Thorstein Veblen: THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP AND THE STATE OF THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS.(New York, N.Y.: Macmillan, March 1914; New edition: New York, N.Y.: B. W. Huebsch, July 1918.)
.... It is a distinctive mark of mankind that the working-out of the instinctive proclivities of the
race is guided by intelligence to a degree not approached by the other animals. But the dependence of the
race on its endowment of instincts is no less absolute for this intervention of intelligence; since it is only by the prompting of instinct that reflection and deliberation come to be so employed, and since instinct also governs the scope and method of intelligence in all this employment of it.[...]
The extreme diversity of native character, both physical and spiritual, noticeable in these communities is in all probability due to their being made up of a mixture of
racial stocks. In point of pedigree, all individuals in the peoples of the Western culture are hybrids, and the greater number of individuals is a mixture of more than two
racial stocks. The proportions in which the several transmissible traits that go to make up the
racial type enter into the composition of these hybrid individuals will accordingly vary endlessly. The number of possible permutations will therefore be extremely large; so that the resulting range of variation in the hybrids that so result from the crossing of these different
racial stocks will be sufficiently large, even when it plays within such limits as to leave the generic human type intact.[...].
Disserviceably wide departures from this generically human and serviceable type of spiritual endowment will tend constantly to be selectively eliminated from the
race, even where the variation arises from hybridism. The like will hold true in a more radical fashion as applied to any variants that may arise through a Mendelian mutation.
So that the numerous
racial types now existing represent only such mutants as lie within the limits of tolerance imposed by the situation under which any given mutant type has emerged and survived. A surviving mutant type is necessarily suited more or less closely to the circumstances under which it emerged and first made good its survival, and it is presumably less suited to any other situation. With a change in the situation, therefore, such as may come with the migration of a given
racial stock from one habitat to another, or with an equivalent shifting growth of culture or change of climate, the requirements of survival are likely to change.
Indeed, so grave are the alterations that may in this way supervene in the current requirements for survival, that any given
racial stock may dwindle and decay for no other reason than that the growth of its culture has come to subject the stock to methods of life widely different from those under which its type of man originated and made good its fitness to survive. So, in the mixture of
races that make up the population of the Western nations a competitive struggle for survival has apparently always been going on among the several
racial stocks that enter into the hybrid mass, with varying fortunes according as the shifting cultural demands and opportunities have favoured now one, now another type of man.
These cultural conditions of survival in the
racial struggle for existence have varied in the course of centuries, and with grave consequences for the life-history of the
race and of its culture; and they are perhaps changing more substantially and rapidly in the immediate present than at any previous time within the historical period. So that, for instance, the continued biological success of any given one of these stocks in the European
racial mixture has within a moderate Period Of time shifted from the ground of fighting capacity, and even in a measure from the ground of climatic fitness, to that of spiritual fitness to survive under the conditions imposed by a new cultural situation, by a scheme of institutions that is insensibly but incessantly changing as it runs.(9*)
These unremitting changes and adaptations that go forward in the scheme of institutions, legal and customary, unremittingly induce new habits of work and of thought in the community, and so they continually instill new principles of conduct; with the outcome that the same range of instinctive dispositions innate in the population will work out to a different effect as regards the demands of
race survival. To all appearance, what counts first in this connection toward the selective survival of the several European
racial stocks is their relative fitness to meet the material requirements of life, - their economic fitness to live under the new cultural limitations and with the new training which this altered cultural situation gives.
But the fortunes of the Western [18] civilisation as a cultural scheme, apart from the biological survival or success of any given
racial constituent in the Western peoples, is likewise bound up with the viability of European mankind under these institutional changes, and dependent on the spiritual fitness of inherited human nature successfully and enduringly to carry on the altered scheme of life so imposed on these peoples by the growth of their own culture. Such limitations imposed on cultural growth by native proclivities ill suited to civilised life are sufficiently visible in several directions and in all the nations of Christendom. What is known of heredity goes to say that the various
racial types of man are stable; so that during the life-history of any given
racial stock, it is held, no heritable modification of its typical make-up, whether spiritual or physical, is to be looked for. The typical human endowment of instincts, as well as the typical make-up of the
race in the physical respect, has according to this current view been transmitted intact from the beginning of humanity, - that is to say from whatever point in the mutational development of the
race it is seen fit to date humanity, - except so far as subsequent mutations have given rise to new
racial stocks, to and by which this human endowment of native proclivities has been transmitted in a typically modified form.[...]
