Abigail Van Buren said this about a person's character: The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.

Hello Nancy, As Neal mentioned there are 2 entities compared here. " In the latter kind " : This "latter" denotes the second mentioned of 2 and in your sentence it is being distinguished from the former by the priority of character as an observed entity or the character in general being treated preferentially . I guess you know the whole context and you could derive the exact meaning now ,if not add some more details :)

From what I can gather the sentence is saying that a person's character is very important and will be judged above all other things.

Hello Nancy, Please, when you want to know the meaning of a sentence, write the all sentence at least because it is really important to have the complete idea before explanation, right ?

Hi Nancy It's hard to tell without more context, but it looks like two things are being compared. The sentence fragment that you have quoted says that 'character' is more important (than something else) in the second of the two things you are comparing.