average of the adults in
the modern industrial community. And it will appear presently that the
puerile spiritual make-up of these representatives of the upper and the
lowest social strata shows itself also in the presence of other archaic
traits than this proclivity to ferocious exploit and isolation.

As if to leave no doubt about the essential immaturity of the fighting
temperament, we have, bridging the interval between legitimate boyhood
and adult manhood, the aimless and playful, but more or less systematic
and elaborate, disturbances of the peace in vogue among schoolboys of a
slightly higher age. In the common run of cases, these disturbances
are confined to the period of adolescence. They recur with decreasing
frequency and acuteness as youth merges into adult life, and so they
reproduce, in a general way, in the life of the individual, the sequence
by which the group has passed from the predatory to a more settled habit
of life. In an appreciable number of cases the spiritual growth of the
individual comes to a close before he emerges from this puerile
phase; in these cases the fighting temper persists through life. Those
individuals who in spiritual development eventually reach man's
estate, therefore, ordinarily pass through a temporary archaic phase
corresponding to the permanent spiritual level of the fighting and
sporting men. Different individuals will, of course, achieve spiritual
maturity and sobriety in this respect in different degrees; and those
who fail of the average remain as an undissolved residue of crude
humanity in the modern industrial community and as a foil for that
selective process of adaptation which makes for a heightened industrial
efficiency and the fullness of life of the collectivity. This
arrested spiritual development may express itself not only in a direct
participation by adults in youthful exploits of ferocity, but also
indirectly in aiding and abetting disturbances of this kind on the
part of younger persons. It thereby furthers the formation of habits of
ferocity which may persist in the later life of the growing generation,
and so retard any movement in the direction of a more peaceable
effective temperament on the part of the community. If a person so
endowed with a proclivity for exploits is in a position to guide the
development of habits in the adolescent members of the community, the
influence which he exerts in the direction of conservation and reversion
to prowess m