Sq. ft.Department of biology190,000Department of geology83,000Special laboratories for students5,000Rough storage, workshops, etc.20,000Lecture hall6,000————Total304,000Present museum space to be devoted to the department of anthropology96,000————Grand total400,000
Future Development.—With suitable buildings provided, the immediate development of the National Museum naturally lies in four directions: (1) The occupation of the present building by the anthropological collections; (2) the housing, developing, and installing of the large biological collections; (3) the development of a great museum of practical geology; and (4) the development of the scientific side of a National University.
1. The collections in anthropology, as they stand to-day, cover a wide field in a broken and disconnected way. It is difficult to use them effectively to illustrate the great features of this branch of science. They do not present a connected story of the peoples and cultures of the world. This arises from the gaps in the collections and the absence of suitable laboratory and exhibition space. This department should have adequate representations of the American peoples and their culture, not only of our own country, but of the whole American continent. Our nation is the only one in America that can reasonably be expected to do anything of importance toward the preservation of the materials necessary for the illustrationof this vast field; and as the American race is a unit, of which the tribes in our own territory constitute a considerable part, it appears to be our duty to take up this work in a comprehensive way. Thus would be built up not only a National Museum, but an American Museum in the widest sense. This applies not only to anthropology, but to the other great departments of the museum. It will be impossible to carry on such a work without turning over to the Department of Anthropology the entire present building, with all its laboratory and exhibition space.
2. The Department of Biology now occupies a large exhibition space in the Smithsonian building and 55,000 square feet in the museum building. Large collections are stored in laboratories and inclosed spaces in the exhibition halls which would be placed on exhibition if space were available. As has already been explained, in a new building there should be available for the Department of Biology 190,000 square feet of exhibition, laboratory, and storage space.
The present exhibit is more complete than that of the other departments of the museum. Of birds there is a large mounted series, one of the finest in existence, but it is so indifferently housed that it fails to make the impression it should. Of mammals there is a good North American series, and there are some excellent examples of exotic species. There is a good and rather large exhibit of the various groups of the lower forms of animals, including an especially fine series of corals and sponges. These are the only series at present exhibited which can be considered at all comprehensive. Of the great groups of fishes, reptiles, and amphibians there is room only for an outline representation. The wonderful variety of form among insects can be scarcely more than suggested in the space available. Of plants there has hitherto been no exhibit worthy of the name, and the space which it has now been possible to set aside is entirely out of proportion to the vast extent and importance of this great kingdom of Nature.
Every natural-history museum of the first class should have at least two comprehensive exhibition series. The first, theSystematic Series, is a series representing the natural groups, among which all animals and plants, from the highest to the lowest, are divided. The second, theFaunal and Floral Series, is a series showing the animals and plants characteristic of each of the grand divisions of the earth's surface, which naturalists have established as a result of their study of these two kingdoms of Nature. These two great comprehensive exhibits should be supplemented by a number ofSpecial Series, illustrating the more interesting phenomena and phases of life, such as the macroscopic and microscopic structure ofanimals and plants and their development from the germ to the fully adult individual, and special modifications of form and color by which animals are protected from their enemies; the adaptations for peculiar environments and modes of life; the characteristics of youth, maturity, and old age; the variation in form, size, and color among individuals of the same species; the domiciles and other works constructed by birds, mammals, insects, and the like. To these series should be added another of great importance, theEconomic Series, representing the animals and plants as related to the activities and needs of man. Any one of these principal series in its full development would more than fill the entire space now available.
3. There should be developed a museum of practical geology in the broadest sense, which will be of service to every producer and consumer of American mineral products, and to all students of geology who are engaged in either economic or purely scientific investigations.
In addition to the series of rocks and fossils illustrating the stratigraphy and succession of the sedimentary rocks and the systematic collection of minerals and ores, an exhibit showing how geologic work benefits the daily life of the people should be developed. An illustration of this would be a representation of the artesian-water supply of the semi-arid region, showing the stratification and structure of the sedimentary rocks, and how hydrographic and geologic investigations clearly indicate the regions in which artesian-water development may be carried on successfully. Mining and areal geology could also be illustrated in such manner as to place before the student and intelligent observer the import and value of such work.
