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.
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