The Washburn times. [volume] (Washburn, Wis.) 1896-1976, 1914-01-01
's|zE OF THE BRAIN NO CHANGE IN MAN
1t Is the World That Is
Evolving.
Confidence In the Future Is inspired
by the Stability of the Human
Type-Humanity Same Now
as In the Stone Age.

The late Alfred Russell Wallace was
sometimes called a pessimist because
of his view that the human race had
not improved perez ptibly since the
dawn of history. Yet is this a pessi'
mistic view? asks the Springfield
(Mass.) Republican. 1t may seem so
to those who look for a millennium
day after tomorrow. 1t would Ger.
tainly seem so to writer in con-
temporary magazine who says: "Hun'
dreds of years from now nature may
attain it's supreme end by evolving an
ascendant form of life possessing CO.
lossal reproductive energies. Man as
he is known today will almost cease to
exist" The novelty of evolution, a
doctrine in the formation of which
Wallace played an important part, has
led many hasty thinkers into the be-
lief that the race is changing rapidly,
and has given q great opportunity to
the eugenists, who propose to hasten
the process.
But Wallace took longer view and
saw that the change was in the world
rather than in man himself, that hui
man nature was much the same now
and in the stone age. Rightly consid-
cred, It. is not a disheartening view,
but rather the 'reFarse. 1t should give
courage and confidence because it i'm
plies stability in the material. If in
few centuries men could change so
greatly for the better as some hope we
should have also to assume that they
might change as greatly for the worse
as others fear. The changes, as
matter of fact, in & given race seem
negligible so far as the records run.
There is no reason to suppose that
trader from Tyre or Babylon would
feel less at home in New York than
the Syrian peddler who lands there
erature a Roman of Pliny's day edu-
Gated in a modern school would be in
distinguishable from the modern en-
vironment. It is sometimes assumed
that human nature has become too re-
fined ever again to take pleasure In
gladiatorial shows. yet bull fights,
prize fights and the sensational press
indicate that the old Adam is still
there-it is civilization which has
changed, and civilization needs TO be
guarded jealousy in the knowledge
that it is only skin deep. The French
scholar in the eighteenth century who
most earnestly protested that mankind
could never have been guilty of the ex-
cesses pictured by Tacitus himself per
ished in the reign of terror.
Those who look for the advent of au-
tomato goodness will certainly be dis
appointed. Gladly as we should let the
ape and tiger die, they still have their
place in the human heart, and all plans
for the future must be conditioned by
their continued survival. But this does
not mean that man can rise so high
and no higher, that he must always be
slipping back into the atavistic mud.
On the contrary, the stability of the
human type is just what gives conf
dence in the future of man. Civiliza-
tons have risen and decayed. but none
has left things quite where they were
before; of the ruins of such man has
made a stepping stone to something
higher. Our civilization may be no
better than that of Athens $500 years
ago, but it is vastly greater, and
marked for longer life Civilization
may still progress in cycles, but the
waves sweep farther, and the ebb tide
is more quickly passed. There is no
need TO repine because human nature
is not perfecting itself; there is rather
reason for hope that having, with all
his imperfections achieved so much,
man is advancing to still greater
triumphs. OF the "superman" we know
nothing, and if such breed should
arrive on earth it would mean as little
to us as we to the monkeys. 1t is pre-
cisely because history is the record OF
people very like ourselves that It has
such transcendent interest, and there
is nothing pessimistic in the view that
the great unknown triumphs of the
future are to be achieved. However
high he may climb, man will remain
"a little lower than the angels but
within those limits there is nothing of
which we need despair. Wallace was
painSnlly impressed with many fea
lures of the industrial age.