Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 2 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and UtilityRomanes, George John
Science
Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 2 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and Utility
Romanes, George John
Evolution (Biology); Heredity
[21] See _Proc. Zool. Soc._ June 4, 1889, for an account of the
performances in this respect of the Chimpanzee "Sally." Also,
for some remarks on the psychology of the subject, in _Mental
Evolution in Man_, p. 215. I should like to take this
opportunity of stating that, after the two publications above
referred to, this animal's instruction was continued, and that,
before her death, her "counting" extended as far as ten. That
is to say, any number of straws asked for from one to ten would
always be correctly given.
Once more, it is obviously unfair to select such men as a "Newton, a La
Place, a Gauss, or a Cayley" for the purpose of estimating the
difference between savages and civilized man in regard to the latter
"faculty." These men are the picked mathematicians of centuries.
Therefore they are men who not only enjoyed all the highest possible
benefits of individual culture, but likewise those who have been most
endowed with mathematical power congenitally. So to speak, they are the
best variations in this particular direction which our race is known to
have produced. But had such variations arisen among savages it is
sufficiently obvious that they could have come to nothing. Therefore, it
is the _normal average_ of "mathematical faculty" in civilized man that
should be contrasted with that of savage man; and, when due regard is
paid to the all-important consideration which immediately follows, I
cannot feel that the contrast presents any difficulty to the theory of
human evolution by natural causation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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