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and in thus further modifying the inherited tendencies with which its offspring start in life. In such an animal the organized experience of the race counts for much, but the special experience of the individual counts for something in altering the future career of the race. Such an animal is capable of psychical progress, and such an animal must begin life not with matured faculties but as an infant. Instead of a few actually realized capacities, it starts with a host of potential capacities, of which the play of circumstance must determine what ones shall be realizable.

Manifestly, therefore, the very state of things which made psychical variation more advantageous to the progenitors of mankind than physical variation, this very state of things simultaneously conspired to enhance the progressiveness of primeval man and to prolong the period of his infancy, until the plastic or malleable part of his life came to extend over several years instead of terminating in rigidity in the course of four or five months, as with the orang-outang. Upon the consequences of this state of things, in gradually bringing about that capacity for progress which distinguishes man from all lower animals, I need not further enlarge. What we have here especially to note, amid the entanglement of all these causes conspiring to educe humanity from animality, is the fact, illustrated above, that this prolongation of infancy was manifestly the circumstance which knit those permanent relationships, giving rise to reciprocal necessities of behavior, which distinguish the rudest imaginable family group of men from the highest imaginable association of gregarious nonhuman Primates.

Additional References:

Herbert Spencer, The Factors of Organic Evolution, in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, Vol. I. Geddes and Thompson, The Evolution of Sex, chaps. i, ii, xix, xxi. Robert Mackintosh, From Comte to Benjamin Kidd. August Weismann, The Germ Plasm: a Theory of Heredity. George John Romanes, An Examination of Weismannism. Alfred Russell Wallace, Studies: Scientific and Social. R. L. Dugdale, The Jukes. Oscar C. McCulloh, The Tribe of Ishmael. Arthur Fairbanks, Introduction to Sociology, Part III. H. W. Conn, The Method of Evolution.

B. THE PSYCHICAL FACTORS

XV

COMPARISON OF MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL LAWS AND INQUIRY AS TO THE INFLUENCE OF EACH ON THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY 1

It has, I trust, been made apparent that whatever may hereafter be the case, we, looking merely at the present state of our knowledge, must pronounce the metaphysical method to be unequal to the task, often imposed upon it, of discovering the laws which regulate the movements of the human mind. We are therefore driven to the only remaining method, according to which mental phenomena are to be studied, not simply as they appear in the mind of the individual observer but as they appear in the actions of mankind at large. The essential opposition between these two plans is very obvious; but it may perhaps be well to bring forward further illustration of the resources possessed by each for the investigation of truth; and for this purpose I will select a subject which, though still imperfectly understood, supplies a beautiful instance of the regularity with which, under the most conflicting circumstances, the great laws of nature are able to hold their course.

The case to which I refer is that of the proportion kept up in the births of the sexes, a proportion which, if it were to be greatly disturbed in any country, even for a single generation, would throw society into the most serious confusion, and would infallibly cause a great increase in the vices of the people.2 Now it 1 From The History of Civilization in England, by Henry Thomas Buckle, chap. iv.

2 Thus we find that the Crusades, by diminishing the proportion of men to women in Europe, increased licentiousness. See a curious passage in Sprengel, Histoire de la Médecine, Vol. II, p. 376. In Yucatan there is generally a considerable excess of women, and the result is prejudicial to morals (Stephens'

has always been suspected that on an average the male and female births are tolerably equal; but until very recently no one could tell whether or not they are precisely equal, or, if unequal, on which side there is an excess.1 The births being the physical result of physical antecedents, it was clearly seen that the laws of the births must be in those antecedents; that is to say, that the causes of the proportion of the sexes must reside in the parents themselves.2 Under these circumstances the question arose, if it was not possible to elucidate this difficulty by our knowledge of animal physiology; for it was plausibly said, "Since physiology is a study of the laws of the body, and since all births are products resulting from the body, it follows that if we know the laws of the body, we shall know the laws of the birth." This was the view taken by physiologists of our origin; and this is Central America, Vol. III, pp. 380, 429). On the other hand, respecting the state of society produced by an excess of males, see Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 259; Journal of Geographical Society, Vol. XV, p. 45; Vol. XVI, p. 307; Southey's Commonplace Book, third series, p. 579.

1 On this question a variety of conflicting statements may be seen in the older writers. Goodman, early in the seventeenth century, supposed that more females were born than males (Southey's Commonplace Book, third series, p. 696). Turgot (Œuvres, Vol. II, p. 247) rightly says, "Il naît un peu plus d'hommes que de femmes "; but the evidence was too incomplete to make this more than a lucky guess; and I find that even Herder, writing in 1785, takes for granted that the proportion was about equal: "ein ziemliches Gleichmass in den Geburten beider Geschlechter" (Ideen zur Geschichte, Vol. II, p. 149); and was sometimes in favor of girls: "ja, die Nachrichten mehrerer Reisenden machen es wahrscheinlich, dass in manchen dieser Gegenden wirklich mehr Töchter als Söhne geboren werden." 2 A question, indeed, has been raised as to the influence exercised by the state of the mind during the period of orgasm. But whatever this influence may be, it can only affect the subsequent birth through and by physical antecedents, which in every case must be regarded as the proximate cause. If, therefore, the influence were proved to exist, we should still have to search for physical laws, though such laws would of course be considered merely as secondary ones, resolvable into some higher generalization.

3 Some writers treat physiology as a study of the laws of life. But this, looking at the subject as it now stands, is far too bold a step, and several branches of knowledge will have to be raised from their present empirical state before the phenomena of life can be scientifically investigated. The more rational mode seems to be, to consider physiology and anatomy as correlative, the first forming the dynamical, and the second forming the statical, part of the study of organic

structure.

