The ethnic composition of the European populations varies. In
some cases even the lower classes are in large measure made up of
the peace-disturbing dolicho-blond; while in others this ethnic
element is found chiefly among the hereditary leisure class. The
fighting habit seems to prevail to a less extent among the
working-class boys in the latter class of populations than among
the boys of the upper classes or among those of the
populations first named.
If this generalization as to the temperament of the boy among the
working classes should be found true on a fuller and closer
scrutiny of the field, it would add force to the view that the
bellicose temperament is in some appreciable degree a race
characteristic; it appears to enter more largely into the make-up
of the dominant, upper-class ethnic type -- the dolicho-blond --
of the European countries than into the subservient, lower-class
types of man which are conceived to constitute the body of the
population of the same communities.
The case of the boy may seem not to bear seriously on the
question of the relative endowment of prowess with which the
several classes of society are gifted; but it is at least of some
value as going to show that this fighting impulse belongs to a
more archaic temperament than that possessed by the average adult
man of the industrious classes.
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