dignity, worth, or honour, as applied either to persons or
conduct, is of first-rate consequence in the development of
classes and of class distinctions, and it is therefore necessary
to say something of its derivation and meaning. Its psychological
ground may be indicated in outline as follows.

As a matter of selective necessity, man is an agent. He is, in
his own apprehension, a centre of unfolding impulsive activity --
"teleological" activity. He is an agent seeking in every act the
accomplishment of some concrete, objective, impersonal end. By
force of his being such an agent he is possessed of a taste for
effective work, and a distaste for futile effort. He has a sense
of the merit of serviceability or efficiency and of the demerit
of futility, waste, or incapacity. This aptitude or propensity
may be called the instinct of workmanship. Wherever the
circumstances or traditions of life lead to an habitual
comparison of one person with another in point of efficiency, the
instinct of workmanship works out in an emulative or invidious
comparison of persons. The extent to which this result follows
depends in some considerable degree on the temperament of the
population. In any community where such an invidious comparison
of persons is habitually made, visible success becomes an end
sought for its own utility as a basis of esteem. Esteem is gained
and dispraise is avoided by putting one's efficiency in evidence.
The result is that the instinct of workmanship works out in an
emulative demonstration of force.

During that primitive phase of social development, when the
community is still habitually peaceable, perhaps sedentary, and
without a developed system of individual ownership, the