4 "Voulez-vous savoir de quoi dépend le sexe des enfants? Fernel vous répond, sur la foi des anciens, qu'il dépend des qualités de la semence du père et de la

"1

precisely the view taken by metaphysicians of our history. Both parties believed that it was possible at once to rise to the cause of the phenomenon, and by studying its laws predict the phenomenon itself. The physiologist said, "By studying individual bodies, and thus ascertaining the laws which regulate the union of the parents, I will discover the proportion of the sexes, because the proportion is merely the result to which the union gives rise." Just in the same way, the metaphysician says, "By studying individual minds, I will ascertain the laws which govern their movements; and in that way I will predict the movements of mankind, which are obviously compounded of the individual movements.' These are the expectations which have been confidently held out by physiologists respecting the laws of the sexes, and by metaphysicians respecting the laws of history. Towards the fulfillment, however, of these promises the metaphysicians have done absolutely nothing, nor have the physiologists been more successful, although their views have the support of anatomy, which admits of the employment of direct experiment, a resource unknown to metaphysics. But towards settling the present question, all this availed them nothing; and mère" (Renouard, Histoire de la Médecine, Paris, 1846, Vol. II, p. 106); see also, at p. 185, the opinion of Hippocrates, adopted by Galen; and similar views in Lepelletier, Physiologie Médicale, Vol. IV, p. 332, and Sprengel, Histoire de la Médecine, Vol. I, pp. 252, 310; Vol. II, p. 115; Vol. IV, p. 62. For further information as to the opinions which have been held respecting the origin of sexes, see Beausobre, Histoire de Manichée, Vol. II, p. 417; Asiatic Researches, Vol. III, pp. 358, 361; Vishnu Purana, p. 349; Works of Sir William Jones, Vol. III, p. 126; Ritter's History of Ancient Philosophy, Vol. III, p. 191; Denham and Clapperton's Africa, pp. 323, 324; Maintenon, Lettres Inédites, Vol. II, p. 62; and the view of Hohl (Burdach, Physiologie, Vol. II, p. 472): "que les femmes chez lesquelles prédomine le système artériel procréent des garçons, au lieu que celles dont le système veineux a la prédominance mettent au monde des filles." According to Anaxagoras, the question was extremely simple: xai äppeva μèv ånd τῶν δεξιῶν, θήλεα δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν ἀριστερῶν (Diog. Laert., ii, 9, Vol. I, p. 85).

1 "Le métaphysicien se voit comme la source de l'évidence et le confident de la nature: Moi seul, dit-il, je puis généraliser les idées, et découvrir le germe des événements qui se développent journellement dans le monde physique et moral; et c'est par moi seul que l'homme peut être éclairé " (Helvetius, De l'Esprit, Vol. I, p. 86). Compare Herder, Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit, Vol. II, p. 105. Thus, too, M. Cousin (Histoire de la Philosophie, IIe série, Vol. I, p. 131) says, "Le fait de la conscience transporté de l'individu dans l'espèce et dans l'histoire, est la clef de tous les développements de l'humanité.”

physiologists are not yet possessed of a single fact which throws any light on this problem: Is the number of male births equal to female births, is it greater, or is it less?

These are questions to which all the resources of physiologists, from Aristotle down to our own time, afford no means of reply.1 And yet at the present day we, by the employment of what now seems a very natural method, are possessed of a truth which the united abilities of a long series of eminent men failed to discover. By the simple expedient of registering the number of births and their sexes, by extending this registration over several years, in different countries, we have been able to eliminate all casual disturbances and ascertain the existence of a law which, expressed in round numbers, is, that for every twenty girls there are born twenty-one boys; and we may confidently say that although the operations of this law are of course liable to constant aberrations, the law itself is so powerful that we know of

1 Considering the very long period during which physiology has been studied, it is remarkable how little the physiologists have contributed towards the great and final object of all science, namely, the power of predicting events. To me it appears that the two principal causes of this are: the backwardness of chemistry, and the still extremely imperfect state of the microscope, which even now is so inaccurate an instrument that when a high power is employed, little confidence can be placed in it; and the examination, for instance, of the spermatozoa has led to the most contradictory results. In regard to chemistry, MM. Robin and Verdeil, in their recent great work, have ably proved what manifold relations there are between it and the further progress of our knowledge of the animal frame, though I venture to think that these eminent writers have shown occasionally an undue disposition to limit the application of chemical laws to physiological phenomena. See Robin et Verdil, Chimie Anatomique et Physiologique, Vol. I, pp. 20, 34, 167, 337, 338, 437, 661; Vol. II, pp. 136, 137, 508; Vol. III, pp. 135, 144, 183, 281, 283, 351, 547, Paris, 1853. The increasing tendency of chemistry to bring under its control what are often supposed to be purely organic phenomena is noticed cautiously in Turner's Chemistry, Vol. II, p. 1308, London, 1847; and boldly in Liebig's Letters on Chemistry, 1851, pp. 250, 251. The connection between chemistry and physiology is touched on rather too hastily in Bouilland, Philosophie Médicale, pp. 160, 257; Broussais, Examen des Doctrines Médicales, Vol. III, p. 166; Brodie's Lectures on Pathology, p. 48; Henle, Traité d'Anatomie, Vol. I, pp. 25, 26; Feuchtersleben's Medical Psychology, p. 88; but better in Holland's Medical Notes, 1839, p. 270, a thoughtful and suggestive work. On the necessity of chemistry for increasing our knowledge of embryology, compare Wagner's Physiology, pp. 131, 132, note, with Burdach, Traité de Physiologie, Vol. IV, pp. 59, 168.

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