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 quasi-predatory
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 make-up 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, be 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 industrial 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 modern industry 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
be 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 withdrawn 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 arrivés 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 be 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; but 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 modern industrial 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 be 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 modern life 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, but 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.