H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 205 



development to the East Indies and Polynesia, their inter-mixtures with 

 earlier types and with migrants from the Chinese side, and the tendency 

 towards the evolution of types aggregating characters from different 

 ancestors are too special subjects for treatment in a general outline. 



Xn Concluding Considerations. 



The intention of this sketch has been to suggest that we are approaching 

 a stage at which it is possible to outline something of the process of race 

 development. It bases itself upon the essential conservatism of heredity, 

 and is in no way in agreement with the opinions of Franz Boas '"' as to 

 rapid modifiability of type. I feel clear in my own mind that Boas' 

 figures are quite inadequate to the support of his conclusions, both because 

 of his use of averages and because of his argument from a single genera- 

 tion. At the same time I feel that modifications have occurred, and 

 that we need to have working hypotheses as to the factors calling them 

 forth and developing them on divergent lines. 



It might seem that the thoughts expressed in this address lead direct 

 to the Lamarckian position in evolutionary theory — changes of use of 

 muscles, of jaws, and so on, being brought out repeatedly as influencing 

 the racial resultant. This is a large topic to touch upon at the end of 

 an address, but I should be sorry to give the impression that I was either 

 blind to the problems or disposed either to extreme Lamarckism or to pure 

 anti-Lamarckism. It seems to me that development is a resultant of 

 the working of hereditary factors of an essentially conservative kind, and 

 of environmental influences which have undergone modifications through 

 changes of climate and vegetation and food, as well as through changes 

 of social habit and infant care and so on. Man, a social animal from the 

 first, has developed his social sense and social organisation, and with 

 this has gone change of environmental influences in plastic infancy, 

 changing in various ways the net outcome of the struggle of factors (and 

 with it the struggle of the parts) in development. 



Are we, then, forced to think of every baby as being moulded from a 

 very primitive stage to its appropriate modern form solely by repetition 

 of these environmental influences generation after generation ? I think 

 not. We could not experiment, even if we dared, for a modern English 

 baby placed under palaeolithic conditions from birth would probably die, 

 with its mother, who would have to be treated in the same way for the 

 sake of such an impossible experiment. 



Changes of environmental influences are usually cumulative, for 

 natural processes are essentially irreversible even if, as in climate, there 

 is something like a cyclic scheme of change. The cumulative change may 

 be said to draw out the course of development more and more from its 

 original path, thus creating a state of internal strain. No two embryos 

 can possibly be exactly alike, unless they be early stages of identical twins, 

 and some of the hereditary units may well vary towards, others away from, 

 a condition which would diminish that internal strain. Those varying 

 so as to diminish the strain would probably grow best. So we have a 

 theoretical possibility of variation of the germ, limping after variation 



*" Boas, F. ' Changes of bodily form of Descendants of Immigrants,' 1911. 



