efficiency of the individual can be shown chiefly and most
consistently in some employment that goes to further the life of
the group. What emulation of an economic kind there is between
the members of such a group will be chiefly emulation in
industrial serviceability. At the same time the incentive to
emulation is not strong, nor is the scope for emulation large.

When the community passes from peaceable savagery to a predatory
phase of life, the conditions of emulation change. The
opportunity and the incentive to emulate increase greatly in
scope and urgency. The activity of the men more and more takes on
the character of exploit; and an invidious comparison of one
hunter or warrior with another grows continually easier and more
habitual. Tangible evidences of prowess -- trophies -- find a
place in men's habits of thought as an essential feature of the
paraphernalia of life. Booty, trophies of the chase or of the
raid, come to be prized as evidence of pre-eminent force.
Aggression becomes the accredited form of action, and booty
serves as prima facie evidence of successful aggression. As
accepted at this cultural stage, the accredited, worthy form of
self-assertion is contest; and useful articles or services
obtained by seizure or compulsion, serve as a conventional
evidence of successful contest. Therefore, by contrast, the
obtaining of goods by other methods than seizure comes to be
accounted unworthy of man in his best estate. The performance of
productive work, or employment in personal service, falls under
the same odium for the same reason. An invidious distinction in
this way arises between exploit and acquisition on the other
hand. Labour acquires a character of irksomeness by virtue of the
indignity imputed to it.