Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
Whether an advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is or is
not displayed in the biological history of the globe, it is clearly
enough displayed in the progress of the latest and most heterogeneous
creature--Man. It is true alike that, during the period in which the
Earth has been peopled, the human organism has grown more heterogeneous
among the civilized divisions of the species; and that the species, as a
whole, has been growing more heterogeneous in virtue of the
multiplication of races and the differentiation of these races from each
other. In proof of the first of these positions, we may cite the fact
that, in the relative development of the limbs, the civilized man
departs more widely from the general type of the placental mammalia than
do the lower human races. While often possessing well-developed body and
arms, the Australian has very small legs: thus reminding us of the
chimpanzee and the gorilla, which present no great contrasts in size
between the hind and fore limbs. But in the European, the greater length
and massiveness of the legs have become marked--the fore and hind limbs
are more heterogeneous. Again, the greater ratio which the cranial bones
bear to the facial bones illustrates the same truth. Among the
vertebrata in general, progress is marked by an increasing heterogeneity
in the vertebral column, and more especially in the segments
constituting the skull: the higher forms being distinguished by the
relatively larger size of the bones which cover the brain, and the
relatively smaller size of those which form the jaws, &c. Now this
characteristic, which is stronger in Man than in any other creature, is
stronger in the European than in the savage. Moreover, judging from the
greater extent and variety of faculty he exhibits, we may infer that the
civilized man has also a more complex or heterogeneous nervous system
than the uncivilized man: and, indeed, the fact is in part visible in
the increased ratio which his cerebrum bears to the subjacent ganglia,
as well as in the wider departure from symmetry in its convolutions. If
further elucidation be needed, we may find it in every nursery. The
infant European has sundry marked points of resemblance to the lower
human races; as in the flatness of the alæ of the nose, the depression
of its bridge, the divergence and forward opening of the nostrils, the
form of the lips, the absence of a frontal sinus, the width between the
eyes, the smallness of the legs. Now, as the developmental process by
which these traits are turned into those of the adult European, is a
continuation of that change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous
displayed during the previous evolution of the embryo, which every
anatomist will admit; it follows that the parallel developmental process
by which the like traits of the barbarous races have been turned into
those of the civilized races, has also been a continuation of the change
from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.
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