A HANDBOOK OF HUMAN BIOLOGY 



A Review 



HU^IANISTS often are jealous 

 of the pigs, calves or cabbages 

 in the belief that more careful, 

 scientific study has bsen given to the 

 plants and animals than to the human 

 breed, and that more definite informa- 

 tion is available upon the proper hand- 

 ling of crops and herds than upon the 

 nurture and education of children. 

 This feeling vt'ill not be allayed by a 

 reading of the present w^ork,' but prog- 

 ress is made through every recognition 

 of the need of developing the human 

 side of biology, and the present efifort 

 to supply this enormous deficiency 

 should be highly appreciated. The re- 

 sult is a notable achievement that must 

 find a place in all working libraries 

 that include general biology and the so- 

 cial sciences. 



People are more important than 

 plants and animals, and partly for that 

 reason are much more difficult to study 

 scientifically, because regular experi- 

 mental methods are not applicable to 

 normal human populations, rarely even 

 to a few^ individuals. Hence the bio- 

 logical data of humanity are restricted 

 largely to observation and inference, 

 which are much more difficult to make 

 and to interpret correctly than to se- 

 cure corresponding experimental data 

 from other species that can be placed 

 under controlled conditions. From any 

 agricultural stand])oint the human crop 

 must be reckoned as a failure if we 

 consider how few of our young men 

 and women attain, or even approach, 

 the full standard of their possibilities 

 of development. We are becoming 

 conscious of the limitations of our edu- 

 cational system but lack the knowledge 

 and understanding that are necessary 

 to devise ]:)ractical ways to change it. 

 As it is necessary to go outside civi- 



lization and live with savages in order 

 to begin properly to appreciate civili- 

 zation, and to understand what civili- 

 zation is, so it is necessary to go 

 outside of man to the life of animals 

 and plants, in order to see more clearly 

 what is peculiar to man, and thus to 

 .^ain a more practical consciousness of 

 human development, racial and indi- 

 vidual. Most of the animals and plants 

 are easily found and studied in the 

 wild state, so that we may know their 

 original habits and the conditions and 

 the limiting factors of their develop- 

 ment, but we have only fragmentary 

 data and slight understanding of the 

 biology of primitive man. 



Though our author has little to say 

 directlv of eugenics, which consciously 

 has figured very little in the past of 

 human development, the eugenic i)osi- 

 tion is powerfully supported by a 

 world-wide collection of facts relating 

 to human existence, and showing that 

 hi one form or another, natural, politi- 

 cal, economic, social or religious, there 

 have been selective checks to reproduc- 

 tion, working through all the ages and 

 stages of human progress, and tending 

 in direct or different ways to strength- 

 en or to weaken the tendencies of 

 human development. What we begin 

 to see as we become more conscious of 

 the sorting processes of the present 

 age, is that civilization may suspend or 

 reverse the conditions of natural selec-' 

 tion that tended always to the further 

 improvement of the race, and establish 

 forms of negative or adverse selection. 

 If special ability and higher education 

 do not have greater survival value, so 

 that the capable are more likely to 

 marry and to raise larger families than 

 less cai)able and less educated people, 

 a condition of negative selection must 



^ Carr-Sauxdf.rs, a. M. The Populalion Problem, a Study in Human Evolution. 

 Tp. 51(5. The Oxford L'nivcTsity Press. New York, and London, 1922. 



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