Chapter 9: The Conservation of Archaic Traits
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BACK
The institution of a leisure class has an effect not only upon
social structure but also upon the individual character of the
members of society. So soon as a given proclivity or a given point
of view has won acceptance as an authoritative standard or norm of
life it will react upon the character of the members of the society
which has accepted it as a norm. It will to some extent shape their
habits of thought and will exercise a selective surveillance over
the development of men's aptitudes and inclinations. This effect is
wrought partly by a coercive, educational adaptation of the habits
of all individuals, partly by a selective elimination of the unfit
individuals and lines of descent. Such human material as does not
lend itself to the methods of life imposed by the accepted scheme
suffers more or less elimination as well as repression. The
principles of pecuniary emulation and of industrial exemption have
in this way been erected into canons of life, and have become
coercive factors of some importance in the situation to which men
have to adapt themselves.
These two broad principles of conspicuous waste and industrial
exemption affect the cultural development both by guiding men's
habits of thought, and so controlling the growth of institutions,
and by selectively conserving certain traits of human nature that
conduce to facility of life under the leisure-class scheme, and so
controlling the effective temper of the community. The proximate
tendency of the institution of a leisure class in shaping human
character runs in the direction of spiritual survival and reversion.
Its effect upon the temper of a community is of the nature of an
arrested spiritual development. In the later culture especially, the
institution has, on the whole, a conservative trend. This
proposition is familiar enough in substance, but it may to many have
the appearance of novelty in its present application. Therefore a
summary review of its logical grounds may not be uncalled for, even
at the risk of some tedious repetition and formulation of
commonplaces.
Social evolution is a process of selective adaptation of temperament
and habits of thought under the stress of the circumstances of
associated life. The adaptation of habits of thought is the growth
of institutions. But along with the growth of institutions has gone
a change of a more substantial character. Not only have the habits
of men changed with the changing exigencies of the situation, but
these changing exigencies have also brought about a correlative
change in human nature. The human material of society itself varies
with the changing conditions of life. This variation of human nature
is held by the later ethnologists to be a process of selection
between several relatively stable and persistent ethnic types or
ethnic elements. Men tend to revert or to breed true, more or less
closely, to one or another of certain types of human nature that
have in their main features been fixed in approximate conformity to
a situation in the past which differed from the situation of today.
There are several of these relatively stable ethnic types of mankind
comprised in the populations of the Western culture. These ethnic
types survive in the race inheritance today, not as rigid and
invariable moulds, each of a single precise and specific pattern,
but in the form of a greater or smaller number of variants. Some
variation of the ethnic types has resulted under the protracted
selective process to which the several types and their hybrids have
been subjected during the prehistoric and historic growth of
culture.
This necessary variation of the types themselves, due to a selective
process of considerable duration and of a consistent trend, has not
been sufficiently noticed by the writers who have discussed ethnic
survival. The argument is here concerned with two main divergent
variants of human nature resulting from this, relatively late,
selective adaptation of the ethnic types comprised in the Western
culture; the point of interest being the probable effect of the
situation of today in furthering variation along one or the other of
these two divergent lines.
The ethnological position may be briefly summed up; and in order to
avoid any but the most indispensable detail the schedule of types
and variants and the scheme of reversion and survival in which they
are concerned are here presented with a diagrammatic meagerness and
simplicity which would not be admissible for any other purpose. The
man of our industrial communities tends to breed true to one or the
other of three main ethic types; the dolichocephalic-blond, the
brachycephalic-brunette, and the Mediterranean -- disregarding minor
and outlying elements of our culture. But within each of these main
ethnic types the reversion tends to one or the other of at least two
main directions of variation; the peaceable or antepredatory variant
and the predatory variant. The former of these two characteristic
variants is nearer to the generic type in each case, being the
reversional representative of its type as it stood at the earliest
stage of associated life of which there is available evidence,
either archaeological or psychological. This variant is taken to
represent the ancestors of existing civilized man at the peaceable,
savage phase of life which preceded the predatory culture, the
regime of status, and the growth of pecuniary emulation. The second
or predatory variant of the types is taken to be a survival of a
more recent modification of the main ethnic types and their hybrids
-- of these types as they were modified, mainly by a selective
adaptation, under the discipline of the predatory culture and the
latter emulative culture of the quasi-peaceable stage, or the
pecuniary culture proper.
Under the recognized laws of heredity there may be a survival from a
more or less remote past phase. In the ordinary, average, or normal
case, if the type has varied, the traits of the type are transmitted
approximately as they have stood in the recent past -- which may be
called the hereditary present. For the purpose in hand this
hereditary present is represented by the later predatory and the
quasi-peaceable culture.