In most museums the principal effort has been to make a collection of useful mineral products. This is desirable, but, from the broad view of illustrating the practical in addition to the scientific side of geology, it should be secondary. The best basis for classification on the practical side of the museum exhibit appears to be the finished mineral product. For instance, if pig iron be taken as a key material in classification, the iron ores from which it has been obtained should be arranged so as to show the various kinds whose combination has resulted in the pig iron. In connection with this should be grouped the geologic phenomena, which should include any geologic conditions connected with the original deposition and the occurrence of iron ores. This might include the conditions which have led to the oxidation of pyrite and other sulphur compounds of iron, and to the development of hydrous oxides of iron; also an illustration of what has been demonstratedin regard to the solution of widely distributed minerals in certain rocks, and their subsequent concentration in ore bodies by metasomatic action. All the metals could be arranged under such a classification, as also the nonmetallic products. The preparation of such an exhibit would require many years of work, the details of which would be considered as each mineral product was taken in hand.
4. The fourth direction of development is toward the requirements of a National University, which has already been sufficiently dwelt upon in this connection.
Children's Museum.—The children gain a fair amount of information from the general exhibit in any well-arranged museum, but it is desirable that their interest should be aroused by having certain exhibits made expressly for them. I would have a space set aside in each of the three departments in which nothing should be exhibited except for the children. It might be called a Museum Kindergarten.
Some of the preceding suggestions have been adopted by the museum authorities and partially put into execution, and the carrying of them out is dependent upon enlarged facilities for laboratory work and exhibition space. During the administration of Dr. Goode the museum developed as far as possible under the conditions surrounding it. No one knew better than he that only by securing new buildings and expanding the museum could it take the place in America that the several national museums of Europe have taken in their respective countries. It is well recognized that a public museum is a necessity in every highly civilized community, and that, as has been so well stated by Dr. Goode, "the degree of civilization which any nation, city, or province has attained is best shown by the character of its public museums and the liberality with which they are maintained." At present New York city is, in this respect, in advance of all other American cities and of the national Government. Whether the latter will take its proper place by developing the National Museum as it has developed the National Library remains to be seen. The question whether they are willing to be represented by the museum as it is to-day is one that the American people should consider and decide at an early date; meantime, it is the duty of all interested in the advancement of science and education to aid by every means in their power the development of a National Museum that will be truly national and American.
By JOSEPH JACOBS,
PRESIDENT OF THE JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
In the December (1898) and January (1899) numbers of Appletons' Popular Science Monthly Prof. William Z. Ripley concludes the remarkable series of articles on the Racial Geography of Europe, originally delivered as Lowell Institute lectures, by a couple of articles on the Jews. Strictly speaking, the articles might seem to have no right in the particular series in which Professor Ripley has included them, since their main object is to show that the Jews are not a race but a people, and have therefore no claim to be considered in the racial geography of any continent. But one can not regret that a daring disregard for logic has caused Professor Ripley to conclude his interesting series with the somewhat startling paradox that Jews are not Jews, in the sense of the word in which both their friends and their enemies have hitherto taken it. As Professor Ripley has been good enough to refer to me as having written with some authority on the subject, and as I have not been convinced by his arguments against the comparative racial purity of the Jews, I am glad of an opportunity to discuss the question, which is of equal theoretic and practical interest.
The theoretic interest, with which alone we need concern ourselves here, seems to me of two kinds. Professor Ripley, as a student of anthropology, declares, as the result of his inquiries, that there has been so large an admixture of round skulls with the (hypothetically assumed) original long skulls of the Hebrews that all signs of racial unity have disappeared. I, on the other hand, who have approached the subject as a student of history,[10]see no evidence of any such large admixture of alien elements in the race since its dispersion from Palestine, and have come, therefore, to the opposite conclusion—that the Jews now living are, to all intents and purposes, exclusively the direct descendants of the Diaspora. Here, then, anthropology and history—if Professor Ripley and I have respectively interpreted their verdicts aright—appear to speak in two opposite senses, and no conference at La Hague or elsewhere can appoint a court of appeal which can decide between contrary propositions by two different sciences.
But the point in discussion seems to me to raise also a problem of exceeding interest within the anthropological sphere itself. Professor Ripley assumes that round heads beget round heads, and long heads descend from long heads for all time unchanged. That appears to carry with it the assumption that no amount of brain activity can increase the mass of brain, that skull capacity has no relation to mental capacity, and that alone among the organs of the body the brain and skull are incapable of growth, change, or development. Thecruxof Jewish anthropology raises this problem, as I shall proceed to show, and, if I have interpreted history aright, offers valuable material toward its solution.
