By force of his being such an agent he is possessed of a taste for effective work, and a distaste for futile effort.

He has a sense of the merit of serviceability or efficiency and of the demerit of futility, waste, or incapacity.

This aptitude or propensity may be called the instinct of workmanship.

Wherever the circumstances or traditions of life lead to an habitual comparison of one person with another in point of efficiency, the instinct of workmanship works out in an emulative or invidious comparison of persons.

The extent to which this result follows depends in some considerable degree on the temperament of the population.