42 MAN THE ANIMAL 



vations of pulse rates on different people an approximate 

 numerical value can be assigned to m close enough to satisfy 

 all practical purposes. And so similarly for other characters, until 

 in the end one could plot out the whole pattern of the extent of 

 biologically permissible individual variation consistent with 

 viability and continued survival, for a great range of character- 

 istics, structural, physiological, mental, behavioral, and so on. 

 When this has been done we shall have a sort of map of the 

 organization territory within which man does his living, and, 

 by and large, must do it. 



Now because of the vast amount of scattered but carefully 

 collected information regarding the variation of man that exists 

 in the literature of anthropology, anatomy, physiology, psy- 

 chology, etc. it is possible to construct such a map. For a number 

 of years I have been engaged in so doing, as opportunity offered. 

 Though far from finished the results obtained are of some sug- 

 gestive interest. In order to present briefly here some idea of 

 their nature six broad categories of human characteristics have 

 been chosen, and a relative mean value of m for each category 

 computed. The categories are as follows: 



I. Size and shafe dimensions. These include linear measure- 

 ments of bodily characters, such as stature, arm length, etc., and 

 indices measuring shape, such as the cephalic index, and the 

 like. In this first category there are included over 200 separate 

 series of measurements, involving all told many thousands of 

 individual measurements. In general this category shows the 

 narrowest limits of variation of any so far studied. The absolute 

 weighted mean value of m for the whole category is 1.153. 

 The physical interpretation of this figure is that, as an average 

 of the whole category, the linear and shape dimensions of the 

 largest and queerest formed adult human beings are only about 

 1.2 times as great as the corresponding dimensions of the small- 

 est observed human beings. It must be again emphasized that 

 this is an average for many different dimensions of the sort 

 named, and for various races and kinds of people. 



II. Physiological dimensions. This category includes such 



