THE ALLEGED DEGENERATION OF MAN.

Evening Star, Issue 3965, 9 November 1875, Page 3

THE ALLEGED DEGENERATION OF MAN.

There never was a delusion with less evidence for it, except a permanent impression amon* mankind, which is often tho result, not of accumulated experience, but of an ever-renewing disc ntent with the actual j state of th ngs. There is not the (slightest evidence any where that man was ever bigger, stronger, swifter, or more enduring under the same conditions of food and climate than he is now. As to bigness, the evidence is positive. Modern Egyptians are as big as the mummies who were conquerors in their day, and modem Englishman are 1 i gor There are not in existence a thousand coats of armor which an English regiment could put on. Very few modens can use ancient swords, because the hilts arc too small for their hands. Endless wealth and skill were expanded iu picking gladiators, and there is no evidence that a man among them was as big or as strong as Shaw. Wo ske'eton. no statue, no picLi re indicates that men were ever bigger. The Jews of to-day are as large as they were in Egypt, or larger The people of the Romagna have all the bearing and more than the size of the Roman soldiery. No feat is recorded as usual with Greek athletes which English acrobats could, not perform now. 'i here is no naked savagn tribe which naked Cornishmen or J Vorkshiremen could not strangle. No race exi-st s < f which a thousand men similarly armed would defeat an ICuglish, or German, or Russian regiment of equal numbers. Nothing is recorded of our fo efatlu-rs here in England which Englishmen could not do, unless it be some f,ats of archer/, which were the result of a long training of the eye for generations. The most civilized and luxurious family that ever existed, the European Royal caste, is physically as big, as healthy, and as powerful as any people of whom we have any account that science can accept. Thiers' Frenchman is t.'a.'-ar's 'iaul in a'-l bodily conditions, and with an increased power of keeping alive, which may be partly owing to improved conditions of living, but is probably owing fctill more to developed vitality. There is no evidence that even the feeble ia:es arc feebler than they beemiv; after their first acclimatisation. 'I he Bengalee was what we know him twelve hundred years ago, and the Chinaman was represented on porcelain just as he is now before the birth of Christ. No race ever multiplied like the Anglo-Saxon, which has I had no advantage of climate, and till lately

no particular advantage of food. Physical condition depends on physical conditions, a- d why should a race hotter fed, bettor clothed, and hotter housed than it ever was before deguierato ? Because it rats corn instead of hcrries V Compare tho California;* aad Duger Indiin. P>je:mso it wear* clothej? 'I he. wearing of clothe;, if biud u . some —which the experienc;; of army d iclors in India as o the bcr.t cotlurno for marching makes excessively doubtful, thsy declaring unanimously that brcechk-js men suffer from varicose veins as men wearing trousers do not must operate as a permanent physical training. Von carry weight habitually. Because they iVe-p indoors V Compare English professionals with Tnsiinauiun savages, living in identically the same climate, but living out of doors. T e conditious of civilisation not only do not prohibit Captain Webb, who wo ;ld have outwalked, out-swum, or strangled any German that Tacitus ever romanced about," but they enable hira to live to seventy instead of dying at forty five, as 2,01'0 years ago he, then probably a slave bred for the arena, would have done. That races have degenerated in what we may call the physical-moral qualities is incontestable, or at least, having the fear of the Duke of .Argy'l !:cfore our eye 3, wc •-•, ill not contest; it, though we do not believe the Greek Klepht to be the inferior of the Spartan in courage, or the mm who defended Bhurtpore to be more timorous than th men who were defeated with for us —but of physical degeneracy without change of food or climate we cm find r,o authentic trace. The illusion in a m re result of discontent, and of inability to fee facts through the raist in which time klndiy enshrouds thsm. That the humm race, even under the beat conditions, advances very little in physical capacities is true, but then it is true also that those conditions arc fatal to the most powerful rf the old improving forces, the airvival of the fittest. Still an advance is perceptible in vital power, and we question whether a Grc«k swimmer would ever have crossed from Dover to Calais, just as strongly as we question whether the ancient world ever possessed a horse which would have achieved a place at Epsom. _ Why should men grow feeble in civilisation any more than horses ?-■•• Spectator. '