The Destiny of Man, Viewed in the Light of His OriginFiske, John
Religion
The Destiny of Man, Viewed in the Light of His Origin
Fiske, John
Human beings; Immortality
of mammoths on pieces of reindeer-antler with a bit of pointed flint.
Yet during an entire geologic aeon before these Cave-Men appeared on the
scene, "a being erect upon two legs," if we may quote from Serjeant
Buzfuz, "and wearing the outward semblance of a man and not of a
monster," wandered hither and thither over the face of the earth,
setting his mark upon it as no other creature yet had done, leaving
behind him innumerable tell-tale remnants of his fierce and squalid
existence, yet too scantily endowed with wit to make any written
disclosure of his thoughts and deeds. If the physiological annals of
that long and weary time could now be unrolled before us, the principal
fact which we should discern, dominating all other facts in interest and
significance, would be that mutual reaction between increase of cerebral
surface and lengthening of babyhood which I have here described.
Thus through the simple continuance and interaction of processes that
began far back in the world of warm-blooded animals, we get at last a
creature essentially different from all others. Through the complication
of effects the heaping up of minute differences in degree has ended in
bringing forth a difference in kind. In the human organism physical
variation has well-nigh stopped, or is confined to insignificant
features, save in the grey surface of the cerebrum. The work of cerebral
organization is chiefly completed after birth, as we see by contrasting
the smooth ape-like brain-surface of the new-born child with the
deeply-furrowed and myriad-seamed surface of the adult civilized brain.
The plastic period of adolescence, lengthened in civilized man until it
has come to cover more than one third of his lifetime, is thus the
guaranty of his boundless progressiveness. Inherited tendencies and
aptitudes still form the foundations of character; but individual
experience has come to count as an enormous factor in modifying the
career of mankind from generation to generation. It is not too much to
say that the difference between man and all other living creatures, in
respect of teachableness, progressiveness, and individuality of
character, surpasses all other differences of kind that are known to
exist in the universe.
VII.
Change in the Direction of the Working of Natural Selection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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