Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/27

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY I 3

the pre-human instinctive pairing. Slavery followed as the cap- ture and appropriation of men ; thus constituting, with polyg- amy, the patriarchate; and, finally, with increased population and agriculture, the conquest of territory and the establish- ment of feudalism completed the extension of self-consciousness through all the institutions of society.

It may be objected that man had become fully self-conscious long before the appearance of feudalism, and even before slavery or polygamy, and that, therefore, we should not look to social institutions as the peculiar expression of that capacity. The objection is not sound, for self-consciousness ranges from the child to the adult, from the idiot to the genius, and it reaches its highest development only with the appearance of a social environment fitted to give it expression. In fact, it is not until long after the establishment of feudalism, and when the bonds of custom are broken, that we find the generally accepted type of self-consciousness, the reflective, introspective philosopher. The earlier self-consciousness which originated social institu- tions was merely empiric, imitative, habitual, phenomenal, tak- ing itself as a matter of course, and not inquiring into its own essence. It could, therefore, expand and deepen only as it found the social occasion, and this occasion was that gradual increase of population and improvement in the production of wealth which forced upon individuals the recognition of scarcity in suc- cessive fields of life as a determining factor in the struggle for existence. Scarcity is a relative situation. Private property in land could not be thought of until land came to be scarce and its possession a condition of survival. So with private property in men, women, children, and tools. It is increased density of population that brings into consciousness the element of scarcity in the several fields of human activity one after the other, and upon this consciousness private appropriation is built at once, thus setting the foundation for social institutions.' All social

Mnan original and discerning discussion on "The Beginnings of Ownership," in the American Journal of Sociology, 1898, Dr. Veblen makes the distinction between "economic" property and that "quasi-personal " fringe of material things which the primitive man conceived as accompanying his own personality, and which had not yet come to have economic value to him.