FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159  
160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   >>   >|  
f branches arising from a common limb. This is the relation that we have earlier found to be a universal one throughout the animal kingdom, and science believes that it indicates everywhere an evolutionary history--an actual development along different lines of descent of forms which have a common starting-point and ancestry. The second principle is perhaps even more significant: when we review the many races from the Caucasian to the dwarf Negrito, we traverse a downward path which will bring us inevitably to the higher apes. In our survey of human races, we have passed from the Caucasian, with the largest brain and cranium and with straight jaws well underneath the brain-case, to the pygmy with a relatively small brain, with huge projecting jaws and with prominent ridges over the eyes; one step more along that path would bring us to the gorilla or the chimpanzee. The array of lower primates, from the lemur to the gorilla, gives a series of forms exhibiting a progressive advance in respect to the size of the brain and cranium, and a gradual retreat of the jaws to a position underneath the cranium; and one step further brings us to man. In a word, these two lines join--in fact, they are directly continuous. There is a far smaller difference between the lowest man and the highest ape than we have been accustomed to suppose. Thus in general terms, it can justly be said that process of evolution which developed the first man from its ape-man progenitor seems to have continued during subsequent ages. Spreading out in diverging lines of evolutionary descent no less clearly than they have in geographical respects, certain races have far surpassed their fellows of a lower order, which, like the brute pygmy, remain nearer the common structural form from which all men have sprung. VI THE MENTAL EVOLUTION OF MAN The problems dealing with the make-up of the human mind and with the evidences of mental evolution bring the student to matters of more vivid human interest. Mental phenomena are so complex and intricate that it is well-nigh impossible to analyze their history without a knowledge of the principles derived from the broad study of evolution as a general doctrine, where human prejudice is not so large a factor and where his perspective is less affected by the proximity of the observer to his facts. For these and other reasons the foregoing treatment of human evolution has been confined to the purely structur
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159  
160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
evolution
 

cranium

 

common

 

gorilla

 

Caucasian

 
underneath
 
descent
 

evolutionary

 
general
 

history


nearer

 

structural

 
developed
 

EVOLUTION

 
remain
 

process

 
MENTAL
 
sprung
 

diverging

 

Spreading


subsequent

 

progenitor

 

surpassed

 

continued

 

fellows

 

respects

 

geographical

 

mental

 

doctrine

 

prejudice


principles

 
derived
 

confined

 

treatment

 

observer

 
proximity
 

foregoing

 
factor
 

perspective

 
affected

knowledge
 

evidences

 
reasons
 
student
 

problems

 

dealing

 
matters
 

impossible

 
purely
 

analyze