On grounds of selective survival it is reasonably to be presumed that any given
racial type that has endured the test of selective elimination, including the complement of instinctive dispositions by virtue of which it has endured the test, will on its first emergence have been passably suited to the circumstances, material and cultural, under which the type emerged as a mutant and made good its survival; and in so far as the subsequent growth of institutions has altered the available scope and method of instinctive action it is therefore to be presumed that any such subsequent change in the scheme of institutions will in some degree hinder or divert the free play of its instinctive proclivities and will thereby hinder the direct and unsophisticated working-out of the instinctive dispositions native to this given
racial type.
What is known of the earlier phases of culture in the life-history of the existing
races and peoples goes to say that the initial phase in the life of any given
racial type, [20] the phase of culture which prevailed in its environment when it emerged, and under which the stock first proved its fitness to survive, was presumably some form of savagery. Therefore the fitness of any given type of human nature for life after the manner and under the conditions imposed by any later phase in the growth of culture is a matter of less and less secure presumption the farther the sequence of institutional change has departed from that form of savagery which marked the initial stage in the life-history of the given
racial stock.[...].
These various peoples show more or less distinct and recognisable national types of physique - or perhaps rather of physiognomy - and temperament, and the lines of differentiation between these national types incontinently traverse the lines that divide the
racial stocks. At the same time these national types have some degree of permanence; so much so that they are colloquially spoken of as types of
race. While no modern anthropologist would confuse nationality with
race, it is not to be overlooked that these national hybrid types are frequently so marked and characteristic as to simulate
racial characters and perplex the student of
race who is intent on identifying the
racial stocks out of which any one of these hybrid populations has been compounded.[...]But whatever the degree of stability possessed by these hybrid national or local types, the outcome for the present purpose is much the same; the hybrid populations afford a greater scope and range of variation in their human nature than could be had within the limits of any pure-bred
race.
Yet, for all the multifarious diversity of
racial and national types, early and late, and [24] for all the wide divergence of hybrid variants, there is no difficulty about recognising a generical human type of spiritual endowment, just as the zoologists have no difficulty in referring the various
races of mankind to a single species on the ground of their physical characters. The distribution of emphasis among the several instinctive dispositions may vary appreciably from one
race to another, but the complement of instincts native to the several
races is after all of much the same kind, comprising substantially the same ends. Taken simply in their first incidence, the
racial variations of human nature are commonly not considerable; but a slight bias of this kind, distinctive of any given
race, may come to have decisive weight when it works out cumulatively through a system of institutions, for such a system embodies the cumulative sophistications of untold generations during which the life of the community has been dominated by the same slight bias.(10*)
Racial differences in respect of these hereditary spiritual traits count for much in the outcome, because in the last resort any
race is at the mercy of its instincts. [...]But after all has been said it remains true that the margin within which the instinctive nature of the
race can be effectively adapted to changing circumstances is relatively narrow - narrow as contrasted with the range of variation in institutions - and the limits of such adaptation are somewhat rigid.
As the matter stands, the
race is required to meet changing conditions of life to which its relatively unchanging endowment of instincts is presumably not wholly adapted, and to meet these conditions by the use of technological ways and means widely different from those that were at the disposal of the
race from the outset. In the initial phases of the life-history of the
race, or of any given
racial stock, the exigencies to which its spiritual (instinctive) nature was selectively required to conform were those of the savage culture, as has been indicated above, - presumably in all cases a somewhat "low" or elementary form of savagery.[...]
Mechanical, matter-of-fact appreciation of external and material phenomena seems to be in a peculiar degree difficult, irrelevant and incongruous with the genius of the
race. But even if it should seem that this
race, or group of
races, is peculiarly given to such sympathetic interpretation of natural phenomena in terms of human instinct, the difference between them and the typical
racial stocks of the old world in this respect is after all a difference in degree, not in kind.
