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.
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