THE COLLECTED WORKS OF THORSTEIN VEBLEN: Business Theories, Economic Articles & Essays. Thorstein Veblen

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СКАЧАТЬ is also to be seen in good vigour in any civilised community. So, for instance, what the phrase-makers have called “race-suicide” meets the instinctive and unsolicited reprobation of all men, even of those who would not conceivably go the length of contributing in their own person to the incoming generation. So also, virtually all thoughtful persons, - that is to say all persons who hold an opinion in these premises, - will agree that it is a despicably inhuman thing for the current generation wilfully to make the way of life harder for the next generation, whether through neglect of due provision for their subsistence and proper training or through wasting their heritage of resources and opportunity by improvident greed and indolence. Providence is a virtue only so far as its aim is provision for posterity.

      It is difficult or impossible to say how far the current solicitude for the welfare of the race at large is to be credited to the parental bent, but it is beyond question that this instinctive disposition has a large part in the sentimental concern entertained by nearly all persons for the life and comfort of the community at large, and particularly for the community’s future welfare. Doubtless this parental bent in its wider bearing greatly reënforces that sentimental approval of economy and efficiency for the common good and disapproval of wasteful and useless living that prevails so generally throughout both the highest and the lowest cultures, unless it should rather be said that this animus for economy and efficiency is a simple expression of the parental disposition itself. It might on the other hand be maintained that such an animus of economy is an essential function of the instinct of workmanship, which would then be held to be strongly sustained at this point by a parental solicitude for the common good.

      In making use of the expression, “instinct of workmanship” or “sense of workmanship,” it is not here intended to assume or to argue that the proclivity so designated is in the psychological respect a simple or irreducible element; still less, of course, is there any intention to allege that it is to be traced back in the physiological respect to some one isolable tropismatic sensibility or some single enzymotic or visceral stimulus. All that is matter for the attention of those whom it may concern. The expression may as well be taken to signify a concurrence of several instinctive aptitudes, each of which might or might not prove simple or irreducible when subjected to psychological or physiological analysis. For the present inquiry it is enough to note that in human behaviour this disposition is effective in such consistent, ubiquitous and resilient fashion that students of human culture will have to count with it as one of the integral hereditary traits of mankind.¹² As has already appeared, neither this nor any other instinctive disposition works out its functional content in isolation from the instinctive endowment at large.

      The instincts, all and several, though perhaps in varying degrees, are so intimately engaged in a play of give and take that the work of any one has its consequences for all the rest, though presumably not for all equally. It is this endless¹³ complication and contamination of instinctive elements in human conduct, taken in conjunction with the pervading and cumulative effects of habit in this domain, that makes most of the difficulty and much of the interest attaching to this line of inquiry.

      There are few lines of instinctive proclivity that are not crossed and coloured by some ramification of the instinct of workmanship. No doubt, response to the direct call of such half-tropismatic, half-instinctive impulses as hunger, anger, or the promptings of sex, is little if at all troubled with any sentimental suffusion of workmanship; but in the more complex and deliberate activities, particularly where habit exerts an appreciable effect, the impulse and sentiment of workmanship comes in for a large share in the outcome. So much so, indeed, that, for instance, in the arts, where the sense of beauty is the prime mover, habitual attention to technique will often put the original, and only ostensible, motive in the background. So, again, in the life of religious faith and observance it may happen now and again that theological niceties and ritual elaboration will successfully, and in great measure satisfactorily, substitute themselves for spiritual communion; while in the courts of law a tenacious following out of legal technicalities will not infrequently defeat the ends of justice.

      As the expression is here understood, all instinctive action is intelligent in some degree; though the degree in which intelligence is engaged may vary widely from one instinctive disposition to another, and it may even fall into an extremely automatic shape in the case of some of the simpler instincts, whose functional content is of a patently physiological character. Such approach to automatism is even more evident in some of the lower animals, where, as for instance in the case of some insects, the response to the appropriate stimuli is so far uniform and mechanically determinate as to leave it doubtful whether the behaviour of the animal might not best be construed as tropismatic action simply.¹⁴ Such tropismatic directness of instinctive response is less characteristic of man even in the case of the simpler instinctive proclivities; and the indirection which so characterises instinctive action in general, and the higher instincts of man in particular, and which marks off the instinctive dispositions from the tropisms, is the indirection of intelligence. It enters more largely in the discharge of some proclivities than of others; but all instinctive action is intelligent in some degree.

      This is what marks it off from the tropisms and takes it out of the category of automatism.¹⁵

      Hence all instinctive action is teleological. It involves holding to a purpose. It aims to achieve some end and involves some degree of intelligent faculty to compass the instinctively given purpose, under surveillance of the instinctive proclivity that prompts the action. And it is in this surveillance and direction of the intellectual processes to the appointed end that the instinctive dispositions control and condition human conduct; and in this work of direction the several instinctive proclivities may come to conflict and offset, or to concur and reënforce one another’s action.

      The position of the instinct of workmanship in this complex of teleological activities is somewhat peculiar, in that its functional content is serviceability for the ends of life, whatever these ends may be; whereas these ends to be subserved are, at least in the main, appointed and made worth while by the various other instinctive dispositions. So that this instinct may in some sense be said to be auxiliary to all the rest, to be concerned with the ways and means of life rather than with any one given ulterior end. It has essentially to do with proximate rather than ulterior ends. Yet workmanship is none the less an object of attention and sentiment in its own right. Efficient use of the means at hand and adequate management of the resources available for the purposes of life is itself an end of endeavour, and accomplishment of this kind is a source of gratification.

      All instinctive action is intelligent and teleological. The generality of instinctive dispositions prompt simply to the direct and unambiguous attainment of their specific ends, and in his dealings under their immediate guidance the agent goes as directly as may be to the end sought, - he is occupied with the objective end,,, not with the choice of means to the end sought; whereas under the impulse of workmanship the agent’s interest and endeavour are taken up with the contriving of ways and means to the end sought.

      The point of contrast may be unfamiliar, and an illustration may be pertinent. So, in the instinct of pugnacity and its attendant sentiment of anger¹⁶ the primary impulse is doubtless to a direct frontal attack, assault and battery pure and simple; and the more highly charged the agent is with the combative impulse, and the higher the pitch of animation to which he has been wrought up, the less is he inclined or able to take thought of how he may shrewdly bring mechanical devices to bear on the object of his sentiment and compass his end with the largest result per unit of force expended. It is only the well-trained fighter that will take without reflection to workmanlike ways and means at such a juncture; and in case of extreme exasperation and urgency even such a one, it is said, may forget his workmanship in the premises and throw himself into the middle of things instead of resorting to the indirections and leverages to which his workmanlike training in the art of fighting has habituated him. So, again, the immediate prompt-ings of the parental bent urge to direct personal intervention and service in behalf of the object of solicitude. In persons, highly gifted in this respect the impulse asserts itself to succor the helpless with one’s own hands, to do for them in one’s СКАЧАТЬ