It is to the variant of human nature which is characteristic of this
recent -- hereditarily still existing -- predatory or quasipredatory
culture that the modern civilized man tends to breed true in the
common run of cases. This proposition requires some qualification so
far as concerns the descendants of the servile or repressed classes
of barbarian times, but the qualification necessary is probably not
so great as might at first thought appear. Taking the population as
a whole, this predatory, emulative variant does not seem to have
attained a high degree of consistency or stability. That is to say,
the human nature inherited by modern Occidental man is not nearly
uniform in respect of the range or the relative strength of the
various aptitudes and propensities which go to make it up. The man
of the hereditary present is slightly archaic as judged for the
purposes of the latest exigencies of associated life. And the type
to which the modern man chiefly tends to revert under the law of
variation is a somewhat more archaic human nature. On the other
hand, to judge by the reversional traits which show themselves in
individuals that vary from the prevailing predatory style of
temperament, the ante-predatory variant seems to have a greater
stability and greater symmetry in the distribution or relative force
of its temperamental elements.
This divergence of inherited human nature, as between an earlier and
a later variant of the ethnic type to which the individual tends to
breed true, is traversed and obscured by a similar divergence
between the two or three main ethnic types that go to make up the
Occidental populations. The individuals in these communities are
conceived to be, in virtually every instance, hybrids of the
prevailing ethnic elements combined in the most varied proportions;
with the result that they tend to take back to one or the other of
the component ethnic types. These ethnic types differ in temperament
in a way somewhat similar to the difference between the predatory
and the antepredatory variants of the types; the dolicho-blond type
showing more of the characteristics of the predatory temperament --
or at least more of the violent disposition -- than the
brachycephalic-brunette type, and especially more than the
Mediterranean. When the growth of institutions or of the effective
sentiment of a given community shows a divergence from the predatory
human nature, therefore, it is impossible to say with certainty that
such a divergence indicates a reversion to the ante-predatory
variant. It may be due to an increasing dominance of the one or the
other of the "lower" ethnic elements in the population. Still,
although the evidence is not as conclusive as might be desired,
there are indications that the variations in the effective
temperament of modern communities is not altogether due to a
selection between stable ethnic types. It seems to be to some
appreciable extent a selection between the predatory and the
peaceable variants of the several types.
This conception of contemporary human evolution is not indispensable
to the discussion. The general conclusions reached by the use of
these concepts of selective adaptation would remain substantially
true if the earlier, Darwinian and Spencerian, terms and concepts
were substituted. Under the circumstances, some latitude may be
admissible in the use of terms. The word "type" is used loosely, to
denote variations of temperament which the ethnologists would
perhaps recognize only as trivial variants of the type rather than
as distinct ethnic types. Wherever a closer discrimination seems
essential to the argument, the effort to make such a closer
discrimination will be evident from the context.
The ethnic types of today, then, are variants of the primitive
racial types. They have suffered some alteration, and have attained
some degree of fixity in their altered form, under the discipline of
the barbarian culture. The man of the hereditary present is the
barbarian variant, servile or aristocratic, of the ethnic elements
that constitute him. But this barbarian variant has not attained the
highest degree of homogeneity or of stability. The barbarian culture
-- the predatory and quasi-peaceable cultural stages -- though of
great absolute duration, has been neither protracted enough nor
invariable enough in character to give an extreme fixity of type.
Variations from the barbarian human nature occur with some
frequency, and these cases of variation are becoming more noticeable
today, because the conditions of modern life no longer act
consistently to repress departures from the barbarian normal. The
predatory temperament does not lead itself to all the purposes of
modern life, and more especially not to modern industry.
Departures from the human nature of the hereditary present are most
frequently of the nature of reversions to an earlier variant of the
type. This earlier variant is represented by the temperament which
characterizes the primitive phase of peaceable savagery. The
circumstances of life and the ends of effort that prevailed before
the advent of the barbarian culture, shaped human nature and fixed
it as regards certain fundamental traits. And it is to these
ancient, generic features that modern men are prone to take back in
case of variation from the human nature of the hereditary present.
The conditions under which men lived in the most primitive stages of
associated life that can properly be called human, seem to have been
of a peaceful kind; and the character -- the temperament and
spiritual attitude of men under these early conditions or
environment and institutions seems to have been of a peaceful and
unaggressive, not to say an indolent, cast. For the immediate
purpose this peaceable cultural stage may be taken to mark the
initial phase of social development. So far as concerns the present
argument, the dominant spiritual feature of this presumptive initial
phase of culture seems to have been an unreflecting, unformulated
sense of group solidarity, largely expressing itself in a
complacent, but by no means strenuous, sympathy with all facility of
human life, and an uneasy revulsion against apprehended inhibition
or futility of life. Through its ubiquitous presence in the habits
of thought of the ante-predatory savage man, this pervading but
uneager sense of the generically useful seems to have exercised an
appreciable constraining force upon his life and upon the manner of
his habitual contact with other members of the group.
The traces of this initial, undifferentiated peaceable phase of
culture seem faint and doubtful if we look merely to such
categorical evidence of its existence as is afforded by usages and
views in vogue within the historical present, whether in civilized
or in rude communities; but less dubious evidence of its existence
is to be found in psychological survivals, in the way of persistent
and pervading traits of human character. These traits survive
perhaps in an especial degree among those ethic elements which were
crowded into the background during the predatory culture. Traits
that were suited to the earlier habits of life then became
relatively useless in the individual struggle for existence. And
those elements of the population, or those ethnic groups, which were
by temperament less fitted to the predatory life were repressed and
pushed into the background.
