Thorstein Veblen：The Theory of the Leisure Class, Excerpt 100

The ethnic types of today, then, are variants of the primitive racial types. They have suffered some alteration, and have attained some degree of fixity in their altered form, under the discipline of the barbarian culture. The man of the hereditary present is the barbarian variant, servile or aristocratic, of the ethnic elements that constitute him. But this barbarian variant has not attained the highest degree of homogeneity or of stability. The barbarian culture--the predatory and quasi-peaceable cultural stages--though of great absolute duration, has been neither protracted enough nor invariable enough in character to give an extreme fixity of type. Variations from the barbarian human nature occur with some frequency, and these cases of variation are becoming more noticeable today, because the conditions of modern life no longer act consistently to repress departures from the barbarian normal. The predatory temperament does not lead itself to all the purposes of modern life, and more especially not to modern industry.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/833
Locator：Excerpt 100 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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