Closely bound up with this correlation of anthropomorphism and
prowess is the fact that anthropomorphic cults act to
conserve, if not to initiate, habits of mind favorable to a
regime of status. As regards this point, it is quite impossible
to say where the disciplinary effect of the cult ends and where
the evidence of a concomitance of variations in inherited traits
begins. In their finest development, the predatory temperament,
the sense of status, and the anthropomorphic cult all together
belong to the barbarian culture; and something of a mutual causal
relation subsists between the three phenomena as they come into
sight in communities on that cultural level. The way in which
they recur in correlation in the habits and attitudes of
individuals and classes today goes far to imply a like causal or
organic relation between the same psychological phenomena
considered as traits or habits of the individual. It has appeared
at an earlier point in the discussion that the relation of
status, as a feature of social structure, is a consequence of the
predatory habit of life. As regards its line of derivation, it is
substantially an elaborated expression of the predatory attitude.
On the other hand, an anthropomorphic cult is a code of detailed
relations of status superimposed upon the concept of a
preternatural, inscrutable propensity in material things.
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