§2.In examining these organic activities lying at the basis of human industry, we shall light at the outset upon one fact of extreme significance, viz.that to each of these organically useful efforts Nature has attached some definite physical, or psycho-physical, enjoyment.Hunting, fighting, mating, the care and protection of the young, indeed all actions which possess what is called 'survival value' or biological utility, are endowed with a pleasure bonus as a bribe for their performance.Nature endows most organically useful efforts with concurrent enjoyment.
But, though in these 'organic functions' many animals give out a great deal of 'laborious' effort, commingled with elements of play or of incipient art, as in the dancing, singing and decorative operations of birds, to none of them is the word 'industry' fully applicable.We do not seem to enter the definitely economic sphere until we find animals sufficiently reasonable to interfere in a conscious way with their environment, for tolerably distant ends.For, though much industrial production and consumption will continue to be either instinctive or automatic in their operation, a growing element of conscious purpose will become essential to the ordered conduct of all industrial processes.The conscious conception of more distant ends and the growing willingness to make present sacrifices for their attainment are the plainest badges of this industrial progress.When a being is aware of these purposes he has entered a rational economy.
As this more rational economy proceeds, the marks which distinguish it from a purely instinctive organic economy become evident.The instinctive economy allows little scope for individuality of life, the dominant drive of its 'implicit' purpose is specific, i.e., subserving the maintenance and evolution of the species.The spirit of the hive in bee-life is the fullest expression of this subservience of the individual life to the corporate life and of the present generation to the series of generations constituting the specific life.But everywhere the dominion of instinct implies the absorption of the individual life in promoting the ends of the species:
successful parenthood is the primary work of the individual.
It might almost be said that the dawn of reason is the dawn of selfishness.
For rational economy involves a conscious realisation of the individual self, with ends of its own to be secured and with opportunities for securing them.The earliest conception of this separate self and its ends will naturally tend to be in terms of merely or mainly physical satisfaction.Thus the displacement of the instinctive by the rational economy is evidently a critical era, attended with grave risks due to the tendency towards an over-assertion of the individual self and a consequent weakening of the forces making for specific life.Man, the newly conscious individual, may perversely choose to squander organic resources 'intended' by nature for the race upon his own personal pleasures and needs.He may refuse to make as a matter of rational choice those personal efforts and sacrifices for family and race which no animal, subject to the drive of instinct, is able to 'think' of refusing.Such may be an effect of the release from the life of organic instincts.The increasing supply of foods and other sources of physical satisfaction he may apply to build up for himself a life of super-brutal hedonism.1 For, when reason first begins to assert supremacy, it is apt to become thrall to the purely animal self.Only as this animal self becomes spiritualised and socialised, does the social race-life reassert its sway upon the higher plane of human consciousness.
§3.But it is of importance to realise that a first effect of reason, operating to direct the purposive activities, is to liberate the 'self' from the dominion of the specific life, and to enable it to seek and obtain separate personal satisfactions.For with this power comes the fact and the sense of 'personal property' which play so large a part in industry.
Early industry and early property are largely directed by the requirements of this dawning sense of personality.Though the origins of industry are doubtless found in the promptings of organic utility, they are not of a narrowly 'utilitarian' character.We do not find the earliest industries of man closely confined to the satisfaction of what might seem the most urgent of his organic needs, food, shelter, protection against enemies.
The elements of play and ornament are so prevalent in early industries as to suggest the theory, which some anthropologists press far, that adornment for personal glory is the dominant origin of industry and property.So, for example, Bücher2 contends that the earliest really industrial activities were a painting and tatooing of the body, and a manufacture of clothing and of other personal apparatus for purely ornamental purposes.
Even the taming of domestic animals was, he held, first undertaken for amusement or for the worship of the gods.The strong attraction of most savage or backward peoples in our day towards articles of ornament and play which afford expression to naive personal pride, appears to support this view.Primitive man certainly does not evolve towards industrial civilisation by a logically sane economy of satisfying first his most vitally important material needs, and then building on this foundation a superstructure of conveniences, comforts and luxuries, with the various industries appertaining thereto.This economic man is nowhere found.Actual man, as many anthropologists depict him, appears to begin with the luxuries and dispenses with the conveniences.
