December 22, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



815 



zens of certain mountain districts, and 

 other peoples departing from the copper- 

 tinted, black-maned and medium-size stand- 

 ards. In seeking to classify the local 

 tribes, ethnologists were led to note indus- 

 trial and social {%. e., activital) features in 

 addition to physical characters; and so be- 

 gan a system of classifying peoples on the 

 basis of conduct, or in terms of what they 

 do as human creatures rather than what 

 they merely are as animal beings. In 

 Europe there was a tendency to cla.ssify 

 hoth living peoples and the relics of their 

 precursors in terms of industrial develop- 

 ment, and the stone age, the bronze age 

 and the iron age were defined; in America 

 the native tribes were classified first by the 

 statesman-scientist Gallatin, and more fully 

 by the scientist-statesman Powell, in terms 

 of language; while some authorities classi- 

 fied so many as might be of the world's 

 peoples according to their respective modes 

 of social organization. An outcome of 

 these essays was a system in which known 

 peoples are combined in groups defined by 

 distinctively human attributes; defined on 

 the industrial basis, the groups were some 

 time denoted (1) Paleolithic, (2) Neolithic, 

 (3) Bronze and (4) Iron, and afterward 

 and more broadly (1) Protolithic, (2) 

 Technolithic, (3) Metallurgic and (4) 

 Mechanical ; and defined on the basis of so- 

 cial organization the peoples were grouped 

 as (1) Maternal (or Avuncular), (2) Pa- 

 triarchal, (3) Civic and (4) Democratic— 

 the classes or groups in either case repre- 

 senting types of culture. A more impor- 

 tant outcome was clearer recognition of 

 the classific distinctness of man, coupled 

 with living realization that, whatsoever his 

 genetic affinities, man as an active and 

 creative being rises far superior to any 

 quadrumane or other animal prototype — 

 for even the lowest human is an upright, 

 two-handed and two-footed hairless body 

 T^ath his face to his fellows, while even the 



highest quadrumane (or quadruped) is but 

 a groveling and bristly beast with his gaze 

 and half-hands on the ground. 



As the world's peoples and tribes were 

 classed by race and culture jointly, it was 

 soon seen that the types of culture really 

 represent grades or stages in development, 

 and also that the exercise of function and 

 organ attending culture is a material factor 

 in development; and hence that the course 

 of human progress is not that of vital 

 evolution alone, but one affected increas- 

 ingly through the ages by activital forces 

 arising in and with man himself. Like 

 other beings of the animal realm, man is 

 indeed a creature of birth and heredity 

 and is influenced by environment; but 

 through his collective activities, themselves 

 the product and measure of culture, it be- 

 comes his chief function to modify environ- 

 ment and make conquest over lower nature. 

 Even the primal factor of heredity passes 

 partly (and increasingly) under social con- 

 trol; while the races occasionally blend, 

 sometimes with so ill effect that the mixed 

 family fades, yet often with so good result 

 that to-day the world's peoples may be 

 graded by ethnic complexity, the world's 

 strongest blood being the world's most- 

 mixed blood — and this blending reveals a 

 law of convergent development (or intensi- 

 fication) extending the doctrine of poly- 

 genesis far beyond the four old-world types 

 and suggesting that any or all of the more 

 isolated tribes may represent primary 

 stocks developed independently from fit 

 local prototypes. So in the human realm 

 the activities are paramount; and mankind 

 may be classified either independently of 

 or in conjunction with racial affinities in 

 accordance with the activities and with the 

 culture-stages defined in terms of the activi- 

 ties. Classified in this way, the peoples of 

 the world fall into one or another of the 

 four principal stages according to the de- 

 gree of their advancement in some or all 



