THE COLLECTED WORKS OF THORSTEIN VEBLEN: Business Theories, Economic Articles & Essays. Thorstein Veblen

the kingship and temporal power has arisen out of the priestly office and spiritual power - or perhaps better where the inchoate kingship was in its origins chiefly of a priestly complexion, with a gradual shifting of kingly power and prerogative to a temporal basis,¹⁰³ - there the transition from a creation of property and mastery rights by priestly economies (fraud?) to a tenure of wealth and authority by royal prerogative (force?) will have so blended the two methods of genesis as to leave the attempt at a hard fast discrimination between them somewhat idle.

      But whatever may be conceived to have been the genesis of ownership, the institution is commonly found, in the barbarian culture, to be tempered with a large infusion of predatory concepts, of status, prerogative, differential respect of persons and economic classes, and a corresponding differential respect of occupations. Whether property provokes to predation or predation initiates ownership, the situation that results in early phases of the pecuniary culture is much the same; and the causal relation in which this situation stands to the advance in workmanship is also much the same. This relation between workmanship and the pecuniary culture brought on with the advent of ownership is a twofold one, or, perhaps better, it is a relation of mutual give and take. The increase in industrial efficiency due to a sufficient advance in the industrial arts gives rise to the ownership of property and to pecuniary appreciations of men and things, occupations and products, habits, customs, usages, observances, services and goods. At the same time, since predation and warlike exploit are intimately associated with the facts of ownership through its early history (perhaps throughout its history), there results a marked accentuation of the self-regarding sentiments; with the economically important consequence that self-interest displaces the common good in men’s ideals and aspirations. The animus entailed by predatory exploit is one of self-interest, a seeking of one’s own advantage at the cost of the enemy, which frequently, in the poetically ideal case, takes such an extreme form as to prefer the enemy’s loss to one’s own gain. And in the emulation which the predatory life and its distinctions of wealth introduce into the community, the end of endeavour is likely to become the differential advantage of the individual as against his neighbours rather than the undifferentiated advantage of the group as a whole, in contrast with alien or hostile groups. The members of the community come to work each for his own interest in severalty, rather than for an undivided interest in the common lot. Such sentiment of group solidarity as there may remain falls also into the invidious and emulative form; whereby the fighting patriot becomes the type and exemplar of the public spirited citizen, whose ideal then is to follow his leader and humble the pride of those whom the chances of contention have thrown in with the other side of the game. The sentiment of common interest, itself in good part a diffuse working-out of the parental instinct, comes at the best to converge on the glory of the flag instead of the fulness of life of the community at large, or more commonly it comes to be centred in loyalty, that is to say in subservience, to the common war-chief and his dynastic successors.

      In the shifting of activities, ideals and aims so brought in with the advent of wealth and ownership, the part of the priests and their divinities is not to be overlooked, for herein lies one of the greater cultural gains brought on by the technological advance at this juncture.

      The margin of service and produce available for consumption in the cult increases, and by easy consequence the spiritual prestige and the temporal power and prerogatives of the priesthood grow greater. The jurisdiction of the gods of the victors is extended, through the vicarious power of the priests, over the subject peoples, and as the temporal dominion is enlarged and an increasing measure of coercion is employed in controlling these dominions, so also in the affairs of the gods and their priests there is an accession of power and dignity. It commonly happens where predatory enterprise comes to be habitual and successful that the temporal power tends to centre in an autocratic and arbitrary ruler; and in this as in so much else, spiritual affairs are likely to take their complexion from the temporal, resulting in a strong drift toward an autocratic monotheism, which in the finished case comes to a climax in an omnipotent, omniscient deity of very exalted dignity and very exacting temper. For the habits of thought enforced in the affairs of daily life are carried over into men’s sense of what is right and good in the life of the gods as well. If there is any choice among the gods under whose auspices a people has successfully entered on a career of predation, so that some of the gods have more of a reputation for rapacity and inhumanity than others, the most atrocious among them is likely, other things being equal, to become the war-god of the conquering host, and so eventually to be exalted to the suzerainty among the gods, and even in time to become the one and only incumbent of the divine czardom.

      Should it happen that a relatively humane, tolerant and tractable deity comes in for exaltation to the divine suzerainty, as well may be if such a one has already a good prior claim standing over from the more peaceable past, he will readily acquire the due princely arrogance and irresponsibility that vests the typical heavenly king. It may be added that as a matter of course no degree of imputed inhumanity in the most high God will stand in the way of a god-fearing and astute priesthood volubly ascribing to him all the good qualities that should grace an elderly patriarchal gentleman of the old school; so that even his most infamous atrocities become ineffably meritorious and are dispensed of his mercy.¹⁰⁴

      With the terrors of a jealous and almighty God behind them, and with faith in their own mission and sagacity in its administration, the priesthood are in a position to make the affairs of the heavenly king count for much in the affairs of men; more particularly since this spiritual power enters into working arrangements with the temporal power; so that in the outcome these institutions which in their origins have grown out of a precarious margin of product above subsistence come to possess themselves of the output at large and leave a precarious margin of subsistence to the community at large.¹⁰⁵

      These further matters of “natural law in the spiritual world” are not in themselves of direct interest to the present inquiry, and they are also matters of somewhat tedious commonplace. Yet this run of things has grave consequences in the further working-out of the technological situation as well as in the course of material welfare for the community on whom it is incumbent to turn the technological knowledge to account, to conserve or improve and transmit it, and for this reason it has seemed necessary summarily to recall those general features of the cultural scheme that are inherently associated with the earlier pecuniary culture, - the full-blown barbarian culture. And it seems pertinent also to add something further in the same connection before leaving this aspect of the case.

      It is necessary to hark back to what was said in an earlier chapter, of the relations of tillage and cattle-breeding to the instinct of workmanship and the course of technological advance. Both the technological and the institutional bearing of cattle-breeding is particularly notable in this connection. As already spoken of in what has gone before, cattle-breeding has the technological peculiarity that it may be successfully entered on and carried forward with a larger admixture of anthropomorphic concepts than the mechanic arts, or even than the domestication and care of the crop plants. It is perhaps not to be admitted that the penchant of early man to take an anthropomorphic view of the lower animals and impute to them the common traits of human nature has directly conduced to their successful domestication, but it should be within the mark to say that this penchant may have been primarily responsible for the course of conduct that led to the domestication of animals,¹⁰⁶ and that it has apparently never been a serious drawback to any pastoral culture. Now, wealth in flocks and herds is peculiar not only in being eminently portable, even to the extent that in the usual course of this industry it is necessary for a pastoral community to migrate, or to go over an extended itinerary with the changing seasons, but it has also the peculiar quality of mul-tiplying spontaneously, given only a degree of surveillance and a sufficient range of pasture lands. It follows that cattle are easy and tempting to acquire by predation, will accumulate through natural increase without notable exertion on the part of their owners, and will multiply beyond the bearing capacity of any disposable range. Hence a pastoral people, or a people given in great part to pastoral pursuits, will somewhat readily take to a predatory life; will have to be organised for defence (and offence) against raids or encroachments from its neighbours engaged in the same pursuits; will find itself short of range lands through the natural increase of its flocks or herds, and so will even involuntarily be brought into feud with neighbouring herdsmen through mutual trespass. Further, the work of herding,