As if to leave no doubt about the essential immaturity of the
fighting temperament, we have, bridging the interval between
legitimate boyhood and adult manhood, the aimless and playful,
but more or less systematic and elaborate, disturbances of the
peace in vogue among schoolboys of a slightly higher age. In the
common run of cases, these disturbances are confined to the
period of adolescence. They recur with decreasing frequency and
acuteness as youth merges into adult life, and so they reproduce,
in a general way, in the life of the individual, the sequence by
which the group has passed from the predatory to a more settled
habit of life. In an appreciable number of cases the spiritual
growth of the individual comes to a close before he emerges from
this puerile phase; in these cases the fighting temper persists
through life. Those individuals who in spiritual development
eventually reach man's estate, therefore, ordinarily pass through
a temporary archaic phase corresponding to the permanent
spiritual level of the fighting and sporting men. Different
individuals will, of course, achieve spiritual maturity and
sobriety in this respect in different degrees; and those who fail
of the average remain as an undissolved residue of crude humanity
in the modern industrial community and as a foil for that
selective process of adaptation which makes for a heightened
industrial efficiency and the fullness of life of the
collectivity.
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