May 19, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



779 



increase (saving of infants, improved sani- 

 tation, bettered hygiene, shortened hours 

 and intensified stress of labor, enhanced 

 enjoyment of life, and all the rest) sus- 

 ceptible of statement in terms of definite 

 quantity. The various questions of via- 

 bility (than which no inquiries mean more 

 to living men) are not to be answered 

 through actuaries' tables based on selected 

 classes, valuable and suggestive as these 

 tables are ; they must be answered through 

 health offices and census bureaus— and 

 their pressing importance forms one of the 

 strongest arguments in support of perman- 

 ent census bureaus in this and other coun- 

 tries. Thus, again, human strength is in- 

 creasing, as suggested by the superior vigor 

 and endurance found among advanced 

 peoples and rising generations, and shown 

 definitely by the constant breaking of 

 athletic records; yet, while it is most sig- 

 nificant that record-breaking progresses at 

 an increasingly rapid rate (i. e., more rec- 

 ords are broken during each decade than 

 during the last), the rate of increase re- 

 mains problematic. Similarly, that meas- 

 ure of faculty expressed in coordination of 

 mind and body is increasing, as shown by 

 the ever-growing and never-failing ability 

 of engineers, mechanicians, builders, elec- 

 tricians and other specialists to master and 

 command the strength-trying devices of 

 modem times — locomotive and marine en- 

 gine, dynamo and steam hammer, range- 

 finder and machine-gun, and all the rest ; 

 yet both the rate and the factors of in- 

 crease in human faculty remain in the 

 realm of the unmeasured. These are but 

 sample questions ancillary to the practical 

 problem as to the reaction of function on 

 structure; they merely suggest Avays in 

 which mind born of body in humanity's 

 prime is rising into dominion over fleshly 

 organ and constitution, as well as over sub- 

 human nature — and these ways remain for 

 the future to trace. 



A related problem, although minor in it- 

 self, has recently risen into prominence 

 through the impetus of importation over- 

 sea; it is that of 'degeneracy.' The ob- 

 servational data for the idea of human 

 retrogression are apparently voluminous 

 (though seen to be mainly of opposite 

 meaning in the light of modern human 

 knowledge) and the notion is by no means 

 new; but the ratiocinative basis of the re- 

 cent fad is obviously chaotic, e. g., in that 

 an individual is classed as 'degenerate' by 

 reason of the inheritance of ancestral char- 

 acters, or in other words, because he is no 

 better than his sire or grandsire. True, 

 if normal man is rising to successively 

 higher planes of physical and mental per- 

 fection through constructive exercise, as 

 modern anthropology so clearly indicates, 

 the unfortunate who is no better than his 

 ancestry is indeed below his proper place 

 in the scheme of humanity — though not de- 

 generate, but merely unregenerate (in non- 

 ecclesiastical sense). It is also true that 

 maleficent exercise may produce cumula- 

 tive and apparently aberrant efi^ects, just 

 as does the beneficent exercise normal to 

 mankind, the one yielding Nero and Billy 

 the Kid as the other Shakespeare and 

 Bacon, twin luminaries in intellectual his- 

 tory; but its end is destruction, with the 

 consequent elimination of the criminal, 

 while its middle merely marks lower layers 

 in the constantly ascending stream of hu- 

 manity. Naturally a theme filling tomes 

 and flooding lighter literature for years is 

 too large for full analysis in a paragraph; 

 it must suffice to note that the 'degeneracy' 

 of the day was not unfitly characterized 

 even so early as when aphorism foreran 

 writing, and the proverb beginning 'Put a 

 beggar on horseback' gained currency. The 

 great facts are (1) that less vigorous indi- 

 viduals fall short of the mean progress of 

 their fellows in such wise as to get out of 

 harmony with the institutions framed by 