I might have met Professor Ripley's arguments on narrower grounds, which would have enabled me to evade this larger question. His main, I might say his solitary, argument is that contemporary Jews are predominantly brachycephalic, or round-headed, whereas contemporary Arabs, whom he takes as the type of the Semites, are as predominantly dolichocephalic, or long-headed. Accepting Professor Ripley's own criterion of purity of race, I might point to the almost universal round-headedness of the Jew as a proof of their racial unity. The fact that Arabs do not share that quality really does not affect the question. Linguistically and geographically the Hebrews of history were associated with the Aramæans and Assyrians of Asia Minor, and Professor Ripley himself allows that Asia Minor was mainly brachycephalic. Till Professor Ripley brings forward craniological evidence that the cephalic index of the ancient Hebrews was below 77.8, his reference to the contemporary Arab must be ruled out of court. But, quite apart from this, the Arabic evidence would be of little significance, since the chief characteristic of Moslem civilization has been the predominance of marriage by capture and descent from slave concubines. Every caravan that has entered Arabia for the last twelve hundred years has had its contingent of female slaves of alien race, mainly from dolichocephalic Africa. I must confess my surprise that Professor Ripley has based his main argument on the shifting sands of Arabic racial purity.
The only attempt Professor Ripley makes toward a proof that the pure Hebrew is dolichocephalic is a half-hearted endeavor to claim that quality for the Sephardim, or Spanish and Portuguese Jews, descended in the main from Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal in 1492. As a matter of fact, the largest number of measurements of Sephardic heads has been made by Mr. Spielman and myself,[11]and of the fifty-one heads examined by us only eight werelong-headed. Professor Ripley gives a portrait of a Tunisian Jew, with index 75, who is also probably of Sephardic origin, like most of the Jews of the Mediterranean littoral. But, curiously enough, there is far more evidence for the mixture of race among contemporary Sephardim than of any other branch of Jews. Even while they were living in Spain as avowed Jews they were persistently accused of intermarriage, chiefly with the Moors, while a large number of contemporary Sephardim are descended not from refugees of 1492, but from the so-called Marranos—Jews who remained in Spain, professing Christianity and marrying tolerably freely among the surrounding population. If one wished to be hypercritical, one could trace the long-headedness of a minority of Jews to this admixture of race from Spain.
After all, I must insist that it is to history one must go to determine a question of this sort. Jews have shown such marked individuality throughout their career for the last two thousand years among the nations—they have been so much in the world's eye throughout that time—that any appreciable degree of intermarriage would not have escaped notice, both by themselves and by their enemies. Now there is practically no evidence of this kind during the Christian era. Religious antipathy has been so strong throughout that period as to form an almost insurmountable barrier to intermarriage and the consequent proselytism to Judaism which is necessary for a valid Jewish marriage. Sporadic cases doubtless occur, but their very infrequency drew attention to them, and all that historical research can discover is under one hundred cases throughout the middle ages, scattered through Europe. Jewish nomenclature has special formulæ to name the proselyte, and yet, though we have hundreds of the mediæval lists of Jewish communities and martyrologies, it is the rarest thing in the world to find one of these names referred to as "sons (or daughters) of Abraham our father." In earlier days, doctors of the Talmud, when discussing hypothetical cases, dismissed that of the proselyte as being so rare.[12]In my Memoir in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute for 1885 I have taken the marriage statistics of modern Algeria as most nearly representing the most favorable conditions that one could imagine at any time during the middle ages, and have found that during nearly half a century (1830-'77) there were only thirty mixed marriages out of an average population of twenty-five thousand Jews—not one a year. The only instances of proselytism on a large scale are those of the Chozars in southern Russia, converted to Judaism in the eighth century, and the Falashas of Abyssinia, about the same time. Yet these are an indirectproof, by the method of difference, of the comparatively pure descent of the rest of the Jews, for neither the Karaites, who are the descendants of the Chozars, nor the Falashas show any of the characteristic Jewish features or expression.