On the transition to the predatory culture the character of the
struggle for existence changed in some degree from a struggle of the
group against a non-human environment to a struggle against a human
environment. This change was accompanied by an increasing antagonism
and consciousness of antagonism between the individual members of
the group. The conditions of success within the group, as well as
the conditions of the survival of the group, changed in some
measure; and the dominant spiritual attitude for the group gradually
changed, and brought a different range of aptitudes and propensities
into the position of legitimate dominance in the accepted scheme of
life. Among these archaic traits that are to be regarded as
survivals from the peaceable cultural phase, are that instinct of
race solidarity which we call conscience, including the sense of
truthfulness and equity, and the instinct of workmanship, in its
naive, non-invidious expression.
Under the guidance of the later biological and psychological
science, human nature will have to be restated in terms of habit;
and in the restatement, this, in outline, appears to be the only
assignable place and ground of these traits. These habits of life
are of too pervading a character to be ascribed to the influence of
a late or brief discipline. The ease with which they are temporarily
overborne by the special exigencies of recent and modern life argues
that these habits are the surviving effects of a discipline of
extremely ancient date, from the teachings of which men have
frequently been constrained to depart in detail under the altered
circumstances of a later time; and the almost ubiquitous fashion in
which they assert themselves whenever the pressure of special
exigencies is relieved, argues that the process by which the traits
were fixed and incorporated into the spiritual makeup of the type
must have lasted for a relatively very long time and without serious
intermission. The point is not seriously affected by any question as
to whether it was a process of habituation in the old-fashioned
sense of the word or a process of selective adaptation of the race.
The character and exigencies of life, under that regime of status
and of individual and class antithesis which covers the entire
interval from the beginning of predatory culture to the present,
argue that the traits of temperament here under discussion could
scarcely have arisen and acquired fixity during that interval. It is
entirely probable that these traits have come down from an earlier
method of life, and have survived through the interval of predatory
and quasi-peaceable culture in a condition of incipient, or at least
imminent, desuetude, rather than that they have been brought out and
fixed by this later culture. They appear to be hereditary
characteristics of the race, and to have persisted in spite of the
altered requirements of success under the predatory and the later
pecuniary stages of culture. They seem to have persisted by force of
the tenacity of transmission that belongs to an hereditary trait
that is present in some degree in every member of the species, and
which therefore rests on a broad basis of race continuity.
Such a generic feature is not readily eliminated, even under a
process of selection so severe and protracted as that to which the
traits here under discussion were subjected during the predatory and
quasi-peaceable stages. These peaceable traits are in great part
alien to the methods and the animus of barbarian life. The salient
characteristic of the barbarian culture is an unremitting emulation
and antagonism between classes and between individuals. This
emulative discipline favors those individuals and lines of descent
which possess the peaceable savage traits in a relatively slight
degree. It therefore tends to eliminate these traits, and it has
apparently weakened them, in an appreciable degree, in the
populations that have been subject to it. Even where the extreme
penalty for non-conformity to the barbarian type of temperament is
not paid, there results at least a more or less consistent
repression of the non-conforming individuals and lines of descent.
Where life is largely a struggle between individuals within the
group, the possession of the ancient peaceable traits in a marked
degree would hamper an individual in the struggle for life.
Under any known phase of culture, other or later than the
presumptive initial phase here spoken of, the gifts of good-nature,
equity, and indiscriminate sympathy do not appreciably further the
life of the individual. Their possession may serve to protect the
individual from hard usage at the hands of a majority that insists
on a modicum of these ingredients in their ideal of a normal man;
but apart from their indirect and negative effect in this way, the
individual fares better under the regime of competition in
proportion as he has less of these gifts. Freedom from scruple, from
sympathy, honesty and regard for life, may, within fairly wide
limits, he said to further the success of the individual in the
pecuniary culture. The highly successful men of all times have
commonly been of this type; except those whose success has not been
scored in terms of either wealth or power. It is only within narrow
limits, and then only in a Pickwickian sense, that honesty is the
best policy.
As seen from the point of view of life under modern civilized
conditions in an enlightened community of the Western culture, the
primitive, ante-predatory savage, whose character it has been
attempted to trace in outline above, was not a great success. Even
for the purposes of that hypothetical culture to which his type of
human nature owes what stability it has -- even for the ends of the
peaceable savage group -- this primitive man has quite as many and
as conspicuous economic failings as he has economic virtues -- as
should be plain to any one whose sense of the case is not biased by
leniency born of a fellow-feeling. At his best he is "a clever,
good-for-nothing fellow." The shortcomings of this presumptively
primitive type of character are weakness, inefficiency, lack of
initiative and ingenuity, and a yielding and indolent amiability,
together with a lively but inconsequential animistic sense. Along
with these traits go certain others which have some value for the
collective life process, in the sense that they further the facility
of life in the group. These traits are truthfulness, peaceableness,
good-will, and a non-emulative, non-invidious interest in men and
things.
