motive that lies at the root
of ownership is emulation; and the same motive of emulation continues
active in the further development of the institution to which it has
given rise and in the development of all those features of the social
structure which this institution of ownership touches. The possession of
wealth confers honour; it is an invidious distinction. Nothing equally
cogent can be said for the consumption of goods, nor for any other
conceivable incentive to acquisition, and especially not for any
incentive to accumulation of wealth.

It is of course not to be overlooked that in a community where nearly
all goods are private property the necessity of earning a livelihood
is a powerful and ever present incentive for the poorer members of
the community. The need of subsistence and of an increase of physical
comfort may for a time be the dominant motive of acquisition for those
classes who are habitually employed at manual labour, whose subsistence
is on a precarious footing, who possess little and ordinarily accumulate
little; but it will appear in the course of the discussion that even in
the case of these impecunious classes the predominance of the motive of
physical want is not so decided as has sometimes been assumed. On the
other hand, so far as regards those members and classes of the community
who are chiefly concerned in the accumulation of wealth, the incentive
of subsistence or of physical comfort never plays a considerable part.
Ownership began and grew into a human institution on grounds unrelated
to the subsistence minimum. The dominant incentive was from the outset
the invidious distinction attaching to wealth, and, save temporarily and
by exception, no other motive has usurped the primacy at any later stage
of the development.

Property set out with being booty held as trophies of the successful
raid. So long as the group had departed and so long as it still stood
in close contact with other hostile groups, the utility of things or
persons owned lay chiefly in an invidious comparison between their
possessor and the enemy from whom they were taken. The habit of
distinguishing between the interests of the individual and those of
the group to which he belongs is apparently a later growth. Invidious
comparison between the possessor of the honorific booty and his less
successful neighbours within the group was no doubt present early as an
element of the utility of the things possessed, though this wa