Those who contest the purity of the Jewish race lay great stress upon the Chozars as forming the nucleus of the Russian Polish Jews, who are, as is well known, a predominant majority among present-day Jews, probably ninety per cent of whom either dwell in the Russian dominions or are descended from former inhabitants of old Poland. Yet against this is the absence of any reference to Jews in Poland during the time the Chozars flourished (eighth to eleventh centuries), while the very speech of the Polish Jews—the so-called "Yiddish," really archaic German mixed with Hebrew—indicates their true source, the German kingdoms and principalities. Professor Ripley throws some doubt upon the possibility of such large numbers as those of the Polish Jews having been derived from Germany. Nowadays there are probably five millions of Jews in the regions once possessed by Poland, but the remarkable fertility of Jews is one of the most striking characteristics of their vital statistics, to which, indeed, Professor Ripley has called attention in his remarks upon their vitality. The development of a generation depends, as is well known, upon the relative number of deaths under five years of age, and it is just at this period that Jewish mortality presents so favorable an aspect, owing to the care of Jewish mothers and the absence of alcoholism among the fathers. I have estimated that the Jewish population of the world in 1730 (six generations ago) was only 1,300,000, whereas at the present moment it is at least nine times as much. If one could assume the same rate of progress to have existed through the middle ages the Jewish population in the fourteenth century would have been not much more than 25,000. Such a rate of progress is, however, extremely unlikely, considering the large losses by persecution, which in Poland alone, during the disastrous Cossack inroads between 1648 and 1656, is said to have removed no less than 180,000 Jews. But, making every allowance for this disturbance in the rate of progress, it would have been quite possible for 50,000 Jews who had migrated to Poland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to increase to over half a million at the beginning of the eighteenth. Americans, who have seen nearly half a million Russian Jews land upon their shores within the last twenty years after crossing nearly half the world, need not be incredulous as to the possibility of one tenth of that number passing over the borders between Germany and Poland in a couple of centuries during the middle ages, when, if means of transit were less numerous, intensity ofpersecution and motives for emigration were ten times as strong as even under the iron rule of the Russian Czar.
History, then, as I read it, has nothing to say against the purity of descent of contemporary Jews from those of the Bible. What has anthropology, as interpreted by Professor Ripley, to produce against this negative evidence of history? Mainly, it would appear, the fact that Jews of the present day are predominantly brachycephalic. Of the fact there can be little doubt. The list given by Professor Ripley in the Popular Science Monthly (vol. liv, page 340), of over twenty-five hundred heads, would be sufficient to establish this. But the very uniformity of the index is almost sufficient by itself to refute the deduction Professor Ripley draws from it. If there had been any general amount of admixture, that would have tended rather to produce variety than uniformity. Surely Professor Ripley does not contend that the Jewish young men and maidens, who, on his theory, so freely welcomed outsiders into the family circle, have never fallen in love with long-headed persons of the opposite sex. His argument requires that the original Jews of the Diaspora were long-headed, and that they have uniformly intermarried with the broad-headed varieties of the genushomo. Now, he adduces no evidence whatever that Jews originally were dolichocephalic, and even if he succeeded in proving this he would have the further difficulty of finding a European race with skulls so broad as to raise the average index of the race considerably over 80. If we assume that the original index of the Jewish skull was 75, Professor Ripley would have to find some race with an average index of nearly 90 before the mixture would raise the contemporary Jewish skull to its present broad-headedness. Dr. Ammon has shown[13]that there are only two small regions in Europe where such abnormally broad skulls exist, neither of them centers of Jewish population.
But Dr. Ammon has shown more. By comparison with the skulls found in the long barrows in Germany, he shows that the index of German skulls has risen from 77 to no less than 83 during the last thousand years or so; and he further shows, by reasoning similar to that which I have just given, that this rise in index can not be due to any admixture of race. Now, to what is this rise in head index due? Dr. Ammon, who is a professed disciple of Weismann, does not go into the question of causation, but the simplest and most obvious explanation is that cranial capacity has followed brain development, and that, roughly speaking, brachycephalism implies intellectual development. A few instances may be given, confirming this impression of the superior intellectual capacity ofthe broad-headed. Prof. Karl Pearson, in his Chances of Death (vol. i, page 205), has given the following sexual ratios of the superiority of English, German, and French men over the opposite sex:
English.German.French.Brain weight1.1201.1171.125Skull capacity1.1791.1261.164Stature1.0811.0781.069