The like proclivity is in good evidence throughout, wherever any
race of men have endeavoured to put their acquaintance with natural phenomena into systematic form. The bond of combination in the making of systems, whether cosmologic, mythic, philosophic or scientific, has been some putative human trait or traits. It may be that in their appreciation of facts and their making of systems the American
races have by some peculiar native gift been inclined to an interpretation in terms of fertility, growth, nurture and life-cycles.[...]." 20) What is assumed here is what is commonly held, viz. that the
racial stocks that made up the late palaeolithic 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 francaise, 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. 21) These 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.[...]. Given the material environment, the rate and character of the technological gains made in any community will depend on the initiative and application of its members, in so far as the growth of institutions has not seriously diverted the genius of the
race from its natural bent; it will depend immediately and obviously on individual talent for workmanship - on the workmanlike [111] bent and capacity of the individual members of the community. Therefore any difference of native endowment in this respect between the several
races will show itself in the character of their technological achievements as well as in the rate of gain.
Races differ among themselves in this matter, both as to the kind and as to the degree of technological proficiency of which they are capable.(5*) It is perhaps as needless to insist on this spiritual difference between the various
racial stocks as it would be difficult to determine the specific differences that are known to exist, or to exhibit them convincingly in detail. To some such ground much of the distinctive character of different peoples is no doubt to be assigned, though much also may as well be traceable to local peculiarities of environment and of institutional circumstances. Something of the kind, a specific difference in the genius of the people, is by common consent assigned, for instance, in explanation of the pervasive difference in technology and workmanship between the Western culture and the Far East. The like difference in "genius" is still more convincingly shown where different
races have long been living near one another under settled cultural conditions.(6*)
It should be noted in the same connection that hybrid Peoples, such as those of Europe or of Japan, where somewhat widely distinct
racial stocks are mingled, should afford a great variety and wide individual varia- [112]tion of native gifts, in workmanship as in other respects. Hybrid stocks, indeed, have a wider range of usual variability than the combined extreme limits of the
racial types that enter into the composition of the hybrid.[...]What is known of the conditions of life in early neolithic times(11*) indicates that the first requisite of competitive survival was a more or less close attention to the [122] business in hand, the providing of subsistence for the group and the rearing of offspring - a closer attention, for instance, than was given to this business by those other rival stocks whom the successful ones displaced; all of which throws into the foreground as indispensable native traits of the successful
race the parental bent and the sense of workmanship, rather than those instinctive traits that make for disturbance of the peace.(12*)
But through it all the suggestion insinuates itself that the latest, or youngest, of the three main European stocks, the
blond, has more rather than less of the pugnacious and predatory temper than the other two, and that this stock made its way to the front in spite of, if not by force of these traits. The advantage of the
blond as a fighter seems to have been due in part to an adventurous and pugnacious temper, but also in part to a superior physique, - superior for the purpose of fighting hand to hand or with the implements chiefly used in warfare and piracy down to a date within the nineteenth century.
The same physical traits of mass, stature and katabolism will likewise have been of great advantage in the quest of a livelihood under the conditions that prevailed in the North-sea region, the habitat of the dolicho-
blond, in the stone age. Something to the same effect is true of the spiritual traits which are said to characterise the
blond, - a certain canny temerity and unrest.(13*) So that [123] the point is left somewhat in doubt; the traits which presently made the northern
blond the most formidable disturber of the peace of Europe and kept him so for many centuries may at the outset have been chiefly conducive to the survival of the type by their serviceability for industrial purposes under the peculiar circumstances of climate and topography in which the
race first came up and made good its survival.
In modern speculations on the origins of culture and the early history of mankind it has until recently been usual to assume, uncritically, that human communities have from the outset of the
race been entangled in an inextricable web of mutual hostilities and beset with an all-pervading sentiment of fear; that the "state of nature" was a state of blood and wounds, expressing itself in universal malevolence and suspicion. …
Source: http://de.geocities.com/veblenite/txt/instinct.txt
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