ic motive. The propensity changes
only in the form of its expression and in the proximate objects to which
it directs the man's activity. Under the regime of individual ownership
the most available means of visibly achieving a purpose is that afforded
by the acquisition and accumulation of goods; and as the self-regarding
antithesis between man and man reaches fuller consciousness, the
propensity for achievement--the instinct of workmanship--tends more
and more to shape itself into a straining to excel others in pecuniary
achievement. Relative success, tested by an invidious pecuniary
comparison with other men, becomes the conventional end of action. The
currently accepted legitimate end of effort becomes the achievement of
a favourable comparison with other men; and therefore the repugnance to
futility to a good extent coalesces with the incentive of emulation. It
acts to accentuate the struggle for pecuniary reputability by visiting
with a sharper disapproval all shortcoming and all evidence of
shortcoming in point of pecuniary success. Purposeful effort comes to
mean, primarily, effort directed to or resulting in a more creditable
showing of accumulated wealth. Among the motives which lead men to
accumulate wealth, the primacy, both in scope and intensity, therefore,
continues to belong to this motive of pecuniary emulation.

In making use of the term "invidious", it may perhaps be unnecessary to
remark, there is no intention to extol or depreciate, or to commend or
deplore any of the phenomena which the word is used to characterise. The
term is used in a technical sense as describing a comparison of persons
with a view to rating and grading them in respect of relative worth or
value--in an aesthetic or moral sense--and so awarding and defining
the relative degrees of complacency with which they may legitimately be
contemplated by themselves and by others. An invidious comparison is a
process of valuation of persons in respect of worth.

Chapter Three ~~ Conspicuous Leisure

If its working were not disturbed by other economic forces or other
features of the emulative process, the immediate effect of such a
pecuniary struggle as has just been described in outline would be to
make men industrious and frugal. This result actually follows, in some
measure, so far as regards the lower classes, whose ordinary means of
acquiring goods is productive labour. This is more especially true
of the labouring classes in a s