LITMIR.BIZ

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the healthy body; it is totally unaware that the nervous system cannot work properly unless the blood be well aerated by active lungs and distributed by a healthy heart; that unless certain glands, of which these people have never heard, are acting properly, the nervous system falls into decadence, and the man becomes an imbecile. To breed for brains is most assuredly to breed for body too: only that the end in view will guide us as to what points of body to breed for. For instance, it would prevent us from having any foolish ambitions as to increasing the stature of the race, or the average weight of its muscular apparatus. Stature may be a point to breed for in the race-culture of giraffes and muscle in the race-culture of the hippopotamus: but such bodily characters are of no moment for man, who is above all things a mind. Whilst we shall pay little attention to these, we or our descendants will be abundantly concerned with the preservation and culture of those many bodily characters upon which the health and vigour and sanity and durability of the nervous system depend.

      Further, notwithstanding all the nonsense that has been written concerning the man of the future, with bald and swollen head, be-goggled eyes, toothless gums, and wicker-work skeleton, those who know the alphabet of physiology and psychology are warranted in believing that wisely to breed for brains will be to breed for beauty too—not of the skin-deep but of the mind-deep variety—and also for grace and energy and versatility of physique. Those who worship brawn as brawn may be commended to the ox; those who respect brawn as the instrument of brain, and value it not by its horse-power but by its capacity as the agent of purpose, will find nothing to complain of in the kinds of men and women whom a wise eugenics has for its ideal.

      The erect attitude.—And now we must briefly consider that “most remarkable fact in the anatomy of man” to which allusion was made in the first paragraph. It is that, as the most philosophic anatomists are now coming to believe, the body of man actually represents the goal of physical evolution. Of course the common opinion is, quite apart from science, that man is the highest of creatures, and that there is no more to be expected. But the doctrine of evolution regards man as the latest, not necessarily the last, term in an age-long process which is by no means completed, and from the evolutionary point of view it is thus a daring and, at first hearing, a preposterous thing to say that, so far as the physical aspects of organic evolution are concerned, the body of man apparently represents the logical and final conclusion of the age-long process which has produced it. Let us attempt very briefly to outline the argument.

      We may say that a great step was taken when from the chaos of the invertebrate or backbone-less animals there emerged the first vertebrates. This unquestionably occurred in the sea, the first backbone being evolved in a fish-like creature which, in the course of time, developed two lateral fins. These became modified into two pairs of limbs, the sole function of which was locomotion. In the next group of vertebrates, the amphibia—such as the frog—we see these limbs terminating each in five digits. (The frog, so to say, decided that we should count in tens.) Now some creatures have specialised their limbs at the cost of certain fingers. The horse, for instance, walks on the nails (the hoofs) of its middle fingers and its middle toes. In the main line of ascent, however, none of these precious fingers (and toes)—how precious let the typist or the pianist say—have been sacrificed. There has been, however, in later ages a tendency towards the specialisation of the front limbs. Used for locomotion at times, they are also used for grasping and tearing and holding, as in the case of the tiger, a member of the carnivora, a relatively late and high group of mammals. But the carnivore does not carry its food to its mouth, and the cat carries her kittens in her mouth and not with her paws. In the apes and monkeys, however, this specialisation goes further, and things are actually carried by the hands to the mouth—a very great advance on the tiger, who fixes his food with his “hands,” and then carries his mouth to it. Food to mouth instead of mouth to food is a much later stage in evolution, a fact which may be recalled when we watch the table manners of certain people. Finally, in man the specialisation reaches its natural limit by the complete liberation of the fore-limbs from the purposes of locomotion—though the crawling gait of a child recalls the base degrees by which we did ascend.

      This great change depends upon an alteration in the axis of the body. The first fishes, like present fishes, were horizontal animals, but gradually the axis has become altered, in the main line of progress, until the semi-erect apes yield to man the erect, or “man the erected,” as Stevenson called him. The son of horizontal animals, he is himself vertical: the “pronograde” has become “orthograde.” Thus the phrase, “the ascent of man,” may be read in two senses. This capital fact has depended upon a shifting of the centre of gravity of the body, which in adult man lies behind the hip-joints, whereas in his ancestors and in the small baby (still in the four-footed stage) it lies in front of the hip-joints. Thus, whilst other creatures tend naturally to fall forwards, so that they must use their fore-limbs for support and locomotion, the whole body of man above the hip-joints tends naturally to fall backwards, being prevented from doing so by two great ligaments which lie in front of the hip-joints and have a unique development in man. The complete erection of the spine means that the skull, instead of being suspended in front, is now poised upon the top of the spinal column. The field of vision is enormously enlarged, and it is possible to sweep a great extent of horizon at a moment's notice. But the complete discharge of the fore-limbs from the function of locomotion has far vaster consequences, especially as they now assume the function of educating their master, the brain, and enabling him to employ them for higher and higher purposes.

      Thus, when we ask ourselves whether there is any further goal for physical evolution, the answer is that none can be seen. So far as physical evolution is concerned the goal has been attained with the erect attitude. Future changes in the anatomy of man will not be positive but negative. There doubtless will be a certain lightening of the ship, the casting overboard of inherited superfluities, but that is all: except that we may hope for certain modifications in the way of increasing the adaptation of the body to the erect attitude, which at present bears very hardly in many ways upon the body of man, and much more so upon the body of woman.

      Thus race-culture will certainly not aim at the breeding of physical freaks of any kind, nor yet at such things as stature. It must begin by clearly recognising what are the factors which in man possess supreme survival-value, and it must aim at their reinforcement rather than at the maintenance of those factors which, of dominant value in lower forms of life, have been superseded in him. A few words will suffice to show in what fashion man has already shed vital characters which, superfluous and burdensome for him, have in former times been of the utmost survival-value.

      The denudation of man.—As contrasted with the whole mass of his predecessors, man comes into the world denuded of defensive armour, destitute of offensive weapons, possessed alone of the potentialities of the psychical. So far as defence is concerned, he has neither fur nor feathers nor scales, but is the most naked and thinnest skinned of animals. In his Autobiography, Spencer tells us how he and Huxley, sitting on the cliff at St. Andrews and watching some boys bathing, “marvelled over the fact, seeming especially strange when they are no longer disguised by clothes, that human beings should dominate over all other creatures and play the wonderful part they do on the earth.”[14] But man is not only without armour against either living enemies or cold; he is also without weapons of attack. His teeth are practically worthless in this respect, not only on account of their small size but also because his chin, a unique possession, and the shape of his jaws, make them singularly unfit for catching or grasping. For claws he has merely nails, capable only of the feeblest scratching; he can discharge no poisons from his mouth; he cannot envelop himself in darkness in order to hide himself; his speediest and most enduring runner is a breathless laggard. And, lastly, he is at first almost bereft of instinct, has to be burnt in order to dread the fire, and cannot find his own way to the breast. His sole instrument of dominance is his mind in all its attributes.

      On the grounds thus indicated, we must be wholly opposed to all proposals for race education and race-culture, and to all social practices, which assume more or less consciously that, for all his boasting, man is after all only an animal: whilst we must applaud the selection and culture of the physical exactly in so far as, but no further than, it makes for health and strength of the psychical—or, if the reader dislikes these expressions, the health and strength of that particular part of the physical which we call the nervous system.

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