In other words, men's skulls contain about eight per cent more and their brains weigh four per cent more than women's, even allowing for the difference in height. So, too, there is a uniform increase of cubic capacity from the skulls of the Australians (75 cubic centimetres) up to the Teutons (93.5 cubic centimetres).[14]The same authority gives the average weight of brain in a number of brachycephalic individuals as 1,314 grammes, as against 1,287 grammes for dolichocephalic cases.[15]Professor Pearson points out that the higher the caste in India the broader the skull, the Brahmans being highest, with an index of 78.86, according to the measurements of Risley. The same writer gives a long list (page 290) of the indexes of skulls of some thirty-seven races, ranging from Australians at the bottom of the list, with 70.34, and headed by mediæval Jews (only twelve skulls), with an index of 84.74. Every indication seems to point out that in races where progress depends upon brain rather than muscle the brain-box broadens out as a natural consequence. Little investigation has as yet been made as to the influence of brain development on the form of the skull, but what little has been done all points in the same direction. Dr. Giulio Chiarugi[16]has made some careful measurements of twenty-one brains, and has shown that in every instance there is much greater complexity of the cerebral convolutions in the brachycephalic as compared with the dolichocephalic skulls, in which the brains were contained. From the nature of the sutures of the skull it is tolerably obvious that if brain capacity produces an enlargement of brain, the consequent internal pressure on the skull will be lateral and tend to produce brachycephalism. The application of all this to the case of Jews seems obvious. If they had been forced by persecution to become mainly blacksmiths, one would not have been surprised to find their biceps larger than those of other folk; and similarly, as they have been forced to live by the exercise of their brains, one should not be surprised to find the cubic capacity of their skulls larger than that of their neighbors. When it is remembered thatthey are, owing to their persecutions, the shortest of all European folk, their relative superiority in brain comes out even more strikingly.
The conclusion I have thus drawn from anthropological data receives remarkable confirmation from the results of an inquiry I made on the Comparative Distribution of Jewish Ability, and contributed to the Anthropological Institute in 1886. Applying the methods of Galton, I compared the celebrities produced by the Jewish race during the last hundred years with those of Englishmen and Scotchmen, and came to the conclusion that the race, as a whole, took rank between Scotchmen and Englishmen in intellectual capacity, while if the comparison had been confined to western Jews, who alone have had an opportunity of displaying their talents, they would have come out superior to both. From the anthropological side we should expect that the brachycephalism of Jews would show itself in superior mental capacity, and this is confirmed by the number of distinguished persons of Jewish blood recorded in the European dictionaries of biography.
The anthropological and sociological importance of this result, if confirmed by further inquiry, seems to me of very great significance for the science of anthropology, and for this reason I have insisted so much upon it. Skull capacity and cephalic index are not so much indications of race as of intellect. If it is found that, as a rule, each race, and even each people, tends to have a uniform cephalic index, that would merely imply that the sociological conditions of the said race or people were tolerably uniform as regards intellectual development. Australians, who have had no opportunity of pitting their wits against any other competing race, and have depended for their existence on the fleetness of their legs and the capacity of their stomachs to carry food from one orgy to another, have used their brains less than all other human races, and have the narrowest skulls of all. Teutons, who have had the largest sphere for intellectual rivalry with their neighbors, have the broadest skulls of all except the Jews, who have, so to speak, lived by their wits the last two thousand years. The evidence produced by Professor Ripley of long-headed Jews among the lower developed communities only shows that where the brain is not much exercised the skull is not broadened.
So far, then, from history and anthropology giving contrary verdicts with regard to the racial purity of the Jews, the above considerations would seem to show that they rather confirm one another's interpretation of the facts. If brain capacity and skull index follow the intellectual struggle for existence, we should not be surprised to find the Jews mostly broad-headed. If there hadbeen much intermixture with races who had less cause to exercise their brains in the struggle for existence, we might expect a greater admixture of dolichocephalism among them. To my mind a much stronger case could have been made out for the admixture of the Jews by the large number of blondes among them, ranging to about twenty per cent, but, as a rule, in Europe blond types are dolichocephalic, and the evidence of admixture that could be drawn from the admixture of blue eyes or brown hair among the Jews is counterbalanced by that very evidence of their uniform round-headedness, upon which Professor Ripley lays so much stress. In the memoir I have frequently quoted I have given reasons for believing that there was a blond as well as a brunette type among the ancient Jews, and till evidence is shown to the contrary the presence of the fair Jew is only an indication of descent from the earlier blond strain of the race.
