rganic relation between the
same psychological phenomena considered as traits or habits of the
individual. It has appeared at an earlier point in the discussion
that the relation of status, as a feature of social structure, is a
consequence of the predatory habit of life. As regards its line
of derivation, it is substantially an elaborated expression of the
predatory attitude. On the other hand, an anthropomorphic cult is a
code of detailed relations of status superimposed upon the concept of
a preternatural, inscrutable propensity in material things. So that, as
regards the external facts of its derivation, the cult may be taken as
an outgrowth of archaic man's pervading animistic sense, defined and in
some degree transformed by the predatory habit of life, the result being
a personified preternatural agency, which is by imputation endowed with
a full complement of the habits of thought that characterize the man of
the predatory culture.

The grosser psychological features in the case, which have an immediate
bearing on economic theory and are consequently to be taken account
of here, are therefore: (a) as has appeared in an earlier chapter,
the predatory, emulative habit of mind here called prowess is but the
barbarian variant of the generically human instinct of workmanship,
which has fallen into this specific form under the guidance of a habit
of invidious comparison of persons; (b) the relation of status is a
formal expression of such an invidious comparison duly gauged and graded
according to a sanctioned schedule; (c) an anthropomorphic cult, in the
days of its early vigor at least, is an institution the characteristic
element of which is a relation of status between the human subject as
inferior and the personified preternatural agency as superior. With
this in mind, there should be no difficulty in recognizing the intimate
relation which subsists between these three phenomena of human nature
and of human life; the relation amounts to an identity in some of their
substantial elements. On the one hand, the system of status and the
predatory habit of life are an expression of the instinct of workmanship
as it takes form under a custom of invidious comparison; on the other
hand, the anthropomorphic cult and the habit of devout observances
are an expression of men's animistic sense of a propensity in material
things, elaborated under the guidance of substantially the same general
habit of invidious comparison. The t