With the advent of the predatory stage of life there comes a change
in the requirements of the successful human character. Men's habits
of life are required to adapt themselves to new exigencies under a
new scheme of human relations. The same unfolding of energy, which
had previously found expression in the traits of savage life recited
above, is now required to find expression along a new line of
action, in a new group of habitual responses to altered stimuli. The
methods which, as counted in terms of facility of life, answered
measurably under the earlier conditions, are no longer adequate
under the new conditions. The earlier situation was characterized by
a relative absence of antagonism or differentiation of interests,
the later situation by an emulation constantly increasing in
relative absence of antagonism or differentiation of interests, the
later situation by an emulation constantly increasing in intensity
and narrowing in scope. The traits which characterize the predatory
and subsequent stages of culture, and which indicate the types of
man best fitted to survive under the regime of status, are (in their
primary expression) ferocity, self-seeking, clannishness, and
disingenuousness -- a free resort to force and fraud.
Under the severe and protracted discipline of the regime of
competition, the selection of ethnic types has acted to give a
somewhat pronounced dominance to these traits of character, by
favoring the survival of those ethnic elements which are most richly
endowed in these respects. At the same time the earlier -- acquired,
more generic habits of the race have never ceased to have some
usefulness for the purpose of the life of the collectivity and have
never fallen into definitive abeyance.
It may be worth while to point out that the dolicho-blond type of
European man seems to owe much of its dominating influence and its
masterful position in the recent culture to its possessing the
characteristics of predatory man in an exceptional degree. These
spiritual traits, together with a large endowment of physical energy
-- itself probably a result of selection between groups and between
lines of descent -- chiefly go to place any ethnic element in the
position of a leisure or master class, especially during the earlier
phases of the development of the institution of a leisure class.
This need not mean that precisely the same complement of aptitudes
in any individual would insure him an eminent personal success.
Under the competitive regime, the conditions of success for the
individual are not necessarily the same as those for a class. The
success of a class or party presumes a strong element of
clannishness, or loyalty to a chief, or adherence to a tenet;
whereas the competitive individual can best achieve his ends if he
combines the barbarian's energy, initiative, self-seeking and
disingenuousness with the savage's lack of loyalty or clannishness.
It may be remarked by the way, that the men who have scored a
brilliant (Napoleonic) success on the basis of an impartial
self-seeking and absence of scruple, have not uncommonly shown more
of the physical characteristics of the brachycephalic-brunette than
of the dolicho-blond. The greater proportion of moderately
successful individuals, in a self-seeking way, however, seem, in
physique, to belong to the last-named ethnic element.
The temperament induced by the predatory habit of life makes for the
survival and fullness of life of the individual under a regime of
emulation; at the same time it makes for the survival and success of
the group if the group's life as a collectivity is also
predominantly a life of hostile competition with other groups. But
the evolution of economic life in the industrially more mature
communities has now begun to take such a turn that the interest of
the community no longer coincides with the emulative interests of
the individual. In their corporate capacity, these advanced
industrial communities are ceasing to be competitors for the means
of life or for the right to live -- except in so far as the
predatory propensities of their ruling classes keep up the tradition
of war and rapine. These communities are no longer hostile to one
another by force of circumstances, other than the circumstances of
tradition and temperament. Their material interests -- apart,
possibly, from the interests of the collective good fame -- are not
only no longer incompatible, but the success of any one of the
communities unquestionably furthers the fullness of life of any
other community in the group, for the present and for an
incalculable time to come. No one of them any longer has any
material interest in getting the better of any other. The same is
not true in the same degree as regards individuals and their
relations to one another.
The collective interests of any modern community center in
industrial efficiency. The individual is serviceable for the ends of
the community somewhat in proportion to his efficiency in the
productive employments vulgarly so called. This collective interest
is best served by honesty, diligence, peacefulness, good-will, an
absence of self-seeking, and an habitual recognition and
apprehension of causal sequence, without admixture of animistic
belief and without a sense of dependence on any preternatural
intervention in the course of events. Not much is to be said for the
beauty, moral excellence, or general worthiness and reputability of
such a prosy human nature as these traits imply; and there is little
ground of enthusiasm for the manner of collective life that would
result from the prevalence of these traits in unmitigated dominance.
But that is beside the point. The successful working of a modern
industrial community is best secured where these traits concur, and
it is attained in the degree in which the human material is
characterized by their possession. Their presence in some measure is
required in order to have a tolerable adjustment to the
circumstances of the modern industrial situation. The complex,
comprehensive. essentially peaceable, and highly organized mechanism
of the modern industrial community works to the best advantage when
these traits, or most of them, are present in the highest
practicable degree. These traits are present in a markedly less
degree in the man of the predatory type than is useful for the
purposes of the modern collective life.
On the other hand, the immediate interest of the individual under
the competitive regime is best served by shrewd trading and
unscrupulous management. The characteristics named above as serving
the interests of the community are disserviceable to the individual,
rather than otherwise. The presence of these aptitudes in his
make-up diverts his energies to other ends than those of pecuniary
gain; and also in his pursuit of gain they lead him to seek gain by
the indirect and ineffectual channels of industry, rather than by a
free and unfaltering career of sharp practice. The industrial
aptitudes are pretty consistently a hindrance to the individual.
