Transcriber’s Note
Transcriber created the cover image fromimages of the original cover and title page.The result remains in the Public Domain.
THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
THE INSTINCT OF
WORKMANSHIP
AND THE STATE OF THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS
BY
THORSTEIN VEBLEN
AUTHOR OF “THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS”
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1914
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1914,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1914.
vii
TO
B K N
PREFACE
The following essay attempts an analysis of such correlationas is visible between industrial use and wont andthose other institutional facts that go to make up anygiven phase of civilisation. It is assumed that in thegrowth of culture, as in its current maintenance, thefacts of technological use and wont are fundamental anddefinitive, in the sense that they underlie and conditionthe scope and method of civilisation in other than thetechnological respect, but not in such a sense as to precludeor overlook the degree in which these other conventionsof any given civilisation in their turn react onthe state of the industrial arts.
The analysis proceeds on the materialistic assumptionsof modern science, but without prejudice to the underlyingquestion as to the ulterior competency of this materialisticconception considered as a metaphysical tenet.The inquiry simply accepts these mechanistic assumptionsof material science for the purpose in hand, sincethese afford the currently acceptable terms of solutionfor any scientific problem of the kind in the present stateof preconceptions on this head.
As should appear from its slight bulk, the essay is ofthe nature of a cursory survey rather than an exhaustiveinquiry with full documentation. The few referencesgiven and the authorities cited in the course of the argumentare accordingly not to be taken as an inclusiveviiipresentation of th