uld appear to
be that the negro has made a distinct and important advance mentally
beyond the Pygmy, reaching at adolescence the limit of mental evolution
which the Pygmy reaches at death. But the negro stops here, or goes
little beyond this limit. His cranial sutures close, the growth of the
brain is arrested, and the development of his mind comes to an end. In
the white the brain continues to expand, and the closing of the sutures
takes place later in life. Probably the latter is a result of the
former, mental development having overcome the tendency of the sutures
to close in early life. It may be further said of the negro that,
mentally, he is emotional far more than intellectual, and unmoral rather
than immoral, he being apparently incapable of comprehending the moral
conceptions of advanced man.
If we seek the Malaysian and Australasian region of the Eastern seas, we
find there another branch of the negro race, similarly in contact with,
and apparently derived from, a Pygmy stock. This Papuan race of blacks
covers a wide island region, but, like the African race, has become
greatly modified by mixture with alien peoples, largely of Malay origin.
Its purest type is to be found in New Guinea, where it approaches the
negro in general character, though with distinctive features of its own.
The Papuan is of medium height; fleshy rather than muscular; color a
sooty brown; forehead high, but narrow and retreating; nose sometimes
flat and wide at nostrils, but oftener hooked with depressed point; lips
thick and projecting; high cheek bones; prognathism general; hair black
and frizzly. He is negroid in appearance, and is said to resemble the
African of the coast region opposite Aden.
We need not pursue this subject further. It will suffice to offer the
general conclusion that the negroid race, while, through its change of
habits from the hunting to the agricultural status, it has made an
advance both mentally and physically beyond the Pygmy aborigines, does
not appear to have advanced greatly in either particular, the negro
reaching a mental limit at a low level, and being arrested physically
while still possessing marked characteristics of the man-ape.
For the higher development of man, under the stress of a more energetic
conflict with the conditions of nature, we must seek the continent of
Europe, whose human inhabitants had not only to subdue the wild beasts
and teach the earth to bring forth wholesome food in p
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