These were the qualities that counted toward
the accumulation and continued tenure of wealth. The economic
basis of the leisure class, then as later, was the possession of
wealth; but the methods of accumulating wealth, and the gifts
required for holding it, have changed in some degree since the
early days of the predatory culture. In consequence of the
selective process the dominant traits of the early barbarian
leisure class were bold aggression, an alert sense of status, and
a free resort to fraud. The members of the class held their place
by tenure of prowess. In the later barbarian culture society
attained settled methods of acquisition and possession under the
quasi-peaceable regime of status. Simple aggression and
unrestrained violence in great measure gave place to shrewd
practice and chicanery, as the best approved method of
accumulating wealth. A different range of aptitudes and
propensities would then be conserved in the leisure class.
Masterful aggression, and the correlative massiveness, together
with a ruthlessly consistent sense of status, would still count
among the most splendid traits of the class. These have remained
in our traditions as the typical "aristocratic virtues.
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