In point of sentimental content this conception of Nature is more nearly in touch with the mediæval Mother of God than with the Heavenly King.
129The imputation of the feminine in this personification of Nature is probably nothing more than a carrying over of the Latin gender of the word, but there is commonly involved in this quasi-personal conception of Nature a notable imputation of kindliness and gentle solicitude that well comports with her putative womanhood. By extraordinarily easy gradationNatura naturanspasses over into Mother Nature. The contrast in this respect, simply on its sentimental side, between the conception of Nature, say in the eighteenth century, on the one hand, and the patriarchal Heavenly King, remote and austere, of the Mediæval cult on the other hand is striking enough. In point of sentimental content this conception of Nature is more nearly in touch with the mediæval Mother of God than with the Heavenly King.
130This, of course, does not overlook the fact that in the course of scientific inquiry there has been an increasing use of statistical methods and results, and that this recourse to statistics has been of an increasingly objective character, both in its methods and in the items handled. It is also to be noted that from time to time serious and consequential attempts have been made to reduce scientific argument at large to similarly objective terms of quantity, quantivalence and concomitance. Karl Pearson’sGrammar of Science, for instance is a shrewd and somewhat popularly known endeavour of this kind. So, again, the philosophical views associated with the names of Leibnitz and of Berkely are of this nature, and there is not a little of the same line of scepticism in the speculations of Hume. But it is equally to be noted that except on the remote plane of generality that belongs to philosophical speculation, and except in the works of pure mathematics, this method of handling facts has not proved available for scientific ends. The “idle curiosity” which finds employment in scientific inquiry is not content with the vacant relation of concomitance alone among the facts which it seeks and systematises. In scientific theory no headway has been made hitherto without the use of this indispensable imputation of causality.—In this connection cf. a paper on “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,”University of California Chronicle, November, 1908, especially footnote, p. 396.
130This, of course, does not overlook the fact that in the course of scientific inquiry there has been an increasing use of statistical methods and results, and that this recourse to statistics has been of an increasingly objective character, both in its methods and in the items handled. It is also to be noted that from time to time serious and consequential attempts have been made to reduce scientific argument at large to similarly objective terms of quantity, quantivalence and concomitance. Karl Pearson’sGrammar of Science, for instance is a shrewd and somewhat popularly known endeavour of this kind. So, again, the philosophical views associated with the names of Leibnitz and of Berkely are of this nature, and there is not a little of the same line of scepticism in the speculations of Hume. But it is equally to be noted that except on the remote plane of generality that belongs to philosophical speculation, and except in the works of pure mathematics, this method of handling facts has not proved available for scientific ends. The “idle curiosity” which finds employment in scientific inquiry is not content with the vacant relation of concomitance alone among the facts which it seeks and systematises. In scientific theory no headway has been made hitherto without the use of this indispensable imputation of causality.—In this connection cf. a paper on “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,”University of California Chronicle, November, 1908, especially footnote, p. 396.
131In this connection it is worth noting, for what it may be worth, that there is a similarly rough concomitance between the diffusion of the blond racial stock in Europe and the modern forms of protestantism and religious heresy. Whether this fact strengthens or weakens any argument that may be drawn from the concomitance of heresy and industry cited above may perhaps best be left an open question.
131In this connection it is worth noting, for what it may be worth, that there is a similarly rough concomitance between the diffusion of the blond racial stock in Europe and the modern forms of protestantism and religious heresy. Whether this fact strengthens or weakens any argument that may be drawn from the concomitance of heresy and industry cited above may perhaps best be left an open question.
132Seechapter v, above.
132Seechapter v, above.
133Cf. Ashley,English Economic History and Theory, bk. i, ch. i; Karl Bücher,Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, ch. iii.
133Cf. Ashley,English Economic History and Theory, bk. i, ch. i; Karl Bücher,Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, ch. iii.
134Cf. R. Ehrenberg,Das Zeitalter der Fugger.
134Cf. R. Ehrenberg,Das Zeitalter der Fugger.
135Seen, as indicated above, in the matter-of-course resort of the scientists to the conception of efficient cause as a solvent of problems touching material phenomena, as well as in the theologians’ and philosophers’ resistless drift toward creative efficiency as the ultimate term of their speculations.
