The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its ScopeCrampton, Henry Edward
Science
The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its Scope
Crampton, Henry Edward
Evolution
We must now briefly consider what may be called the "comparative
anthropology" of mind which deals with the various degrees of mental
ability displayed by different human races; this subject follows
inevitably upon the comparison of the human mind viewed as a single type
with the psychological processes of lower animals. When we reviewed the
diverse characteristics of human races--the protrusion of the jaws,
greater or lesser stature, and the like--it appeared that so-called
"lower" races could be distinguished which differed from the "higher"
races in the direction of the apes; the question immediately arises
whether similar distinctions and relations are discoverable on the basis
of mental traits. But in the present case there are not so many
well-substantiated differentia at the disposal of the student, and it does
not appear so clearly that the "higher" races are furthest from the lower
primates and lower mammalia as regards their mental processes. What facts
there are, however, prove to be highly significant, and they materially
amplify our conception of human faculty as a product of evolution. The
essential point is that the intellectual attainments of various races are
by no means the same. The calculus is a mental product of the white race
only; gunpowder and printing from movable type were independently invented
by the Caucasian and Mongolian races; but the American Indian and the
Negro never originated them. Human faculty, to employ the most general
term for all that distinguishes man from the brutes, proves to be a very
varied thing when we draw comparisons between and among races with
independent lines of ancestry and heredity occupying widely separated
areas. Should we analyze it, we find it to be composed of three
constituents; namely, the physical elements of the brain, the degree to
which the observational or perceptual and higher elements cooperate in
building up the conceptions peculiar to the type, and the materials with
which the physical mechanism deals, in the way of environmental,
educational, and social "grist for the mental mill." Many anthropologists
accord too great an importance to the third constituent of human faculty,
I believe, and they are therefore led to deny that races differ in mental
respects to so large a degree as the thoroughgoing evolutionist would
contend. They hold that differences in such things as powers of
observation are due to training: that, for example, an American Indian or
a South Sea Islander sees certain things in his environment more quickly
than a white man only because these are the things which the experiences
of his earlier life have accustomed him to look for and to find. This may
be granted, and it may also be admitted that children of so-called "lower"
races can be educated side by side with the youth of white races without
noticeably falling behind, up to a certain point when, at the age of
adolescence, in the classic case of the Australian natives, other factors
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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