THE COLLECTED WORKS OF THORSTEIN VEBLEN: Business Theories, Economic Articles & Essays. Thorstein Veblen
this American-Polynesian region are gifted with some special degree of spiritual (instinctive) fitness for plant-breeding. They seem to be endowed with a particular proclivity for sympathetically identifying themselves with and patiently waiting upon the course of natural phenomena, perhaps especially the phenomena of animate nature, which never seem alien or incomprehensible to the Indian. Such at least is the consistent suggestion carried by their myths, legends and symbolism.
The typical American cosmogony is a tissue of legends of fecundity and growth, even more than appears to hold true of primitive cosmogonies elsewhere.42 And yet some caution in accepting such a generalisation is necessary in view, for instance, of the mythological output along similar lines on the Mediterranean seaboard in early times. By native gift the Indian is a “nature-faker,” given to unlimited anthropomorphism.
Mechanical, matter-of-fact appreciation of external and material phenomena seems to be in a peculiar degree difficult, irrelevant and incongruous with the genius of the race. But even if it should seem that this race, or group of races, is peculiarly given to such sympathetic interpretation of natural phenomena in terms of human instinct, the difference between them and the typical racial stocks of the old world in this respect is after all a difference in degree, not in kind. The like proclivity is in good evidence throughout, wherever any race of men have endeavoured to put their acquaintance with natural phenomena into systematic form. The bond of combination in the making of systems, whether cosmologic, mythic, philosophic or scientific, has been some putative human trait or traits.
It may be that in their appreciation of facts and their making of systems the American races have by some peculiar native gift been inclined to an interpretation in terms of fertility, growth, nurture and life-cycles.
Any predisposition freely to accept and use the deliverances of sensible perception on their own recognisances simply, in the terms in which they come, and to connect them up in a system of knowledge in their own terms, without imputation of a spiritual (anthropomorphic) substratum, - for the purposes of workmanship such a predisposition should be of the first importance for effective work in the mechanic arts; and a strong instinctive bias to the contrary should be correspondingly pernicious. Any instinctive bias to colour, distort and derange the facts by imputing elements of human nature will unavoidably act to hinder and deflect the agent from an effectual pursuit of mechanical design. But the like is not true in the same degree as regards men’s dealings with animate nature.
Anthropomorphic interpretation is more at home and less disserviceable here. With less serious derangement in the objective results, plants and animals may be construed to have a conscious purpose in life and to pursue their ends somewhat after the human fashion; witness the facility with which the story-tellers recount plausible episodes (feigned or real) from the life of animals and plants, and the readiness with which such tales get a hearing. Readers and hearers find no great difficulty, if any, in giving make-believe credence to the tales so long as they recount only such adventures as are physically possible to the animals of which (whom?) they are told; the hearers are always ready to go with the story-teller down this highway of make-believe into the subhuman fairy land. Mechanical phenomena, happenings in the mechanic arts, characteristics of the existence of inanimate objects and the changes which they undergo, lend themselves with much less happy effect to the anthropomorphic story-teller’s make-believe. Episodes from the feigned life-history of tools, machines and raw materials are not drawn on with anything like the same frequency, nor do the tales that recount them meet with the same untiring attention. There is always an unreality about them which even the most robust make-believe can overcome only for a short and doubtful interval. Witness the relative barrenness of primitive folk-tales on this inanimate side, as compared with the exuberance of the myths and legends that interpret the life of plants and animals; and where inanimate phenomena are drawn into the net of personation it happens almost unavoidably that a feigned person is thrown into the foreground of the tale plausibly to take the part of bearer, controller or intrigant in the episodes related.43
Even more to the same purpose, as showing the same insidious facility of anthropomorphic interpretation, are the bona-fide constructions of scientists and pseudo-scientists running on the imputation of purpose and deliberation to explain the behaviour of animals. Indeed, at the worst, and still in good faith, it may go so far as to impute some sort of quasi-conscious striving on the part of plants.44 As good and temperate an instance as may be had of such anthropomorphic imputation of workmanlike gifts is afforded, for instance, by the work of Romanes on the behaviour of animals.45 It goes to show how very plausibly some of the lower animals may be credited with these spiritual aptitudes and how far and well the imputation may be made to serve the scien-tist’s end. So plausible, indeed, is this anthropomorphism as to disarm even the scepticism of the trained sceptic. It will also appear in the later course of this inquiry that anthropomorphism, and especially the imputation of workmanship, has borne a much greater part in the work of the scientists than the members of that craft would like to avow; so that the scientific use of the anthropomorphic fancy is by no means a unique distinction of Romanes and the large group or school of biologists of which his work is typical; nor does the presence of this bias in their work by any means strip it of scientific value. In point of fact, it seems to touch the substance of their objective results much less seriously than might be apprehended.
The modern scientist’s watchword is scepticism and caution; and what he may be led to do concessively, in spite of himself, by too broad a consciousness of kind, the savage does joyously and with conviction. His measure of what he sees about him is himself, and his apprehension of what takes place is a comprehension of how such things would be done in the course of human conduct if they were physically possible to man. The man (more often perhaps the woman) who busies himself with the beginnings of plant and animal-breeding will sympathetically put himself in touch with their inclinations and aptitudes with a degree of intimacy and assurance never approached by the followers of Romanes. It is for him to use common sense and fall in with the drift and idiosyncracies of these others who are, mysteriously, denied the gift of speech. By the unambiguous leading of the anthropomorphic fancy he puts himself in the place of his ward, his animal or vegetable friend and cousin, and can so learn something of what is going on in the putative vegetable or animal mind, through patient observation of what comes to light in response to his attentions in the course of his joint life with them. The plant or animal manifestly does things, and the question follows, Why do these speechless others do those things which they are seen to do? - things which often do not lie within the range of things desirable to be accomplished, humanly speaking.
Manifestly these non-human others seek other ends and seek them in other ways than man. Some of the objective results which it lies in their nature to accomplish in so working out their scheme of life are useful to their human cousins; and it stands to reason that when they are dealt kindly with, when man takes pains to further their ends in life, they will take thought and respond somewhat in kind. To turn the proposition about, those things which men find, by trial and error, to bring a good and kindly return from the speechless others are manifestly well received by them and must obviously be of a kind to fall in with their bent and minister to their inclinations; and prudence and fellow-feeling combine to lead men farther along the way so indicated at each move in the propitious direction.
To the unsophisticated - and even to the sophisticated sceptic - it is manifest that animate objects do things. What they aim to do, as well as the logic of their conduct in carrying out their designs, are not precisely the same as in the case of man. But by staying by and learning what they are bent on doing, and observing how they go about it, any peculiarity in the nature of their needs, spiritual and physical, and in their manner of approach-ing their ends, may be learned and assimilated; and their life-work can be furthered and amplified by judiciously ministering to their ascertained needs and making the way smooth for them in what they undertake, so long as their undertakings are such as man is interested in bringing to a successful issue. Of course they work toward ends that are good in their sight, though not always such as men would seek; but that is their affair and is not to be pried into beyond the bounds of a decent neighbourly interest. And they work by methods in some degree other, often wiser, than those of men, and these it is man’s place to learn if he would profit by their companionship.
Much of the scheme of life of these speechless others