These various considerations, taken crudely in their first incidence, would seem to preclude any technological advance under this quasi-peaceable régime of business. Business principles and pecuniary distinctions rule the familiar routine of life, and even the common welfare is conceived in terms of price, and so of differential advantage; and under such a system there should apparently be little chance of the dispassionate pursuit of such a non-invidious interest as that of workmanship. The prime mover in this cultural scheme appears to be invidious self-aggrandisement, without fear or favour; and its goal appears to be the conspicuous waste of goods and services. Yet in point of fact the technological advance under these modern conditions has been larger and more rapid than in any other cultural situation. Therefore the circumstances under which these modern gains in technology have been made will merit somewhat more detailed attention; as also the cultural consequences that have followed from this technological advance or been conditioned by it. And at the risk of some tedious repetition it seems pertinent summarily to recall these peculiar circumstances that have conditioned the modern culture and have presumably shaped its technological output. By and large this modern technological era runs its course within the frontiers of Occidental civilisation, and in the period subsequent to the feudal age. Roughly, its centre of diffusion is the region of the North Sea, and its placement in point of time is in that period of comparative peace spoken of as “modern times.” Such of the peoples comprised within this Western culture as have continued to be actively occupied with fighting during this modern period have had no creative share in this technological era, and indeed they have had little share of any kind. The broad centre of diffusion of this technology coincides in a curious way with that of the singularly competent and singularly matter-of-fact neolithic culture of northern Europe; and the racial elements that have been engaged in this modern technological advance are still substantially the same, and mixed in substantially the same proportions, as during that prehistoric technological era of the lower barbarism or the higher savagery. This implies, of course, that the spiritual (instinctive) endowment of the peoples that have made the modern technological era is still substantially the same as was that of their forebears of the Danish stone age.