181 



DISCOVERY 



the human bodj' is a museum of relics which liave 

 been actiuiit'd at various times during our evolution. 

 All of them were once functional, but arc now dormant, 

 or awake only, like the appendix, to cause trouble. 

 But it has been reserved for modern psjxhologists 

 to discover — and promptly to obscure again by an 

 unnecessary jargon — the equally obvious corollary 

 that what is true of the body is true also of the mind 

 and the nervous system. The sportsman inherits from 

 the cave man not only his powers of physical endurance, 

 but also his love of the chase. The capacity for co- 

 operation is a legacy from necessities of prehistoric 

 warfare ; but so also is the herd-instinct with its 

 blind cruelty to non-conforming individuals. We 

 cannot eradicate during a few years of civilisation 

 the habits that were formed during countless ages of 

 savagery. Trite as this remark may seem, it has 

 taken mankind a very long time to discover and elabo- 

 rate its full implications. One of these is, that in order 

 to eradicate, we must first learn what exactly it is 

 we wish to eradicate. This can only come from a 

 more detaOed knowledge of our primitive ancestors 

 and their environment. WTien we know how they 

 passed their days and what their chief preoccupations 

 were, we shall be able with greater certainty to infer 

 their dominant instincts. From living primitive peoples 

 we can find out a good deal by analogy, that is to say 

 by the methods of comparative anthropology. But 

 as Mr. Hocart pointed out (Hibbert Journal, 191 9), 

 there are pitfalls in this method. In a general sense, 

 the comparative method, which is the method of 

 Tylor, is, of course, valid ; but we must be cautious 

 in assuming in any given case that the culture in 

 question represents a stage through which the human 

 race as a whole — or any portion of it — has passed. 

 It may be a degenerate stage, on the point of extinction. 

 We once believed that Neanderthal man was on the 

 direct line of our evolution, but now we know that he 

 is not. (A more careful study of anthropoid embryo- 

 logy might have saved us from this error.) 



To the student who is thoroughly inured to thinking 

 in terms of millennia or centuries, this discovery of 

 repressed or half-buried instincts by the psychologists 

 comes as no surprise. One would like, however, 

 to see the relative potency of these instincts more 

 fully worked out, and some sj'stem of classification 

 applied to them according to the length of their pedi- 

 gree. In the more obvious cases (such as the sexual 

 instinct) it is obvious that great power and a long 

 pedigree are combined. If this is so, it should be 

 true also that instincts with a short pedigree are 

 less formidable, and more easy to subdue or divert 

 into harmless channels until they exhaust or trans- 

 form themselves. That such transformation is possible 

 is now generally agreed. If, for example, archa;o- 



logical research proves, as it well may, that organised 

 warfare is an institution of quite recent origin, we 

 shall have a strong case against those who say " war 

 has always been and always will be." Ultimately this 

 line of argument is based always upon an assumed in- 

 eradicable instinct of pugnacity, developed by age- 

 long immemorial strife between man and man. This 

 assumption is quite unwarranted, and, in fact, un- 

 warrantable in the light of modem research, which 

 reveals abundant evidence of strife between men and 

 animals, but none of strife between men and other 

 men until quite recent times. 



The long dark ages, when man was merely an animal, 

 and the shorter twilight years when he was only half 

 human, were the breeding-ground of the instincts we 

 inherit but are only dimly conscious of. When these 

 ages are more clearly revealed to us by the light of 

 scientific research, we shall be better able to exorcise 

 the evil spirits they have engendered ; for here, at 

 any rate, it is most surely true that knowledge is 

 power. 



Some Geometrical Canons 

 of Architecture 



By Arthur Bowes, A.M.I.C.E. 



Much has been written on the use of geometrical figures 

 as the basis of the design of ancient and mediaeval 

 buildings, and yet the subject may be said to be to a 

 large extent undeveloped. Only a small portion of the 

 ground has been investigated, and there is little doubt 

 that further research, facilitated by the plentiful 

 supply of detailed and measured plans now available, 

 will discover methods, hitherto unsuspected, adopted 

 by those who were responsible for the planning and 

 designing of important buildings in the past ages. It 

 is scarcely necessary to say that such methods are 

 ignored in the present-day practice of architecture, 

 when design is a matter of individual caprice and a 

 freedom that acknowledges no subservience to any 

 rules or canons of rnusty authorities. 



In the comprehensive pages of the Encyclopedia of 

 Civil Engineering, by Edward Cresey, and in Gwilt's 

 Encyclopedia of Architecture, will be found lucid and 

 well-illustrated explanation of the manner in which the 

 proportions of ancient buildings were arrived at by 

 the aggregation of units of geometrical form. The 

 proportions of many of the Roman triumphal arches 

 are there shown to be based on a circumscribing square, 

 while the same figure is found as the key-note of later 

 work in Italy and France. The equilateral triangle 

 and the related hcxapla, or six-pointed star, are also 