Professor Ripley has scarcely taken into account the more positive arguments I have adduced in my memoir for the comparative purity of Jewish descent. I have pointed out a definite class of Jews—the Cohens, or priestly descendants of Aaron—who can not, according to Jewish law, marry proselytes. These still constitute, I have calculated, some five per cent of Jews even at the present day. He appears to think that this is merely a matter of name, and asks how I would explain the existence of quasi-Jewish names, such as Davis, Harris, Phillips, and Hart, among Christian populations of the Anglo-Saxon world. As a matter of fact, it can be proved that, on the contrary, these names among the Jews have been adopted for "mimicry" reasons from the corresponding Christian names which are mostly derived from the Bible. But, at the best, Professor Ripley's argument would merely prove a certain amount of Jewish blood among the Christian populations of Europe and America, which nobody would deny. That Jews, under the pressure of persecution or for other reasons, have abjured their faith, married Christian wives, and become merged in the surrounding populations, is undoubtedly a fact, but does not in any way affect the relative purity of the "remnant" which has remained true to its faith. It certainly does not affect the very important fact that the ancestry of at least five per cent of Jews at the present day can not have married proselytes, owing to the rigid requirements of Jewish law.
So far as I understand the latter part of Professor Ripley's second article, he appears to contend that the remarkable similarity of the Jewish physiognomy all over the world has no force in proving their racial unity. This is, of course, from the popular point of view, the strongest argument which Professor Ripley has to meet. Speaking generally, one can always tell a Jew or Jewess by theJewish features and expression. So marked is this that Andrée mentions an instance where the negroes of the Gold Coast even distinguish between other whites and Jews by its means, saying not "Here are three whites coming," but "Here are two whites and a Jew." So marked a community of expression and appearance would be, to an ordinary mind, an absolute proof of unity of race, but Professor Ripley prefers to judge by the skull beneath, rather than by the expression and features on the surface. He hints at some obscure embryological process by which Jewish mothers can stamp on their offspring the Ghetto expression, whatever be the racial formation of skull. According to him, it would appear that noses are more plastic in this regard than skulls. I do not quite see how this would work out in detail. Are we to suppose that a pair of snub-nosed converts to Judaism would produce offspring with the characteristic Jewish nose because the lady convert had her imagination influenced by the hook-noses surrounding her? Are we to suppose that round heads can only beget round heads, but that snub noses can produce the hooked variety as a mere result of imagination?
Mere expression one could understand could be produced by sociological causes, and it is certainly my impression that Jews who mix more with their fellow-citizens lose a good deal of the characteristic Jewish expression, but that Jewish features should be influenced in this way few people would be prepared to allow. Jewish "nostrility," as I have termed it, and the "Jew's eye," can not be affected by change of environment. They can be affected, I grant, by admixture with races snub-nosed or dull-eyed, but as they have persisted throughout the ages they are themselves a striking proof of the absence of such admixture.
Altogether I remain unconvinced by Professor Ripley's arguments as to any large admixture of alien elements among contemporary Jews as unvouched for by history, and not necessarily postulated by anthropology. The broad skulls of the Jews, if they differ from those of earlier date (of which Professor Ripley has produced no evidence whatever), are due to the development of Jewish capacity, owing to their consistent attention to education and to the conditions under which they have pursued the struggle for existence. The persistence of Jewish features throughout the ages and the existence of an influential minority who are not allowed by Jewish law to marry outside their race is further proof of the position for which I have throughout contended. If there has been a tolerably large admixture of Jewish and alien blood throughout the Christian centuries it has been by conversions to Christianity or Islam, not by adoption of Judaism, and it is confirmed by history that the offspringhave wandered away from the Jewish race and have not affected the more conservative remnant.
The significance of this result for the science of anthropology can not be overrated. The great question of the science is that expressed by Dr. Galton as "the struggle between Nature and nurture"—the difference that social influences can produce on men of the same race. Jews afford the science almost the sole instance in which this problem can be studied in its least complex form. My own investigations have shown that social environment has a direct influence on such anthropometrical data as height and breathing capacity. The Jews of the West End of London, though of the same race as those of the East End, are superior in height and other external qualities, and this superiority can thus be shown to be due entirely to nurture. Similarly, if the argument I have previously adduced is correct, the brachycephalism of the Jew is a proof that intellectual development produces broad heads, and that, roughly speaking, the cephalic index is a key to intellectual capacity. I should rather reverse Professor Ripley's main contentions: breadth of skull is not a criterion of race, but of intellectual development; whereas features, which are not directly influenced by social or intellectual characteristics, are the true index to racial purity.
By Prof. M. V. O'SHEA.