135Seen, as indicated above, in the matter-of-course resort of the scientists to the conception of efficient cause as a solvent of problems touching material phenomena, as well as in the theologians’ and philosophers’ resistless drift toward creative efficiency as the ultimate term of their speculations.
136Cf. Locke,Of Civil Government, ch. v, “Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has a right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”
136Cf. Locke,Of Civil Government, ch. v, “Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has a right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”
137Illustrative instances of such a customary code of “natural” rights and obligations are numerous in the late literature of ethnology. Good illustrations are afforded by various papers in theReports of the Am. Bureau of Ethnology, on the culture of the Pueblos, Eskimo, and the Indians of the North-West Coast; so also in Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, or in Seligmann,The Veddas.
137Illustrative instances of such a customary code of “natural” rights and obligations are numerous in the late literature of ethnology. Good illustrations are afforded by various papers in theReports of the Am. Bureau of Ethnology, on the culture of the Pueblos, Eskimo, and the Indians of the North-West Coast; so also in Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, or in Seligmann,The Veddas.
138Cf., e. g., C. Beard,The Industrial Revolution, ch. ii; Spencer Walpole,History of England from 1815, vol. i; C. W. Taylor,The Modern Factory System, ch. i, ii.
138Cf., e. g., C. Beard,The Industrial Revolution, ch. ii; Spencer Walpole,History of England from 1815, vol. i; C. W. Taylor,The Modern Factory System, ch. i, ii.
139In a general way, the relation in which the skilled workman in the large industries stands to the machine process is analogous to that in which the primitive herdsman, shepherd or dairymaid stand to the domestic animals under their care, rather than to the relation of the craftsman to his tools. It is a work of attendance, furtherance and skilled interference rather than a forceful and dexterous use of an implement.
139In a general way, the relation in which the skilled workman in the large industries stands to the machine process is analogous to that in which the primitive herdsman, shepherd or dairymaid stand to the domestic animals under their care, rather than to the relation of the craftsman to his tools. It is a work of attendance, furtherance and skilled interference rather than a forceful and dexterous use of an implement.
140It follows also, among other secondary consequences, that the effective industrial life of the skilled workman will, in order to the best average effect, begin at an appreciably more advanced age, and will therefore be shortened by that much. The period of preparation becomes more protracted, more exacting and more costly, and the effective life cycle of the workman grows shorter. Although it does not, perhaps, belong in precisely this connection, it may not be out of place to recall that the increasingly exacting requirements of the machine industry, particularly in the way of accurate, alert and facile conformity to the requirements of the machine process, interrupt the industrial life of the skilled workman at an earlier point in the course of senile decay. So that the industrial life-cycle of the workman is shortened both at its beginning and at its close, at the same time that the commonplace preparation for work grows more costly and exacting.Child labour, which once may, industrially speaking, have been an economical method of consuming the available human material, is no longer compatible with the highest industrial efficiency, even apart from any question of hardship or deterioration incident to an excessive or abusive recourse to child labour; it is incompatible with the community’s material interests. Therefore the business community—the body of businessmen at large—for whose behoof the industries of the country are carried on, have a direct interest not only in extending the age of exemption from industrial employment but also in procuring an adequate schooling of the incoming generation of workmen. The business community is evidently coming to appreciate this state of the case, at least in some degree, as is evidenced by their inclination to favour instruction in the “practical” branches in the public schools, at the public expense, as well as by the wide-reaching movement that aims to equip private and state schools that shall prepare the youth for work in the various lines of industrial employment.
140It follows also, among other secondary consequences, that the effective industrial life of the skilled workman will, in order to the best average effect, begin at an appreciably more advanced age, and will therefore be shortened by that much. The period of preparation becomes more protracted, more exacting and more costly, and the effective life cycle of the workman grows shorter. Although it does not, perhaps, belong in precisely this connection, it may not be out of place to recall that the increasingly exacting requirements of the machine industry, particularly in the way of accurate, alert and facile conformity to the requirements of the machine process, interrupt the industrial life of the skilled workman at an earlier point in the course of senile decay. So that the industrial life-cycle of the workman is shortened both at its beginning and at its close, at the same time that the commonplace preparation for work grows more costly and exacting.
