racter 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