Under the regime of emulation the members of a modern industrial
community are rivals, each of whom will best attain his individual
and immediate advantage if, through an exceptional exemption from
scruple, he is able serenely to overreach and injure his fellows
when the chance offers.
It has already been noticed that modern economic institutions fall
into two roughly distinct categories -- the pecuniary and the
industrial. The like is true of employments. Under the former head
are employments that have to do with ownership or acquisition; under
the latter head, those that have to do with workmanship or
production. As was found in speaking of the growth of institutions,
so with regard to employments. The economic interests of the leisure
class lie in the pecuniary employments; those of the working classes
lie in both classes of employments, but chiefly in the industrial.
Entrance to the leisure class lies through the pecuniary
employments.
These two classes of employment differ materially in respect of the
aptitudes required for each; and the training which they give
similarly follows two divergent lines. The discipline of the
pecuniary employments acts to conserve and to cultivate certain of
the predatory aptitudes and the predatory animus. It does this both
by educating those individuals and classes who are occupied with
these employments and by selectively repressing and eliminating
those individuals and lines of descent that are unfit in this
respect. So far as men's habits of thought are shaped by the
competitive process of acquisition and tenure; so far as their
economic functions are comprised within the range of ownership of
wealth as conceived in terms of exchange value, and its management
and financiering through a permutation of values; so far their
experience in economic life favors the survival and accentuation of
the predatory temperament and habits of thought. Under the modern,
peaceable system, it is of course the peaceable range of predatory
habits and aptitudes that is chiefly fostered by a life of
acquisition. That is to say, the pecuniary employments give
proficiency in the general line of practices comprised under fraud,
rather than in those that belong under the more archaic method of
forcible seizure.
These pecuniary employments, tending to conserve the predatory
temperament, are the employments which have to do with ownership --
the immediate function of the leisure class proper -- and the
subsidiary functions concerned with acquisition and accumulation.
These cover the class of persons and that range of duties in the
economic process which have to do with the ownership of enterprises
engaged in competitive industry; especially those fundamental lines
of economic management which are classed as financiering operations.
To these may be added the greater part of mercantile occupations. In
their best and clearest development these duties make up the
economic office of the "captain of industry." The captain of
industry is an astute man rather than an ingenious one, and his
captaincy is a pecuniary rather than an industrial captaincy. Such
administration of industry as he exercises is commonly of a
permissive kind. The mechanically effective details of production
and of industrial organization are delegated to subordinates of a
less "practical" turn of mind -- men who are possessed of a gift for
workmanship rather than administrative ability. So far as regards
their tendency in shaping human nature by education and selection,
the common run of non-economic employments are to be classed with
the pecuniary employments. Such are politics and ecclesiastical and
military employments.
The pecuniary employments have also the sanction of reputability in
a much higher degree than the industrial employments. In this way
the leisure-class standards of good repute come in to sustain the
prestige of those aptitudes that serve the invidious purpose; and
the leisure-class scheme of decorous living, therefore, also
furthers the survival and culture of the predatory traits.
Employments fall into a hierarchical gradation of reputability.
Those which have to do immediately with ownership on a large scale
are the most reputable of economic employments proper. Next to these
in good repute come those employments that are immediately
subservient to ownership and financiering -- such as banking and the
law. Banking employments also carry a suggestion of large ownership,
and this fact is doubtless accountable for a share of the prestige
that attaches to the business. The profession of the law does not
imply large ownership ; but since no taint of usefulness, for other
than the competitive purpose, attaches to the lawyer's trade, it
grades high in the conventional scheme. The lawyer is exclusively
occupied with the details of predatory fraud, either in achieving or
in checkmating chicanery, and success in the profession is therefore
accepted as marking a large endowment of that barbarian astuteness
which has always commanded men's respect and fear. Mercantile
pursuits are only half-way reputable, unless they involve a large
element of ownership and a small element of usefulness. They grade
high or low somewhat in proportion as they serve the higher or the
lower needs; so that the business of retailing the vulgar
necessaries of life descends to the level of the handicrafts and
factory labor. Manual labor, or even the work of directing
mechanical processes, is of course on a precarious footing as
regards respectability. A qualification is necessary as regards the
discipline given by the pecuniary employments. As the scale of
industrial enterprise grows larger, pecuniary management comes to
bear less of the character of chicanery and shrewd competition in
detail. That is to say, for an ever-increasing proportion of the
persons who come in contact with this phase of economic life,
business reduces itself to a routine in which there is less
immediate suggestion of overreaching or exploiting a competitor. The
consequent exemption from predatory habits extends chiefly to
subordinates employed in business. The duties of ownership and
administration are virtually untouched by this qualification.
The case is different as regards those individuals or classes who
are immediately occupied with the technique and manual operations of
production. Their daily life is not in the same degree a course of
habituation to the emulative and invidious motives and maneuvers of
the pecuniary side of industry. They are consistently held to the
apprehension and coOrdination of mechanical facts and sequences, and
to their appreciation and utilization for the purposes of human
life. So far as concerns this portion of the population, the
educative and selective action of the industrial process with which
they are immediately in contact acts to adapt their habits of
thought to the non-invidious purposes of the collective life. For
them, therefore, it hastens the obsolescence of the distinctively
predatory aptitudes and propensities carried over by heredity and
tradition from the barbarian past of the race.
