The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-10-01
MAN NOT DISCRIMINATING.


dence for it, except permanent impression
among mankind, which is often the result,
not of accumulated experience, but of an ever
renewing discomfort with the actual state of
things. There is not the slightest evidence
anywhere that man was ever bigger, stronger,
swifter or more enduring under the same
condions of food and climate than he is now.
As to bigness, the evidence is positive.
Modern Egyptians are as big as the num-
mics who were conquerors in their day, and
modern Englishmen were bigger. There are
not in existence thousand coats Of armor
which an English regiment could put on.
Very few moderns can use ancient swords,
because the hits are too small for their hands.
Endless wealth and skill were expended in
picking gladiators and there is no evidence
that a man among them was as big or as
strong as Shaw.
No skeleton, no statue, no picture, indi-
Gates 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 Ro-
magma 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 make
Cornishmen or Yorkshiremen could not
strangle. No race exists of which thousand
men similarly armed would defeat an English
or German, or Russian regiment of equal
numbers. Nothing is recorded of our fore
fathers here in England which Englishmen
could not do, unless it be some feats of
archery, which were the results 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 power
full as any people of whom we have any &C
hot Qcn1nt VhIprS'
Frenchman is Caesars Gaul in all bodily con-
ditions and with an increased power of keep
ing alive, which may be partly owing to i'm
proved conditions of living, but is probably
owing still more to developed vitality. There
is no evidence that even the feeble races are
fesbler than they became after their first ac-
climatization.
The Benaglee 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 null
tiplied like the Auglo-S .xon, which has had
no advantage of climate, and till lately no
particular advantage of food. Physical con-
dition depends on physical conditions, and
why should race better fed, better clothed
and better housed than it ever was before de-
generate? Because it eats corn instead of
berries? Compare the California and Digger
Indian. Because it wears clothes
Tie wearing of clothes, if burdensome-
which the experience Of army doctors in
India as to the best costume for marching
makes excessively doubtful, they declaring
unanimously that breechless men suffer from
various veins, as men wearing trousers do
not-must operate as permanent physical
training. You carry weight habitualy. Be-
cause 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
outwalked, outswum, or strangled any Ger
man that Tacitus ever romanced about, but
they enabled him to live to 70 in stead of
dying at 49, as 1000 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 improving forces, the sur
vivai of the most fitest. Still an advance is
perceptible in vital power, and we question
whether Greek swimmer would ever have
crossed from Dover to Calais, just as strongly
as we question whether the ancient world
ever possessed horse which would have
achieved place at Epson. Why should men
grow feeble in civilization any more than
horses?