The morning news., 1888-10-28
ARE NJ EN- ADVANCING G.?
WILL NOT THE HUMAN RACE DE-
GENERATE?


Advance Leading haces OF
Olden Times Not Inferiu to Those
of To-Day-What Constitutes Prog
ress-The Real Descent d Man.
Copyright 1888 by s. s. Mcclure.
New YORK, Oct. 27.-l suppose the
average American. even more than the
average Briton, considers this an age which
has advanced greatly beyond all races and
nations of past times. 1t would seem pre-
posterous to compare theEaghshman OF
the days of good Queen Bss with the En-
elishman of to-day, and still more with the
American of the ever expanding west.
Let any Englishman or American consider
what the next few months will bring t.
him. in what degree he will have occasion
To take advantage of the developments o
modern civilization, and the idea VIII seem
absurd that race which knew nothing Oi
these developments might, nevertheless,
have been far more cultured and human
iz9d race than our modern Aglo-Americans
If this idea seems absurd, how much more
abs1rd would the idea seem that the
ancient Greek or Roman, even the ancient
Hebrew, Egyptian or Chaldeon, might have
been a more fully developed man than the
modern EngliShmau or even the mode n
American. Poor Cicero could not send
telegraphic dispatch. Neither Pericles or
Alclpiades eve Travelled 10y the fast express,
Amos and Isaiah, to say nothing of Aaron
and Moses, would have been appalled, at the
suggestion Of tram cars and elevators; cor
ners in grain, or boring for mineral oil
Yet it is not altogether clear when we con-
slider the matter Alright that the modern
drummer who enjoys al these advantage
is superior to the ancient Greek or Roman,
Hebrew Egyptian or Assyrian.
There is a Passage, long favorite of mine,
in one of Grorge Elot's novels Il dare say
ninety readers of these lines out of hun
dred know it by heart, yet may as we'll
quote it for the sake of the hundredth), in
which without making comparison between
this age and long past centuries, our
Younger and feminine TheophrastuS directs
attention rather keenly TO the possibility
that what we call progress may be retro
gresson. "Non Onlntd grdnd{Or PtaS,"
she quotes, 'qlto puJidmuS hdbet,n you
have not the best Of it in all things O
Youngsters! the elderly man has his envia-
BILE memories, and not the least of them is
the memory of long journeyin mid-spring
or autumn on the outside of stage coach.
Posterity NAV be shot like bullet through
a tube, by atmospheric pressure, from
Winchester to Newcastle; that is fine re-
suit to have among our hopes; but the slow,
Olu-ldSHlOH6u way VI ECOtAAlS liz OlIb Sll1
of our country to the other is the better
thing to have in the memory" (Ah yes,
escpelto crede! What recollection have we
of railway Journeys but of coarse and ma
terial ways! But of stage coach journeys
we have memories TO leaven a lifetime
1.-THE tube journey can never lend much to
picture and narratlve"--nor, y IheoDhras-
tus, much to philosophy, save to philosophy
tinged with retrospective sadness-"it is as
f1r m xuharaoc he
happy outside passenger seated on the box
from the dawn to the cleaning gathered
enough stories of English life, enough of
English labors in town and country, enough
aspects of earth and sky, to make episodes
for modern Odyssey" Doubtless the time
will come when some Donnelly of the future
will find evidence here that George Eliot
never wrote the works which an uncritical
age has attributed to her, and discover a
cryptogam proving to demonstration that
Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, was
the real author of Adam Bede and Silas
Mariner, Felix Holt, the Mill on the Floss,
and Daniel Deronda. Yet the thought is a
Just one. Material advantages not only do
not prove that race or nation has advanced
beyond it's predecessors, but even suggest
the probability that the nation enjoying
them may be materialized even as Matthew
Arnold considered our English nobility ma
teralized or vulgarized as he considered
our middle classes have been; or even bru-
taliZed, as | fear he considered that all the
lower classes of the Anglo-Saxon race,
whether on this or the other side of the At
lantic, had dnquestionably been by the very
means which had been regarded as securing
the culture and civilization of the world.
The fact has in reality been that because
evolution has carried the human race, in its
more civilized branches, i'll a certain direc-
ton, it has been assumed without sufficient
inquiry that this direction is that of advance
as though evolution always meant ad-
vance, Evolution means always con-
stantly increasing fitness for the surround
lngs-but by no means improvement and
advance. for the surroundings may abso-
lutely require deterioration and coarsening,
not merely for success, but for bare survi-
val. If a race of cultured philosophers we're
by stress of circumstances compelled to
make their abode in a wild and savage com
munity, or if (which would come to pre-
csely the same thing wild and savage
community surrounded and encroached
upon community cultured and civilized
aud softened TO the highest degree-which
among the members of this community
would have the best chance to survive and
therefore be in Spencer's sense the fittest
TO s1rvivei Would it be the most philoso-
phlcali On the contrary they would be
without shadow of a chance. They would
be- as matter of fact, what Henry Labou-
chere has called them by way of insult, the
Leprachauus of society and would perish
lncontinently, whereas the rOugher and
least sensitive would not only survive but
thrive. But without going so far as to con-
slider savage, take 4 business community,
say a community of English commercial
men, or American drummers; would ten
derly poetical or profoundly philosophic
men have better chance than men who
can face out their part, neither poetcal nor
philosophical s-men who can persuade their
fellows that they want a supply of
Shagreen spectacles when in reality all the
requirements of their highly cultuI ed minds
would be well satisfied without any such
IS0arsely material products of commerce.
We know well that it is not TIE gentle and
tender, not the philOsophic or scientific, but
the obtruslve and vulgar who have the best
chance OF survival in the struggle for wages
and IN our day the struggle for wages is
no other than the struggle for life.
, By their fruits We shall know them" 1t is
thus we must test ages and races and ma
1lons. Take where possible tie most adj
Nanced development of any race or nation,
or where as yet such development has not
Deen reached, take the manifest tendencies
Oh the development of a still advancing
race or nation, and compare works and deeds
a uulio thoughis-so may we recognize whether
.nere has been Improvement or deteriora-
word
When we do this thoughtfully and
"ltnout prejudice, it does noJ ap-
ola