Child labour, which once may, industrially speaking, have been an economical method of consuming the available human material, is no longer compatible with the highest industrial efficiency, even apart from any question of hardship or deterioration incident to an excessive or abusive recourse to child labour; it is incompatible with the community’s material interests. Therefore the business community—the body of businessmen at large—for whose behoof the industries of the country are carried on, have a direct interest not only in extending the age of exemption from industrial employment but also in procuring an adequate schooling of the incoming generation of workmen. The business community is evidently coming to appreciate this state of the case, at least in some degree, as is evidenced by their inclination to favour instruction in the “practical” branches in the public schools, at the public expense, as well as by the wide-reaching movement that aims to equip private and state schools that shall prepare the youth for work in the various lines of industrial employment.
141Cf.,e. g., Adam Smith’s reflections on the uses of an accurate watch,Theory of the Moral Sentiments, part iv, ch. 2.
141Cf.,e. g., Adam Smith’s reflections on the uses of an accurate watch,Theory of the Moral Sentiments, part iv, ch. 2.
142On the other hand the aphorism often cited, that “Necessity is the Mother of Invention,” appears to be nothing better than a fragment of uncritical rationalism. It offers a rationalised,ex post factoaccount of changes that take place, and reflects that ancient preconception by help of which the spokesmen of edification were enabled to interpret all change as an improvement due to the achievement of some definitely foreknown end. It appears also to be consistently untrue, except so far as “invention” is to be taken as a euphemistic synonym for “prevarication.” Doubtless, the felt need of ways and means has brought on many changes in technology, but doubtless also the ulterior consequences of any one of the greater mechanical inventions have in the main been neither foreseen nor intended in the designing of them. The more serious consequences, especially such as have an institutional bearing, have been enforced by the inventions rather than designed by the inventors.
142On the other hand the aphorism often cited, that “Necessity is the Mother of Invention,” appears to be nothing better than a fragment of uncritical rationalism. It offers a rationalised,ex post factoaccount of changes that take place, and reflects that ancient preconception by help of which the spokesmen of edification were enabled to interpret all change as an improvement due to the achievement of some definitely foreknown end. It appears also to be consistently untrue, except so far as “invention” is to be taken as a euphemistic synonym for “prevarication.” Doubtless, the felt need of ways and means has brought on many changes in technology, but doubtless also the ulterior consequences of any one of the greater mechanical inventions have in the main been neither foreseen nor intended in the designing of them. The more serious consequences, especially such as have an institutional bearing, have been enforced by the inventions rather than designed by the inventors.
143See pp.18–21, above.
143See pp.18–21, above.
144Cf., however, what has been said above (pp. 21–23) of the variability and adaptability of a hybrid population and the possible selective establishment of a hybrid type more suitable to current conditions of life than any one of the racial stocks out of which the hybrid population is made up.
144Cf., however, what has been said above (pp. 21–23) of the variability and adaptability of a hybrid population and the possible selective establishment of a hybrid type more suitable to current conditions of life than any one of the racial stocks out of which the hybrid population is made up.
145So,e. g., the modern technology has, directly and indirectly, brought on the growth of large cities and industrial towns, as well as an increasing density of population at large. This modern state of the industrial arts is a creation of the European community of nations, with the blond-hybrid populations leading. The population of these countries is drifting into these machine-made cities and towns, and this drift affects the blond-hybrids in a more pronounced degree than any other similarly distinguishable element in the population. At the same time the birth-rate is lower and the death-rate higher in these modern urban communities than in the open country, in spite of the fact that more attention is given to preventive sanitation in the urban than in the rural communities, and it is in the urban communities that medical attendance is most available at the same time that its most efficient practitioners congregate there. This accelerated death-rate strikes the blond-hybrids of the towns in an eminent degree; and infant mortality in the towns, particularly, runs at such a figure as to be viewed with the liveliest apprehension. In its summary effects on the viability of the modern peoples this modern technology appears to be as untoward as would their removal to an unsuitable climate. Indeed the hygienic measures that are taken or advocated as a remedy for these machine-made conditions of urban life are of much the same character and require much the same degree of meticulous attention to details that are required to preserve the life of Europeans under the precarious climatic conditions of the low latitudes. So that, for these Europeans at least, the hygienic situation created by their own technology has much of that character of a comprehensive clinic that attaches to the British occupation of India or the later European occupation of West Africa or the Philippines.
