The pecuniary employments call into action chiefly the former of
these two ranges of aptitudes and propensities, and act selectively
to conserve them in the population. The industrial employments, on the
other hand, chiefly exercise the latter range, and act to conserve them.
An exhaustive psychological analysis will show that each of these two
ranges of aptitudes and propensities is but the multiform expression of
a given temperamental bent. By force of the unity or singleness of
the individual, the aptitudes, animus, and interests comprised in the
first-named range belong together as expressions of a given variant
of human nature. The like is true of the latter range. The two may be
conceived as alternative directions of human life, in such a way that
a given individual inclines more or less consistently to the one or
the other. The tendency of the pecuniary life is, in a general way, to
conserve the barbarian temperament, but with the substitution of fraud
and prudence, or administrative ability, in place of that predilection
for physical damage that characterizes the early barbarian. This
substitution of chicanery in place of devastation takes place only in an
uncertain degree. Within the pecuniary employments the selective action
runs pretty consistently in this direction, but the discipline of
pecuniary life, outside the competition for gain, does not work
consistently to the same effect. The discipline of modern life in the
consumption of time and goods does not act unequivocally to eliminate
the aristocratic virtues or to foster the bourgeois virtues. The
conventional scheme of decent living calls for a considerable exercise
of the earlier barbarian traits. Some details of this traditional scheme
of life, bearing on this point, have been noticed in earlier chapters
under the head of leisure, and further details will be shown in later
chapters.
From what has been said, it appears that the leisure-class life and
the leisure-class scheme of life should further the conservation of the
barbarian temperament; chiefly of the quasi-peaceable, or bourgeois,
variant, but also in some measure of the predatory variant. In the
absence of disturbing factors, therefore, it should be possible to
trace a difference of temperament between the classes of society. The
aristocratic and the bourgeois virtues--that is to say the destructive
and pecuniary traits--should be found chiefly among the upper classes,
and the industrial virtues--that is to say the peaceable traits--chiefly
among the classes given to mechanical industry.
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