The course of mutations that has brought on this modern technological episode may be conceived to have run somewhat in the following manner. For lack of sufficient training in predatory habits of thought (as shown, e. g., in the incomplete patriarchalism of the north-Europeans) the predatory culture failed to reach what may be called a normal maturity in the feudal system of Europe, particularly in the North and West, where the blond admixture is stronger; by “normal” being here intended that sequence of growth, institutionalisation, and decay shown typically by the great dynastic civilisations erected by Semitic invaders in the East. In the full-charged predatory culture, in its earlier phases, there appear typically to be present two somewhat divergent economic principles (habits of thought) both of which have something of an institutional force: (_a_) The warrant of seizure by prowess,[114] which commonly comes to vest in the dynastic head in case a despotic state is established; and (_b_) the prescriptive tenure of whatever one has acquired. These two institutional factors are at variance, and according as one or the other of the two finally takes precedence and rules out or masters its rival postulate, the predatory culture continues on lines of coercive exploitation, as in these Asiatic monarchies; or it passes into the quasi-peaceable phase marked by secure prescriptive tenure of property and a settled nobility, and presently into a commercialised industrial situation. Either line of development may, of course, be broken off without having reached a consummation.