145So,e. g., the modern technology has, directly and indirectly, brought on the growth of large cities and industrial towns, as well as an increasing density of population at large. This modern state of the industrial arts is a creation of the European community of nations, with the blond-hybrid populations leading. The population of these countries is drifting into these machine-made cities and towns, and this drift affects the blond-hybrids in a more pronounced degree than any other similarly distinguishable element in the population. At the same time the birth-rate is lower and the death-rate higher in these modern urban communities than in the open country, in spite of the fact that more attention is given to preventive sanitation in the urban than in the rural communities, and it is in the urban communities that medical attendance is most available at the same time that its most efficient practitioners congregate there. This accelerated death-rate strikes the blond-hybrids of the towns in an eminent degree; and infant mortality in the towns, particularly, runs at such a figure as to be viewed with the liveliest apprehension. In its summary effects on the viability of the modern peoples this modern technology appears to be as untoward as would their removal to an unsuitable climate. Indeed the hygienic measures that are taken or advocated as a remedy for these machine-made conditions of urban life are of much the same character and require much the same degree of meticulous attention to details that are required to preserve the life of Europeans under the precarious climatic conditions of the low latitudes. So that, for these Europeans at least, the hygienic situation created by their own technology has much of that character of a comprehensive clinic that attaches to the British occupation of India or the later European occupation of West Africa or the Philippines.
146The statisticians of a hundred years ago,e. g., were content to work in round percentages where their latterday successors are doubtfully content with three-place decimals.
146The statisticians of a hundred years ago,e. g., were content to work in round percentages where their latterday successors are doubtfully content with three-place decimals.
147An eminently illustrative instance of the mechanistic bias in the moral sciences is afforded by the hedonistic conceptions of the early nineteenth century; and the deistic theology of that period and earlier is no less characteristic a symptom of the same animus.Cf.also, for a view running to a conclusion opposed to that spoken for above, H. Bergson,Creative Evolution(translation by Arthur Mitchell, New York, 1911), ch. i, especially pp. 16–23; where the mechanistic conception is construed as an instinctive metaphysical norm and contrasted with the deliverances of reason and experience, which are then held to inculcate an anthropomorphic interpretation of the same facts.
147An eminently illustrative instance of the mechanistic bias in the moral sciences is afforded by the hedonistic conceptions of the early nineteenth century; and the deistic theology of that period and earlier is no less characteristic a symptom of the same animus.
Cf.also, for a view running to a conclusion opposed to that spoken for above, H. Bergson,Creative Evolution(translation by Arthur Mitchell, New York, 1911), ch. i, especially pp. 16–23; where the mechanistic conception is construed as an instinctive metaphysical norm and contrasted with the deliverances of reason and experience, which are then held to inculcate an anthropomorphic interpretation of the same facts.
148“Pragmatism” is the term that has been elected to cover this metaphysical postulate of efficiency conceived as the bench mark of actuality.
148“Pragmatism” is the term that has been elected to cover this metaphysical postulate of efficiency conceived as the bench mark of actuality.
149Of all these latterday revulsionary schemes of surcease from the void and irritation of the mechanistic conception, that spoken for by M. H. Bergson is doubtless the most felicitous, at the same time that it is, in its elements, the most engagingly naïve. Apart from, and without prejudice to, the (doubtless very substantial) merits of this system of speculative tenets, the vogue which it has achieved appears to be due in good part to its consonance with this archaic bent of civilised human nature, already spoken of. The immanent, or rather intrinsically dominant, creative bent inherent in matter and not objectively distinguishable from it, is sufficiently suggestive of that praeter-mechanical efficacy that seems so easy of comprehension to many of the peoples on the lower levels of culture, and that affords the substantial ground of magical practices and finds untroubled expression in the more naïve of their theoretical speculations. It would be a work of extreme difficulty, e. g., to set up a consistently tenable distinction between M. Bergson’sélan de la vie, on the one hand, and themanaof the Melanesians (Cf.Codrington,The Melanesians, esp. ch. vii and xii), thewakondaof the Sioux (Cf.A. C. Fletcher and F. la Flesche, “The Omaha Tribe,”Bureau of Ethnology, Report xxvii(1905–1906), esp. pp. 597–599), or even thehamingiaof Scandinavian paganism, on the other hand.In fact, the point