The educative action of the economic life of the community,
therefore, is not of a uniform kind throughout all its
manifestations. That range of economic activities which is concerned
immediately with pecuniary competition has a tendency to conserve
certain predatory traits; while those indusstrial occupations which
have to do immediately with the production of goods have in the main
the contrary tendency. But with regard to the latter class of
employments it is to be noticed in qualification that the persons
engaged in them are nearly all to some extent also concerned with
matters of pecuniary competition (as, for instance, in the
competitive fixing of wages and salaries, in the purchase of goods
for consumption, etc.). Therefore the distinction here made between
classes of employments is by no means a hard and fast distinction
between classes of persons.
The employments of the leisure classes in modernindustry are such as
to keep alive certain of the predatory habits and aptitudes. So far
as the members of those classes take part in the industrial process,
their training tends to conserve in them the barbarian temperament.
But there is something to be said on the other side. Individuals so
placed as to be exempt from strain may survive and transmit their
characteristics even if they differ widely from the average of the
species both in physique and in spiritual make-up. the chances for a
survival and transmission of atavistic traits are greatest in those
classes that are most sheltered from the stress of circumstances.
The leisure class is in some degree sheltered from the stress of the
industrial situation, and should, therefore, afford an exceptionally
great proportion of reversions to the peaceable or savage
temperament. It should be possible for such aberrant or atavistic
individuals to unfold their life activity on ante-predatory lines
without suffering as prompt a repression Or elimination as in the
lower walks of life.
Something of the sort seems to be true in fact. there is, for
instance, an appreciable proportion of the upper classes whose
inclinations lead them into philanthropic work, and there is a
considerable body of sentiment in the class going to support efforts
of reform and amelioration, And much of this philanthropic and
reformatory effort, moreover, bears the marks of that amiable
"cleverness" and incoherence that is characteristic of the primitive
savage. But it may still be doubtful whether these facts are
evidence of a larger proportion of reversions in the higher than in
the lower strata, Even if the same inclinations were present in the
impecunious classes, it would not as easily find expression there;
since those classes lack the means and the time and energy to give
effect to their inclinations in this respect. The prima facie
evidence of the facts can scarcely go unquestioned.
In further qualification it is to be noted that the leisure class of
today is recruited from those who have been successful in a
pecuniary way, and who, therefore, are presumably endowed with more
than an even complement of the predatory traits. Entrance into the
leisure class lies through the pecuniary employments, and these
employments, by selection and adaptation, act to admit to the upper
levels only those lines of descent that are pecuniarily fit to
survive under the predatory test. And so soon as a case of reversion
to non-predatory human nature shows itself on these upper levels, it
is commonly weeded out and thrown back to the lower pecuniary
levels. In order to hold its place in the class, a stock must have
the pecuniary temperament; otherwise its fortune would he dissipated
and it would presently lose caste. Instances of this kind are
sufficiently frequent.
The constituency of the leisure class is kept up by a continual
selective process, whereby the individuals and lines of descent that
are eminently fitted for an aggressive pecuniary competition are
withdraw from the lower classes. In order to reach the upper levels
the aspirant must have, not only a fair average complement of the
pecuniary aptitudes, but he must have these gifts in such an eminent
degree as to overcome very material difficulties that stand in the
way of his ascent. Barring accidents, the nouveaux arriv衢醩 are a
picked body.
This process of selective admission has, of course, always been
going on; ever since the fashion of pecuniary emulation set in --
which is much the same as saying, ever since the institution of a
leisure class was first installed. But the precise ground of
selection has not always been the same, and the selective process
has therefore not always given the same results. In the early
barbarian, or predatory stage proper, the test of fitness was
prowess, in the naive sense of the word. to gain entrance to the
class, the candidate had to he gifted with clannishness,
massiveness, ferocity , unscrupulousness, and tenacity of purpose.
these were the qualities that counted toward the accumulation and
continued tenure of wealth. the economic basis of the leisure class,
then as later, was the possession of wealth; hut the methods of
accumulating wealth, and the gifts required for holding it, have
changed in some degree since the early days of the predatory
culture. In consequence of the selective process the dominant traits
of the early barbarian leisure class were bold aggression, an alert
sense of status, and a free resort to fraud. the members of the
class held their place by tenure of prowess. In the later barbarian
culture society attained settled methods of acquisition and
possession under the quasi-peaceable regime of status. Simple
aggression and unrestrained violence in great measure gave place to
shrewd practice and chicanery, as the best approved method of
accumulating wealth. A different range of aptitudes and propensities
would then be conserved in the leisure class. Masterful aggression,
and the correlative massiveness, together with a ruthlessly
consistent sense of status, would still count among the most
splendid traits of the class. These have remained in our traditions
as the typical "aristocratic virtues." But with these were
associated an increasing complement of the less obtrusive pecuniary
virtues; such as providence, prudence, and chicanery. As time has
gone on, and the modern peaceable stage of pecuniary culture has
been approached, the last-named range of aptitudes and habits has
gained in relative effectiveness for pecuniary ends, and they have
counted for relatively more in the selective process under which
admission is gained and place is held in the leisure class.
