Page:The Theory of the Leisure Class.pdf/227

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The Conservation of Archaic Traits
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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 ethnic 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 ante-predatory 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 archæological or psychological. This variant is taken to represent the ancestors of existing civilised man at the peaceable, savage phase of life which preceded the predatory culture, the régime 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 later emulative culture of the quasi-peaceable stage, or the pecuniary culture proper.

Under the recognised 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