Modern studies in neurology have contributed much to our knowledge of the function of the nervous system as a whole and of its several parts, and also of the relation of psychical activity to cerebral conditions and processes. The architecture of the neural mechanism delineated by these investigations is not only interesting in itself on account of the marvelous unity of things apparently diverse, but it is at the same time suggestive respecting its office as the physical instrument through which mind must express itself in this world. Psychologists now quite generally conceive of a living being, human or otherwise, as a reacting organism, receiving impressions from its environment and responding to them in some characteristic manner. To be fitted for this office an individual must be provided with appliances alike for the reception of stimulations and for their transformation into incitements to muscular activity. In the human species Nature has ordained that action need not follow immediately and inevitably upon any sense stimulus; fortunately, it may be deferred, so that when it does finally occur itwill be the resultant of any given present impression modified by others previously received and treasured up in memory, as we say. To accomplish this really great feat, Nature had to devise an elaborate contrivance, interposed between incoming messages and outgoing impulses, to act as a moderator or transformer of a very extraordinary and intricate character—the central nervous system, comprising the brain and spinal cord. That it may be able to meet the requirements of its office, this system must be equipped with two principal kinds of apparatus—cells, which will serve as storehouses of energy to be employed in keeping the machinery running, and association fibers or pathways, which will put any one cell into communication with others in the cerebral community.
The item which will engage our attention principally here relates to the primary function of the nerve cell—to store up vital forces in the form of highly unstable chemical compounds,[17]which may upon slight disturbance be broken down, the static energy represented in their union thus becoming dynamic. Those who have given special attention to the matter seem to agree that all activity, physical as well as mental, involves the expenditure of a portion of this energy.[18]It may perhaps be mentioned in passing that when this conception was first being presented some persons hastily constructed the theory that what people had been calling mind was nothing more nor less than a certain mode of manifestation of this mysterious but yet physical force. While abundant evidence, gained from various sciences by recent research, leads one to the conviction that in some unknown manner psychical and neural processes are closely co-ordinated, yet not a single investigator of standing claims that they are identical. There is doubtless among some in our day too great a tendency, unconscious though it may be for the most part, to declare that a description of the physical correlates or antecedents of mental phenomena fully accounts for the latter in respect alike of their nature and their modes of manifestation; but those who find themselves coming to such conclusions might be both interested in and benefited by examining the opinions of great naturalists and psychologists who have reflected long and profoundly upon the world-old problem of the connections between body and mind—such men as Lotze,[19]Darwin,[20]Romanes,[21]Wallace,[22]Fiske,[23]Drummond,[24]Wundt,[25]and many others of equal scientific attainments.
The architecture and chemical constitution of the neural elements indicate unmistakably, it seems, that they were so constructed that in their functioning they would be amenable to the law of the conservation of energy, and recent investigations have produced some experimental evidence in support of this view. Hodge,[26]who succeeded in making microscopical examinations of living nerve cells while under stimulation, demonstrated that the cell by this treatment was depleted of its contents, as revealed in the gradual reduction of its size. In corroboration of these results it was found that the cerebral cells in animals were larger in the morning than after a day's activities, indicating that depletion must have taken place during waking life, followed by recuperation in sleep. Some interesting data relating in a way to this matter are easily gained in the laboratories by the use of the plethysmograph, which is designed to record the degree of blood pressure in different parts of the body. This instrument may be put upon the wrists and head, for instance, and it may be observed, when a person is subjected to certain influences whether, there is any alteration in blood supply in either region. It may be noticed, as a matter of fact, that when one is required to think diligently upon any problem, or being asleep is awakened or even disturbed by a noise in his environment, the volume of blood decreases in the wrist and increases in the head.[27]This same phenomenon is shown by experiments with the scientific cradle.[28]The inference from these data seems reasonable, that mental activity causes an expenditure of nerve force, which Nature seeks to replenish by inciting an unusual flow of nutritive-bearing fluid to the cerebral cortex. It has been shown, in further illustration of this law, that thought increases the temperature of the head, indicating that heat is generated through molecular activity; and also that psychical action increases waste products in the system, which may be derived only from the degradation of substances in nerve cells.[29]So information obtained from various other sources points toward the conclusion that in all activity energy stored in nerve cells is dissipated.
