In
so far as it comes into conflict with the law of conspicuous
waste, the instinct of workmanship expresses itself not so much
in insistence on substantial usefulness as in an abiding sense of
the odiousness and aesthetic impossibility of what is obviously
futile. Being of the nature of an instinctive affection, its
guidance touches chiefly and immediately the obvious and apparent
violations of its requirements. It is only less promptly and with
less constraining force that it reaches such substantial
violations of its requirements as are appreciated only upon
reflection.
So long as all labor continues to be performed exclusively or
usually by slaves, the baseness of all productive effort is too
constantly and deterrently present in the mind of men to allow
the instinct of workmanship seriously to take effect in the
direction of industrial usefulness; but when the quasi-peaceable
stage (with slavery and status) passes into the peaceable stage
of industry (with wage labor and cash payment) the instinct comes
more effectively into play. It then begins aggressively to shape
men's views of what is meritorious, and asserts itself at least
as an auxiliary canon of self-complacency. All extraneous
considerations apart, those persons (adult) are but a vanishing
minority today who harbor no inclination to the accomplishment of
some end, or who are not impelled of their own motion to shape
some object or fact or relation for human use.
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