, the human
nature inherited by modern Occidental man is not nearly uniform in
respect of the range or the relative strength of the various aptitudes
and propensities which go to make it up. The man of the hereditary
present is slightly archaic as judged for the purposes of the latest
exigencies of associated life. And the type to which the modern man
chiefly tends to revert under the law of variation is a somewhat more
archaic human nature. On the other hand, to judge by the reversional
traits which show themselves in individuals that vary from the
prevailing predatory style of temperament, the ante-predatory
variant seems to have a greater stability and greater symmetry in the
distribution or relative force of its temperamental elements.

This divergence of inherited human nature, as between an earlier and a
later variant of the ethnic type to which the individual tends to breed
true, is traversed and obscured by a similar divergence between the
two or three main ethnic types that go to make up the Occidental
populations. The individuals in these communities are conceived to be,
in virtually every instance, hybrids of the prevailing ethnic elements
combined in the most varied proportions; with the result that they tend
to take back to one or the other of the component ethnic types. These
ethnic types differ in temperament in a way somewhat similar to the
difference between the predatory and the antepredatory variants of the
types; the dolicho-blond type showing more of the characteristics of the
predatory temperament--or at least more of the violent disposition--than
the brachycephalic-brunette type, and especially more than the
Mediterranean. When the growth of institutions or of the effective
sentiment of a given community shows a divergence from the predatory
human nature, therefore, it is impossible to say with certainty that
such a divergence indicates a reversion to the ante-predatory variant.
It may be due to an increasing dominance of the one or the other of the
"lower" ethnic elements in the population. Still, although the evidence
is not as conclusive as might be desired, there are indications that
the variations in the effective temperament of modern communities is not
altogether due to a selection between stable ethnic types. It seems to
be to some appreciable extent a selection between the predatory and the
peaceable variants of the several types. This conception of contemporary
human evolution is not ind