But as soon as the custom of individual ownership begins to gain
consistency, the point of view taken in making the invidious
comparison on which private property rests will begin to change.
Indeed, the one change is but the reflex of the other. The
initial phase of ownership, the phase of acquisition by naive
seizure and conversion, begins to pass into the subsequent stage
of an incipient organization of industry on the basis of private
property (in slaves); the horde develops into a more or less
self-sufficing industrial community; possessions then come to be
valued not so much as evidence of successful foray, but rather as
evidence of the prepotence of the possessor of these goods over
other individuals within the community. The invidious comparison
now becomes primarily a comparison of the owner with the other
members of the group. Property is still of the nature of trophy,
but, with the cultural advance, it becomes more and more a trophy
of successes scored in the game of ownership carried on between
the members of the group under the quasi-peaceable methods of
nomadic life.

Gradually, as industrial activity further displaced
predatory activity in the community's everyday life and in men's
habits of thought, accumulated property more and more replaces
trophies of predatory exploit as the conventional exponent of
prepotence and success. With the growth of settled industry,
therefore, the possession of wealth gains in relative importance
and effectiveness as a customary basis of repute and esteem. Not
that esteem ceases to be awarded on the basis of other, more
direct evidence of prowess; not that successful predatory
aggression or warlike exploit ceases to call out the approval and