20 MAN THE ANIMAL 



ment (gravity, air pressure, etc.) upon them. In the case of the 

 living organism the environment only partly determines what 

 it will be under any particular set of circumstances. 



Man has carried these characteristics of environment-choosing 

 and environment-making to vastly greater extents and degrees 

 than any other animal. So much is this so that although the 

 difference is in principle only quantitative, as we have seen, it 

 nevertheless by its magnitude alone puts man in a class by 

 himself. His prowess in environment-making is primarily the 

 result of his superior intelligence, which in turn has led to the 

 development of his arts and sciences. It is sometimes alleged, 

 and a good deal of evidence is advanced from such sources as 

 geographical distribution, survival of extreme hardships in 

 exploration, and the like, that man exhibits the highest degree 

 of biological adaptability of all animals. In a superficial view 

 this seems probably true. But in reality the point has never 

 been adequately tested. For what happens when people habitu- 

 ally live in the dreadfully harsh environment of the polar 

 regions, for example, is that by the arrangement of their hous- 

 ing and clothing and in other ways they make for themselves 

 an effective environment that in the most essential respects 

 approximates the environments of temperate or even torrid 

 zones. The distinguished Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson 

 has given much information on this point from his long ex- 

 perience with the Eskimos. During the long winter night these 

 people spend nearly all their time virtually naked in igloos at 

 temperatures of the order of 80° F. and above. Furthermore 

 their clothing is so constructed as to be most effectively pro- 

 tective when they are out of doors. Stefansson has even sug- 

 gested that the relatively early age at menarche observed among 

 Eskimo girls is probably connected with the high temperature 

 of their effective environment. Again the environmental hard- 

 ships of explorers are now generally recognized to be expressions 

 only of failure to push out around them as they advance an 

 adequate quasi-pseudopodial cloak of mellow temperate en- 

 vironment. How can the comparative grade of man's organic 