The ground of selection has changed, until the aptitudes which now
qualify for admission to the class are the pecuniary aptitudes only.
What remains of the predatory barbarian traits is the tenacity of
purpose or consistency of aim which distinguished the successful
predatory barbarian from the peaceable savage whom he supplanted.
But this trait can not be said characteristically to distinguish the
pecuniarily successful upper-class man from the rank and file of the
industrial classes. The training and the selection to which the
latter are exposed in modernindustrial life give a similarly
decisive weight to this trait. Tenacity of purpose may rather be
said to distinguish both these classes from two others; the
shiftless ne'er do-well and the lower-class delinquent. In point of
natural endowment the pecuniary man compares with the delinquent in
much the same way as the industrial man compares with the
good-natured shiftless dependent. The ideal pecuniary man is like
the ideal delinquent in his unscrupulous conversion of goods and
persons to his own ends, and in a callous disregard of the feelings
and wishes of others and of the remoter effects of his actions; but
he is unlike him in possessing a keener sense of status, and in
working more consistently and farsightedly to a remoter end. The
kinship of the two types of temperament is further shown in a
proclivity to "sport" and gambling, and a relish of aimless
emulation. The ideal pecuniary man also shows a curious kinship with
the delinquent in one of the concomitant variations of the predatory
human nature. The delinquent is very commonly of a superstitious
habit of mind; he is a great believer in luck, spells, divination
and destiny, and in omens and shamanistic ceremony. Where
circumstances are favorable, this proclivity is apt to express
itself in a certain servile devotional fervor and a punctilious
attention to devout observances; it may perhaps be better
characterized as devoutness than as religion. At this point the
temperament of the delinquent has more in common with the pecuniary
and leisure classes than with the industrial man or with the class
of shiftless dependents.
Life in a modern industrial community, or in other words life under
the pecuniary culture, acts by a process of selection to develop and
conserve a certain range of aptitudes and propensities. The present
tendency of this selective process is not simply a reversion to a
given, immutable ethnic type. It tends rather to a modification of
human nature differing in some respects from any of the types or
variants transmitted out of the past. The objective point of the
evolution is not a single one. The temperament which the evolution
acts to establish as normal differs from any one of the archaic
variants of human nature in its greater stability of aim -- greater
singleness of purpose and greater persistence in effort. So far as
concerns economic theory, the objective point of the selective
process is on the whole single to this extent; although there are
minor tendencies of considerable importance diverging from this line
of development. But apart from this general trend the line of
development is not single. As concerns economic theory, the
development in other respects runs on two divergent lines. So far as
regards the selective conservation of capacities or aptitudes in
individuals, these two lines may be called the pecuniary and the
industrial. As regards the conservation of propensities, spiritual
attitude, or animus, the two may be called the invidious or
self-regarding and the non-invidious or economical. As regards the
intellectual or cognitive bent of the two directions of growth, the
former may he characterized as the personal standpoint, of conation,
qualitative relation, status, or worth; the latter as the impersonal
standpoint, of sequence, quantitative relation, mechanical
efficiency, or use.
The pecuniary employments call into action chiefly the former of
these two ranges of aptitudes and propensities, and act selectively
to conserve them in the population. The industrial employments, on
the other hand, chiefly exercise the latter range, and act to
conserve them. An exhaustive psychological analysis will show that
each of these two ranges of aptitudes and propensities is but the
multiform expression of a given temperamental bent. By force of the
unity or singleness of the individual, the aptitudes, animus, and
interests comprised in the first-named range belong together as
expressions of a given variant of human nature. The like is true of
the latter range. The two may be conceived as alternative directions
of human life, in such a way that a given individual inclines more
or less consistently to the one or the other. The tendency of the
pecuniary life is, in a general way, to conserve the barbarian
temperament, but with the substitution of fraud and prudence, or
administrative ability, in place of that predilection for physical
damage that characterizes the early barbarian. This substitution of
chicanery in place of devastation takes place only in an uncertain
degree. Within the pecuniary employments the selective action runs
pretty consistently in this direction, but the discipline of
pecuniary life, outside the competition for gain, does not work
consistently to the same effect. The discipline of modernlife in the
consumption of time and goods does not act unequivocally to
eliminate the aristocratic virtues or to foster the bourgeois
virtues. The conventional scheme of decent living calls for a
considerable exercise of the earlier barbarian traits. Some details
of this traditional scheme of life, bearing on this point, have been
noticed in earlier chapters under the head of leisure, and further
details will be shown in later chapters.
From what has been said, it appears that the leisure-class life and
the leisure-class scheme of life should further the conservation of
the barbarian temperament; chiefly of the quasi-peaceable, or
bourgeois, variant, but also in some measure of the predatory
variant. In the absence of disturbing factors, therefore, it should
be possible to trace a difference of temperament between the classes
of society. The aristocratic and the bourgeois virtues -- that is to
say the destructive and pecuniary traits -- should be found chiefly
among the upper classes, and the industrial virtues -- that is to
say the peaceable traits -- chiefly among the classes given to
mechanical industry.