Recent experimental studies have given us reasons for believing that nerve cells in different individuals yield up their energy in response to stimulation with varying degrees of readiness.[30]Experiencecorroborates what Professor Bryan[31]has said: that some persons possess a leaky nervous system, wherefrom their vitalities flow away without issue in useful results. In such individuals activity will be likely to be in excess of that which the stimulus occasioning it should normally produce. Every one must have seen children, and adults as well, who when they hear a slight noise, for instance, which others do not mind, react with great vigor by jumping or screaming; or, when spoken to unexpectedly the face flushes, the lip quivers, and they become physically uncontrolled in a measure. In these instances the persons are unduly profligate in the expenditure of their means, and, in consequence, their capital is relatively soon exhausted.[32]
The writer last year conducted some experiments upon school children which yielded results that appear to confirm the view here set forth. Scripture's steadiness gauge was used in one test. This is designed to investigate stability of control by requiring a person to direct a light rod under guidance of the eye upon a point several feet distant, failure to accomplish this being announced by the ringing of an electric bell. The subject is usually required to make the trial fifteen times at a single test, and the number of successful attempts is taken to be in a way, although not always reliable, an index to his power of co-ordination. But more important than the success or failure in accomplishing the task is the index it affords of the nervous condition of the subject as revealed in the expressions of face and body. Tests were made in the morning, shortly following the opening of school, and again at half past eleven o'clock, or thereabouts, after the pupils had been working over their lessons for about two hours. One boy of eleven years, A. M., is a fair illustration of what might not inappropriately be called an exhaustive type, wherein nervous energy is readily depleted because of incessant waste. In the morning tests he was well controlled and accurate. A record of five tests made at half past eleven all show that after four or five attempts to place the rod upon the point the hand became very unsteady, the lips compressed, the region about the eyes showed unusual constraint, and the hand not being used was tightly clinched. Ten trials were usually sufficient to produce twitchings orticsin the face and body, although nothing of this was ever noticed at other times. This boy invariably made hard work of the task, and all the physical accompaniments indicated excessive motor stimulation following, of course, upon an unduly excited condition of the cerebral cells. At the close of the experiments he generally seemed exhausted, and upon three occasionsit was thought best not to permit him to make the entire fifteen trials.
Another pupil, W. R., two years younger, illustrates a different type. In the morning trials he was no better than A. M., but he, too, was subjected to five different tests at half past eleven, with the result that he could in every instance complete the task without any apparent fatigue. There was no constraint apparent in the face or hands, no unusual effort to co-ordinate the muscles of the body, and no twitchings of any kind. Now, it seems probable that in the case of W. R. the brain was able to adjust effort in right degree to the needs of the occasion, while with A. M. there was such prodigality in the expenditure of energy in various irrelevant motor tensions and activities that it not only defeated its purpose, but it was soon largely spent. A. M. showed this tendency to nervous extravagance in all the work of the school. While an unusually bright boy, he yet became fatigued in the performance of duties that W. R. could discharge with no evidence of overstrain; indeed, the latter boy seemed never to reach a point beyond which he could not go with safety if he chose.
Further illustrations of this principle of individual differences in the conservation of nervous energy were afforded by another simple experiment. The apparatus employed consisted of a plate of smoked glass set in a frame so that it could be moved horizontally. Just touching the glass, and adjusted to it by a delicate spring, was a fine metal point which could be maintained at any height by a silk thread to be held in the fingers of the subject to be experimented upon, who stood with closed eyes endeavoring to keep his hand perfectly quiet for one half minute. During the test the glass was moved slowly in the frame, the metal point thus tracing a line which was a faithful index to most of the movements, at any rate, of the subject's hand. Five sets of experiments were made upon a number of pupils in the morning soon after the opening of school, and again just before the noon recess. The accompanying tracings are reproductions of those gained at one of the tests, and are typical examples. The first two were secured from a girl, M. L. R., eleven years of age. The one made at half past eleven, after two and a quarter hours' work in school, shows a significant phenomenon which could be easily witnessed during the experiment. She had become so fatigued that all muscular expressions were unusually constrained. During the short period while the experiment continued one could observe the arm and fingers contracting, which accounts for the upward direction of the tracing. The body swayed almost to the point of falling, the fingers of the hand not employed were clinched, and all the expressions indicated great tension. Thesecond set of tracings, gained from a girl, E. H., twelve years of age, shows evidences of marked fatigue after a few hours' work; but the effect upon the bodily activities is quite in contrast with that of the case just mentioned. Here there was relaxation of the muscles, a general letting go of the whole body, revealed in the tracings taking an abrupt downward direction. The third group of tracings was gained from W. R., whose characteristics have already been adverted to, and who indicated here, as in the other tests, that his morning's duties had had no serious effect upon his nervous energies.