THE PROBLEM
peaceable turn aside from collision, while the pugnacious welcome it. The easily contented readily accommodate their desires and actions to the customary restrictions, but the enterprising are always pressing against and trampling upon barriers. The passive strive only to satisfy old wants, and are therefore much stronger in resistance than in offence. The aggressive are insatiate and put forth as much energy to seize what they have not, as to keep what they have. In a passive race, once order is established, the individual keeps to his prescribed orbit from sheer inertia. In an aggressive race order is perpetually endangered by the unruliness of the individual, and can be maintained only through the unremitting operation of certain social forces.
Now, it is the purpose of this inquiry to ascertain how men of the West-European breed are brought to live closely together, and to associate their efforts with that degree of harmony we see about us. Social order, even among the passive, unambitious Hindoos, presents a problem for solution. But it is a much more serious problem among the dolichocephalic blonds of the West. The restless, striving, doing Aryan, with his personal ambition, his lust for power, his longing to wreak himself, his willingness to turn the world upside down to get the fame, or the fortune, or the woman, he wants, is under no easy discipline. The existence of order among men of this daring and disobedient breed challenges explanation. Especially is this true of the European man in America or Australia. The same selective migrations that made the Teuton more self-assertive than the docile Slav or the quiescent Hindoo, have made the
American more strong-willed and unmanageable than even the West-European.
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