The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1875-10-07
Man not Degenerating.

| Ihere was never q deluslOn with less
evidence for it, except a permanent i'm
preston among mankind, which is often
the result, not of accumulated expert.
ence, but of an ever-renewing discomfort
with the actual state ofthings. There is
not the slightest evidence anywhere that
man was ever bigger, stronger, .swifter, OF
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 bigas the mum
mics who were cOnquerors in their day,
and modern EDglishmen are bigger.
There are not in existence a thousand
coats of armor which an English regi-
ment could put on. Very few moderns
can use ancient swords, because the hilts
are too small for the hands. Endless
wealth and skill were expended in picking
gladiators, and there is no evidence that
man among them was as big or as
strong as Shaw. No skeleton, no statue,
no picture indicates that men in general
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.
There is no naked savage tribe which
Cornishmen or Yorkshiremen could not
strangle. No race exists of which a
thousand men similarly armed would de-
feat an English, or German, or Russian
regiment of equal numbers. Nothing is
recorded of our forefathers here in Eng
land which Englishmen could not do,
unless it be some feats of archery, which
were the result of long training of the
eye continued for generations. The
most civilized and luxurious family that
ever existed, the European royal caste, is
physically as big, as healthy, and as pow
erful as any people of whom we have any
account that science can accept. Thiers'
Frenchman is Caesars Gaul in all bodily
condition, and with an increased power
of keeping alive, which may be partly
owing to improved conditions of living,
but it is probably owing still more to de-
veloped vitality. There is no evidence
that even the feeble races are feebler
than they became after their first accli-
matizatiOn.
The Bengalee was what we know him
twelve hundred years ago, and the China
man was represented on porcelain just as
he is now before the birth of Christ. No
race was ever multiplied like the Anglo
Saxon, which has had no advantage of
climate, and till lately no particular ad-
vantage of food. Physical condition de-
pends on physical conditions, and why
should race better fed, better clothed,
and better housed than it was before de-
generate? Because it eats corn instead
of berries? Compare the Californian
and the Digger Indian. Because it wears
clothes? The wearing of clothes, if
burdensome-which the experience of
army doctors in India as to the best cos
tune for marching makes excessively
doubtful, they declaring unanimously
veins, as men wearing trowsers do not
must operate as a permanent physical
training. You carry weight habitually.
Because they keep indoors? Compare
English professionals with Tasmanian
savages, living in identically the same
climate, but living out of doors.
The conditions of civilization not only
do not prohibit Capt. Webb, who would
have out-walked, Out-swum, or strangled
any German that Tacitus ever rOmanced
about, but they enable him to live to
seventy instead of dying at forty-five,
as two thousand years ago he, then prob
ably slave bred for the arena, would
have done.
That the human race, even under the
best conditions, advances very little in
physical capacities is true, but then it
Is true also that those conditions are fatal
to the most powerful of the old improv-
ing forces, the survival of the fittest
Still an advance is perceptible in vital
power, and we question whether Greek
swimmer would have ever crossed from
Dover to Calais, just as strongly as we
question whether the ancient world ever
possessed horse which would have
achieved place in Epson. Why should
men grow feeble in civilization any more
than horses?