Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1922-04-10

4 intellectually, is the human race moving for
ward, slipping backward, or standing still? A
princeton professor says that there is no evidence
Aathat human intelligence has increased in the period
in,of 1000 or 10000 years since the ice age. knowl-
has increased, has been preserved, and has
.ebeen more widely distributed, but the mental ca
,pacity Of the race, he maintains, has not increased
tperceptibly.
4 We arc apt to confess mental capacity with the
aipossession of knowledge. The two arc quite dis
.otinct. A man Of comparatively low mentality may
dpossess and be able to use knowledge which an
other, inherently more intelligent, has never had
the opportunity to acquire. The masses of the PEG.
ple in civilized countries are relatively much better
Informed than were their ancestors. 1t does not
Il follow that they are more brainy. The general
9 verdict of science is, we believe. that they are not
!, appreciably SO, as compared with the generations
.of which We have credible and fairly complete rec
q lords. More knowledge is extant, and it is avail
! able to more people.
y II the general mentality of man has not increas-
ed appreciably within historic times, neither has
{ there been any marked advance in the heights
: reached by individual p%rodigies. Every age has
{ produced its men eminent in the realms of intellect,
1but those of ancient times of whose work we have
records did as profound and as clear thinking as.
I any of their modern successors.
! The Princeton authority seems to be treading
on solid ground when he holds that progress in in
5tellectual capacity within historical time has been
!. only slight, if there has been any progress at all.
But this does not indicate that there has been no
progress. Nobody knows how many million years
. man has inhabited this earth, or what a mere mo-
! 1nent twenty thousand years is in the history of the
B race. The growing tree looks no larger today than
1T DID yesterday. Without instruments of incred-
1 ible delicacy it would be impossible to determine
/ that the tree has grown at all. Yet it has grown.
! Our perceptions are not keen enough to detect the
I change that has occurred in a day. And the period
1 covered by Our recorded history is too brief to per-
NIT mental changes which we can measure.
In one particular the Princeton orofaeeo- =,
Z to be borrowing trouble unnecessarily. He fears
+ that the higher types of our civilization will disap-
pear and be supplanted by a lower order. He points
: to the low birth rate among the intellectual classes
!, Z and the high birth rate among their opposites. A
little arithmetic applied to these facts demonstrated
! that III a few generations the former class will have
e disappeared and the other group will possess the
earth.
i Mechanically this seems correct. But there
!, IS an important element which seems to have been
overlooked. From time i%mmenorial the so-cal1ed
higher classes have been recruited from the So
I called lower orders. Inevitably and universally the
4 patr1c1an,s family tree is rooted in the soil. There
, are families III which titles have run for several gen
crations, but we have a striking Illustration of the
shifting OF classes in such a case as that of England,
! where the titled aristocracy is one Of the recognized
II institutions. Among the thousands in that country
\ VINO wear badges of nobility, there are probably not
q dozen families whose titles date back as far as
4 the earlier Stuarts. The old families of title and
I eminence have died out or become again merged in
the mass. From the commonality here and there
have sprung men of force who have made their
& presence felt, and these have succeeded to the plac-
es OF homer. SO itihas been in all countries and
through all time. The peasant or artisan of one
ii generation has, given to the world it's great intellect
in the next. There is no reason to supnose FIAT
4 this process will be changed. Therefore we need
/ not fear that the world will ever lack its ~intellec-
II t1als.