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.
Departures from the human nature of the hereditary present are most frequently of the nature of reversions to an earlier variant of the type.

This earlier variant is represented by the temperament which characterizes the primitive phase of peaceable savagery.

The circumstances of life and the ends of effort that prevailed before the advent of the barbarian culture, shaped human nature and fixed it as regards certain fundamental traits.