In this, as in many other features of child life, the child reproduces, temporarily and in miniature, some of the earlier phases of the development of adult man.

Under this interpretation, the boy's predilection for exploit and for isolation of his own interest is to be taken as a transient reversion to the human nature that is normal to the early barbarian culture--the predatory culture proper.

In this respect, as in much else, the leisure-class and the delinquent-class character shows a persistence into adult life of traits that are normal to childhood and youth, and that are likewise normal or habitual to the earlier stages of culture.

Unless the difference is traceable entirely to a fundamental difference between persistent ethnic types, the traits that distinguish the swaggering delinquent and the punctilious gentleman of leisure from the common crowd are, in some measure, marks of an arrested spiritual development.

They mark an immature phase, as compared with the stage of development attained by the average of the adults in the modern industrial community.