aits of temperament that come
in question here, as being included among the stable characteristics
that still condition the life of these peoples under the altered
circumstances of the modern age.

[Footnote 5: Cf. _Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, as
above.]

The difference between prehistoric Europe and the present state of these
peoples resolves itself on analysis into a difference in the state of
the industrial arts, together with such institutional changes as have
come on in the course of working out this advance in the industrial
arts. The habits and the exigencies of life among these peoples have
greatly changed; whereas in temperament and capacities the peoples that
now live by and under the rule of this altered state of the industrial
arts are the same as they were. It is to be noted, therefore, that the
fact of their having successfully come through the long ages of
prehistory by the use of this mental and spiritual endowment can not be
taken to argue that these peoples are thereby fit to meet the exigencies
of this later and gravely altered age; nor will it do to assume that
because these peoples have themselves worked out this modern culture and
its technology, therefore it must all be suitable for their use and
conducive to their biological success. The single object lesson of the
modern urban community, with its endless requirements in the way of
sanitation, police, compulsory education, charities,--all this and many
other discrepancies in modern life should enjoin caution on anyone who
is inclined off-hand to hold that because modern men have created these
conditions, therefore these must be the most suitable conditions of life
for modern mankind.

In the beginning, that is to say in the European beginning, men lived in
small and close groups. Control was close within the group, and the
necessity of subordinating individual gains and preferences to the
common good was enjoined on the group by the exigencies of the case, on
pain of common extinction. The situation and usages of existing Eskimo
villages may serve to illustrate and enforce the argument on this head.
The solidarity of sentiment necessary to support the requisite
solidarity of action in the case would be a prime condition of survival
in any racial stock exposed to the conditions which surrounded these
early Europeans. This needful sense of solidarity would touch not simply
or most imperatively the joint prestige of the group