650 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



truly be said that the old is rapidly giving place to the new; 

 that the individualistic, in thought and word and action, is 

 being replaced by the cooperative and the socialistic, that 

 isolated effort is being supplanted in favor of combined purpose. 



But a third and a very real phase of environal action and 

 proenvironal reaction remains for study in the phenomena 

 of degradation or degeneration. We have seen how real and 

 widespread are the ramifications of this, amongst some lower 

 animals and amongst plants. Equally so is it with man, 

 and the same agencies are operative. Thus the Fuegians 

 are of the Red Indian race, but their dress, their customs, 

 their practically obliterated ancestral and animistic religion, 

 as well as other characters, all indicate that they are a de- 

 graded branch of the great Red Indian invasion of South 

 America from the north. This branch, forced southward 

 by the warlike Guarani and other Chaco Indians, reached 

 the cold inhospitable wind- and rain-swept region of Tierra 

 del Fuego. The miserable plant diet, the scant animal life, 

 the scarce wood for houses, fires, etc., all conspired to check 

 back their more ancient — even though simple — proenvironing 

 aspirations. So, even in that inhospitable clime, clothing 

 became scanty; houses took on a more degraded and tem- 

 porary character; they fashioned simpler tools and weapons. 

 In a sentence their entire proenvironal planning was on a 

 downward, rather than on an ascending, plane. 



Had some great stimulating spirits in their midst dared 

 to plan and put into practice an uplifting program, their future 

 might have been very different than is their condition now. 



The steady deterioration that historically is known to have 

 occurred amongst many barbarous, semi-civilized, or civilized 

 nations has not been due wholly or even chiefly to the direct 

 oppressive and despoiling action of invaders, but largely to 

 these nations having lost a great ideal, a proenvironal aspira- 

 tion for the future, and this unquestionably often owing to 

 their having substituted greed of gold and lust of flesh, for 

 thrifty industry and sober continence. Their resultant re- 

 sponses were built up from degniding stimuli, and so these 

 responses l)rought degradation. 