of departure and support for M. Bergson’s speculations appears to be nothing else than a projection, into objective reality, of the same human trait that has here been spoken of as the instinct of workmanship; this norm of initiative and efficiency which so is imposed on objective facts being then worked out with great subtlety and sympathetic insight, to make a comprehensive, cosmological scheme. The like projection of workmanlike initiative and efficiency, and its imputation to objective reality, both at large—as with M. Bergson—and in concrete detail, with more or less of personalisation, is one of the main, though frequently misunderstood, factors in the cosmologies that do duty as a body of science and philosophy among savages and the lower barbarians.That the roots of this speculative scheme of “creative evolution” should reach so far into the background of human culture and draw on sources so close to the undisciplined prime-movers of human nature is, of course, in no degree derogatory to this system of theory; nor does it raise any presumption of unsoundness in the tenets that so are, in the course of elaboration, built up out of this metaphysical postulate. In point of fact, the characterisation here offered places M. Bergson’s thesis, and therefore his system, precisely where he has been at pains to explain that he wishes to take his initial position in advocating his view,—at an even break with the mechanistic conception; the merits of which, as contrasted with his own thesis, will then be made to appear in the course of the further argument that is to decide between their rival claims to primacy. In point of formal and provisional legitimation, such an imputation of workmanlike efficacy at large rests on ground precisely even with that on which the mechanistic conception also rests,—viz. imputation by force of metaphysical necessity, that is to say by force of an instinctive impulse. The main theorem of causation, as well as its several mechanistic corollaries, are, in the last resort, putative traits of matter only, not facts of observation; and the like is true—in M. Bergson’s argument admittedly so—of theélan de la vieas well. So far, therefore, as regards the formally determinable antecedent probability of the two rival conceptions, the one is as good as the other; but M. Bergson’s argument, running on ground of circumstantial evidence in the main, makes out at least a cogently attractive likelihood that the conception for which he speaks is to be accepted as the more fundamental, underlying the mechanistic conception, conditioning it and on occasion overruling its findings in matters that lie beyond its ascertained competence. Which would come, in a different phrasing, to saying that the imputation of creatively workmanlike efficiency rests on instinctive ground more indefeasibly intrinsic to human nature; presumably in virtue of its embodying the functioning of an instinctive proclivity less sophisticated and narrowed by special habituation, such special habituation, e. g., as that exercised by the technology of handicraft and the machine process in recent times.
149Of all these latterday revulsionary schemes of surcease from the void and irritation of the mechanistic conception, that spoken for by M. H. Bergson is doubtless the most felicitous, at the same time that it is, in its elements, the most engagingly naïve. Apart from, and without prejudice to, the (doubtless very substantial) merits of this system of speculative tenets, the vogue which it has achieved appears to be due in good part to its consonance with this archaic bent of civilised human nature, already spoken of. The immanent, or rather intrinsically dominant, creative bent inherent in matter and not objectively distinguishable from it, is sufficiently suggestive of that praeter-mechanical efficacy that seems so easy of comprehension to many of the peoples on the lower levels of culture, and that affords the substantial ground of magical practices and finds untroubled expression in the more naïve of their theoretical speculations. It would be a work of extreme difficulty, e. g., to set up a consistently tenable distinction between M. Bergson’sélan de la vie, on the one hand, and themanaof the Melanesians (Cf.Codrington,The Melanesians, esp. ch. vii and xii), thewakondaof the Sioux (Cf.A. C. Fletcher and F. la Flesche, “The Omaha Tribe,”Bureau of Ethnology, Report xxvii(1905–1906), esp. pp. 597–599), or even thehamingiaof Scandinavian paganism, on the other hand.
In fact, the point of departure and support for M. Bergson’s speculations appears to be nothing else than a projection, into objective reality, of the same human trait that has here been spoken of as the instinct of workmanship; this norm of initiative and efficiency which so is imposed on objective facts being then worked out with great subtlety and sympathetic insight, to make a comprehensive, cosmological scheme. The like projection of workmanlike initiative and efficiency, and its imputation to objective reality, both at large—as with M. Bergson—and in concrete detail, with more or less of personalisation, is one of the main, though frequently misunderstood, factors in the cosmologies that do duty as a body of science and philosophy among savages and the lower barbarians.
