Ill] OF MAN'S GROWTH AND STATURE 93 



our curve ; till the time comes when he accumulates no longer, and 

 is constrained to draw upon his dwindhng store. But in part, tte 

 slow decline in stature is a sign of the unequal contest between our 

 bodily powers and the unchanging force of gravity, which draws us 

 down when we would fain rise up*; we strive against it all our 

 days, in every movement of our limbs, in every beat of our hearts. 

 Gravity makes a difference to a man's height, and no slight one, 

 between the morning and the evening ; it leaves its mark in sagging 

 wrinkles, drooping mouth and hanging breasts ; it is the indomitable 

 force which defeats us in the end, which lays us on our death-bed 

 and lowers us to the grave f. But the grip in which it holds us is 

 the title by which we live; were it not for gravity one man might 

 hurl another by a puff of his breath into the depths of space, beyond 

 recall for all eternity {. 



Side by side with the curve which represents growth in length, 

 or height or stature, our diagram shews the corresponding curve of 

 weight. That this curve is of a different shape from the former one 

 is accounted for in the main (though not wholly) by the fact — 

 which we have already dealt with — that in similar bodies volume, 

 and therefore weight, varies as the cubes of the linear dimensions; 

 and drawing a third curve to represent the cubes of the corresponding 

 heights, it now resembles the curve of weight pretty closely, but 

 still they are not quite the same. There is a change of direction, 

 or "point of inflection," in the curve of weight at one or two years 

 old, and there are certain other features in our curves which the 

 scale of the diagram does not make clear; and all these differences 

 are due to the fact that the child is changing shape as he grows, 

 that other linear dimensions grow somewhat differently from 



* "Lou pes, mestre de tout (Le poids, maitre de tout), m^stre senso vergougno, 

 Que te tirasso en bas de sa brutalo pougno." J. H. Fabre, Oubreto prouven^alo, 

 p. 61. 



t The continuity of the phenomenon of growth, and the natural passage from 

 the phase of increase to that of decrease or decay, are admirably discussed by 

 Enriques, in La Morte, Rivista di Scienza, 1907, and in Wachstum und seine 

 analytische Darstellung, Biol. Centralbl. June, 1909. Haller [Elementa, vii, 

 p. 68) recognised decrementum as a phase of growth, not less important (theoretically) 

 than incrementum ; ''Hristis, sed copiosa, haec est materies." 



X Boscovich, Theoria, para. 552, "Homo hominem arreptum a Tellure, et 

 utcumque exigua impulsum vi vel uno etiam oris flatu impetitum, ab hominum 

 omnium commercio in infinitum expelleret, nunquam per totam aeternitatem 

 rediturum." 



