211 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



_ .yment 

 vironment 



is a fact which the English have but too 

 good reason to know, when on the scorching 

 plains of India they themselves become lan- 

 guid and sickly, while their children have 

 soon to be removed to some cooler climate 

 that they may not pine and die. It is well 

 known also that races are not affected alike 

 by certain diseases. While in Equatorial 

 Africa or the West Indies the coast fever and 

 yellow fever are so fatal or injurious to the 

 new-come Europeans, the negroes and even 

 mulattoes are almost untouched by this 

 scourge of the white nations. On the other 

 hand, we English look upon measles as a 

 trifling complaint, and hear with astonish- 

 ment of its being carried into Fiji, and 

 there, aggravated no doubt by improper 

 treatment, sweeping away the natives by 

 thousands. It is plain that nations moving 

 into a new climate, if they are to flourish, 

 must become adapted in body to the new 

 state of life; thus in the rarefied air of the 

 high Andes more respiration is required 

 than in the plains, and in fact tribes living 

 there have the chest and lungs developed to 

 extraordinary size. Races, tho capable of 

 gradual acclimatization, must not change too 

 suddenly the climate they are adapted to. 

 With this adaptation to particular climates 

 the complexion has much to do, fitting the 

 negro for the tropics and the fair-white for 

 the temperate zone; tho, indeed, color does 

 not always vary with climate, as where in 

 America the brown race extends through hot 

 and cold regions alike. Fitness for a special 

 climate, being matter of life or death to a 

 race, must be reckoned among the chief of 

 race-characters. TYLOR Anthropology, ch. 

 3, p. 73. (A., 1899.) 



1O31. ENVIRONMENT ALONE DOES 

 NOT DEVELOP GENIUS The remarkable 

 scientific activity manifested by the Arabs 

 in all branches of practical astronomy is to 

 be ascribed less to native than to Chaldean 

 and Indian influences. Atmospheric condi- 

 tions merely favored that which had been 

 called forth by mental qualifications, and by 

 the contact of highly gifted races with more 

 civilized neighboring nations. How many 

 rainless portions of tropical America enjoy 

 a still more transparent atmosphere than 

 Egypt, Arabia, and Bokhara ! A tropical 

 sky, and the eternal clearness of the heavens, 

 radiant in stars and nebulous spots, un- 

 doubtedly everywhere exercise an influence 

 on the mind, but they can only lead to 

 thought, and to the solution of mathemat- 

 ical propositions, where other internal and 

 external incitements, independent of cli- 

 matic relation, affect the national character, 

 and where the requirements of religious and 

 agricultural pursuits make the exact divi- 

 sion of time a necessity prompted by social 

 conditions. Among calculating commercial 

 nations (as the Phenieians), among con- 

 structive nations, partial to architecture 

 and the measurement of land (as the Chal- 

 deans and Egyptians), empirical rules of 

 arithmetic and geometry were early discov- 



ered; but these are merely capable of pre- 

 paring the way for the establishment of 

 mathematical and astronomical science. It 

 is only in the later phases of civilization 

 that the established regularity of the 

 changes in the heavens is known to be re- 

 flected in terrestrial phenomena. . . . 

 The conviction entertained in all climates 

 of the regularity of the planetary move- 

 ments has contributed more than anything 

 else to lead man to seek similar laws of 

 order in the moving atmosphere, in the oscil- 

 lations of the ocean, in the periodic course 

 of the magnetic needle, and in the distribu- 

 tion of organisms over the earth's surface. 

 HUMBOLDT Cosmos, vol. ii, pt. ii, p. 221. (H., 

 1897.) 



1032. ENVIRONMENT, ARTIFICIAL, 

 A BONDAGE Possessions May Possess. 

 Only to a certain extent does possession 

 make a man freer, more independent. A 

 step farther and possession becomes master, 

 the possessor a slave required to sacrifice his 

 time and thought, and find himself respon- 

 sible to connections, nailed to place, incorpo- 

 rated in a state, all of which may be opposed 

 to the essential requirements of his in- 

 most nature. SCHOPENHAUER, according to 

 SCHWARZ, Psychologic des Willens, a Lec- 

 ture. (Translated for Scientific Side- 

 Lights.) 



1033. ENVIRONMENT, BIRD'S COR- 

 RESPONDENCE WITH Man a Mass of 

 Correspondences. The bird, again, which is 

 higher in the scale of life, corresponds with 

 a wider environment. The stream is real 

 to it, and the insect. It knows what lies 

 behind the hill; it listens to the love-song 

 of its mate. And to much besides beyond 

 the simple world of the tree this higher or- 

 ganism is alive. The bird, we should say, is 

 more living than the tree; it has a corre- 

 spondence with a larger area of environment. 

 But this bird-life is not yet the highest life. 

 Even within the immediate bird-environ- 

 ment there is much to which the bird must 

 still be held to be dead. Introduce a higher 

 organism, place man himself within this 

 same environment, and see how much more 

 living he is. A hundred things which the 

 bird never saw in insect, stream, and tree 

 appeal to him. Each single sense has some- 

 thing to correspond with. Each faculty 

 finds an appropriate exercise. Man is a 

 mass of correspondences, and because of 

 these, because he is alive to countless objects 

 and influences to which lower organisms are 

 dead, he is the most living of all creatures. 

 DRUMMOND Natural Law in the Spiritual 

 World, essay 4, p. 139. (H. Al.) 



1 034. ENVIRONMENT CANNOT 

 ORIGINATE ADAPTATION Tubular Flow- 

 er Cannot Produce Humming-bird's Bill. 

 But correlation in this sense [i. e., between 

 different parts of the same organism] helps 

 but a little way indeed in conceiving the 

 origin of a new species. There might be the 

 most minute and perfect harmony between 



