tate by becoming 'wacuce' or brave,
either in war or by the bestowal of gifts and the frequent giving of
feasts."

Throughout history there has been a struggle between the principles of
status and competition regarding the part that each should play in the
social system. Generally speaking the advantage of status is in its
power to give order and continuity. As Gibbon informs us, "The superior
prerogative of birth, when it has obtained the sanction of time and
popular opinion, is the plainest and least invidious of all distinctions
among mankind," and he is doubtless right in ascribing the confusion of
the later Roman Empire largely to the lack of an established rule for
the transmission of imperial authority. The chief danger of status is
that of suppressing personal development, and so of causing social
enfeeblement, rigidity, and ultimate decay. On the other hand,
competition develops the individual and gives flexibility and animation
to the social order, its danger being chiefly that of disintegration in
some form or other. The general tendency in modern times has been toward
the relative increase of the free or competitive principle, owing to the
fact that the rise of other means of securing stability has diminished
the need for status. The latter persists, however, even in the freest
countries, as the method by which wealth is transmitted, and also in
social classes, which, so far as they exist at all, are based chiefly
upon inherited wealth and the culture and opportunities that go with it.
The ultimate reason for this persistence--without very serious
opposition--in the face of the obvious inequalities and limitations
upon liberty that it perpetuates is perhaps the fact that no other
method of transmission has arisen that has shown itself capable of
giving continuity and order to the control of wealth.

2. Personal Competition and the Evolution of Individual Types[236]

The ancient city was primarily a fortress, a place of refuge in time of
war. The modern city, on the contrary, is primarily a convenience of
commerce and owes its existence to the market place around which it
sprang up. Industrial competition and the division of labor, which have
probably done most to develop the latent powers of mankind, are possible
only upon condition of the existence of markets, of money and other
devices for the facilitation of trade and commerce.

The old adage which describes the city as the natural environment, of
t