In a general and uncertain way this holds true, hut the test is not
so readily applied nor so conclusive as might be wished. There are
several assignable reasons for its partial failure. All classes are
in a measure engaged in the pecuniary struggle, and in all classes
the possession of the pecuniary traits counts towards the success
and survival of the individual. Wherever the pecuniary culture
prevails, the selective process by which men's habits of thought are
shaped, and by which the survival of rival lines of descent is
decided, proceeds proximately on the basis of fitness for
acquisition. Consequently, if it were not for the fact that
pecuniary efficiency is on the whole incompatible with industrial
efficiency, the selective action of all occupations would tend to
the unmitigated dominance of the pecuniary temperament. The result
would be the installation of what has been known as the "economic
man," as the normal and definitive type of human nature. But the
"economic man," whose only interest is the self-regarding one and
whose only human trait is prudence is useless for the purposes of
modern industry.
The modern industry requires an impersonal, non-invidious interest
in the work in hand. Without this the elaborate processes of
industry would be impossible, and would, indeed, never have been
conceived. This interest in work differentiates the workman from the
criminal on the one hand, and from the captain of industry on the
other. Since work must be done in order to the continued life of the
community, there results a qualified selection favoring the
spiritual aptitude for work, within a certain range of occupations.
This much, however, is to be conceded, that even within the
industrial occupations the selective elimination of the pecuniary
traits is an uncertain process, and that there is consequently an
appreciable survival of the barbarian temperament even within these
occupations. On this account there is at present no broad
distinction in this respect between the leisure-class character and
the character of the common run of the population.
The whole question as to a class distinction in respect to spiritual
make-up is also obscured by the presence, in all classes of society,
of acquired habits of life that closely simulate inherited traits
and at the same time act to develop in the entire body of the
population the traits which they simulate. These acquired habits, or
assumed traits of character, are most commonly of an aristocratic
cast. The prescriptive position of the leisure class as the exemplar
of reputability has imposed many features of the leisure-class
theory of life upon the lower classes; with the result that there
goes on, always and throughout society, a more or less persistent
cultivation of these aristocratic traits. On this ground also these
traits have a better chance of survival among the body of the people
than would be the case if it were not for the precept and example of
the leisure class. As one channel, and an important one, through
which this transfusion of aristocratic views of life, and
consequently more or less archaic traits of character goes on, may
be mentioned the class of domestic servants. these have their
notions of what is good and beautiful shaped by contact with the
master class and carry the preconceptions so acquired back among
their low-born equals, and so disseminate the higher ideals abroad
through the community without the loss of time which this
dissemination might otherwise suffer. The saying "Like master, like
man, " has a greater significance than is commonly appreciated for
the rapid popular acceptance of many elements of upper-class
culture.
There is also a further range of facts that go to lessen class
differences as regards the survival of the pecuniary virtues. The
pecuniary struggle produces an underfed class, of large proportions.
This underfeeding consists in a deficiency of the necessaries of
life or of the necessaries of a decent expenditure. In either case
the result is a closely enforced struggle for the means with which
to meet the daily needs; whether it be the physical or the higher
needs. The strain of self-assertion against odds takes up the whole
energy of the individual; he bends his efforts to compass his own
invidious ends alone, and becomes continually more narrowly
self-seeking. The industrial traits in this way tend to obsolescence
through disuse. Indirectly, therefore, by imposing a scheme of
pecuniary decency and by withdrawing as much as may be of the means
of life from the lower classes, the institution of a leisure class
acts to conserve the pecuniary traits in the body of the population.
The result is an assimilation of the lower classes to the type of
human nature that belongs primarily to the upper classes only.
It appears, therefore, that there is no wide difference in
temperament between the upper and the lower classes; but it appears
also that the absence of such a difference is in good part due to
the prescriptive example of the leisure class and to the popular
acceptance of those broad principles of conspicuous waste and
pecuniary emulation on which the institution of a leisure class
rests. The institution acts to lower the industrial efficiency of
the community and retard the adaptation of human nature to the
exigencies of modern industrial life. It affects the prevalent or
effective human nature in a conservative direction, (1) by direct
transmission of archaic traits, through inheritance within the class
and wherever the leisure-class blood is transfused outside the
class, and (2) by conserving and fortifying the traditions of the
archaic regime, and so making the chances of survival of barbarian
traits greater also outside the range of transfusion of
leisure-class blood.
But little if anything has been done towards collecting or digesting
data that are of special significance for the question of survival
or elimination of traits in the modern populations. Little of a
tangible character can therefore be offered in support of the view
here taken, beyond a discursive review of such everyday facts as lie
ready to hand. Such a recital can scarcely avoid being commonplace
and tedious, but for all that it seems necessary to the completeness
of the argument, even in the meager outline in which it is here
attempted. A degree of indulgence may therefore fairly be bespoken
for the succeeding chapters, which offer a fragmentary recital of
this kind.
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