That the roots of this speculative scheme of “creative evolution” should reach so far into the background of human culture and draw on sources so close to the undisciplined prime-movers of human nature is, of course, in no degree derogatory to this system of theory; nor does it raise any presumption of unsoundness in the tenets that so are, in the course of elaboration, built up out of this metaphysical postulate. In point of fact, the characterisation here offered places M. Bergson’s thesis, and therefore his system, precisely where he has been at pains to explain that he wishes to take his initial position in advocating his view,—at an even break with the mechanistic conception; the merits of which, as contrasted with his own thesis, will then be made to appear in the course of the further argument that is to decide between their rival claims to primacy. In point of formal and provisional legitimation, such an imputation of workmanlike efficacy at large rests on ground precisely even with that on which the mechanistic conception also rests,—viz. imputation by force of metaphysical necessity, that is to say by force of an instinctive impulse. The main theorem of causation, as well as its several mechanistic corollaries, are, in the last resort, putative traits of matter only, not facts of observation; and the like is true—in M. Bergson’s argument admittedly so—of theélan de la vieas well. So far, therefore, as regards the formally determinable antecedent probability of the two rival conceptions, the one is as good as the other; but M. Bergson’s argument, running on ground of circumstantial evidence in the main, makes out at least a cogently attractive likelihood that the conception for which he speaks is to be accepted as the more fundamental, underlying the mechanistic conception, conditioning it and on occasion overruling its findings in matters that lie beyond its ascertained competence. Which would come, in a different phrasing, to saying that the imputation of creatively workmanlike efficiency rests on instinctive ground more indefeasibly intrinsic to human nature; presumably in virtue of its embodying the functioning of an instinctive proclivity less sophisticated and narrowed by special habituation, such special habituation, e. g., as that exercised by the technology of handicraft and the machine process in recent times.
150All this, of course, neither ignores nor denies the substantial part which thejus gentiumand thejus naturaleof the Roman jurists and their commentators have played in the formulation of the system of Natural Rights. In point of pedigree the line of derivation of these legal principles is doubtless substantially as set forth authentically by the jurists who have spent their competent endeavors on that matter. So far as regards the English-speaking communities this pedigree runs back to Locke, and through Locke to the line of jurists and philosophers on whom that great scholar has drawn; while for the promulgation of the like system of principles more at large the names of Grotius, Pufendorf, Althusius doubtless have all the significance commonly assigned them. See pp.290–293above.
150All this, of course, neither ignores nor denies the substantial part which thejus gentiumand thejus naturaleof the Roman jurists and their commentators have played in the formulation of the system of Natural Rights. In point of pedigree the line of derivation of these legal principles is doubtless substantially as set forth authentically by the jurists who have spent their competent endeavors on that matter. So far as regards the English-speaking communities this pedigree runs back to Locke, and through Locke to the line of jurists and philosophers on whom that great scholar has drawn; while for the promulgation of the like system of principles more at large the names of Grotius, Pufendorf, Althusius doubtless have all the significance commonly assigned them. See pp.290–293above.
151Unless the “Syndicalist” movement is to be taken as something sufficiently definite in its principles to make it an exception to the rule.
151Unless the “Syndicalist” movement is to be taken as something sufficiently definite in its principles to make it an exception to the rule.
152Cf., e. g., Anna Youngman,The Economic Causes of Great Fortunes, especially ch. vi; R. Ehrenburg,Grosse Vermögen; Ida Tarbell,History of the Standard Oil Company.
152Cf., e. g., Anna Youngman,The Economic Causes of Great Fortunes, especially ch. vi; R. Ehrenburg,Grosse Vermögen; Ida Tarbell,History of the Standard Oil Company.
153Cf. a paper “On the Nature of Capital” in theQuarterly Journal of Economics, November, 1908.
153Cf. a paper “On the Nature of Capital” in theQuarterly Journal of Economics, November, 1908.
154As late as Adam Smith’s time “manufacturer” still retained its etymological value and designated the workman who made the goods. But from about that time, that is to say since the machine process and the business control of industry have thoroughly taken effect, the term no longer has a technological connotation but has taken on a pecuniary (business) signification wholly; so that the term now designates a businessman who stands in none but a pecuniary relation to the processes of industry.
154As late as Adam Smith’s time “manufacturer” still retained its etymological value and designated the workman who made the goods. But from about that time, that is to say since the machine process and the business control of industry have thoroughly taken effect, the term no longer has a technological connotation but has taken on a pecuniary (business) signification wholly; so that the term now designates a businessman who stands in none but a pecuniary relation to the processes of industry.