Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/470

 mc gee] THE TREND OF HUMAN PROGRESS 4* *

of prognathism, in the shortening of the fore-limbs, in the tendency toward diminution in number of teeth which dentists note, and in other characters of both skeleton and soft tissues.

Correlated with cephalization is a somewhat antithetic pro- cess, found only among mankind, which may be called cheirization. It is the process involved in manual training, both subconscious and purposive ; its mechanism appears in the wide range of action in the human hand as compared with the paw of the animal, and no less strikingly in the increasing range in manual capacity found in ascending the scale of human development from sav- agery to enlightenment; its effects are displayed in the better development of the forearm among white men than among yellow or black men ; and its prevalence is shown in the hundred manifestations of manual dexterity among cultivated men to each half-dozen found among primitive men. Yet the process is not limited to the hand ; it is expressed also in that mobility of countenance and modulation of voice and eloquence of eye that distinguish the civilian from the savage stoic (so called because his poor heritage does not embrace that refinement of bodily function enjoyed by the higher of his kind) ; it is expressed inci- dentally in robustitude of limbs and sensitiveness of skin to touch and temperature — for it is the reciprocal of concentration, and stands for peripheral development in its various aspects. It is expressed more emphatically than in any other way in the motions to which all human activities are reducible, especially in the centrifugal (or outward) motions normal to higher culture in contrast with the centripetal (or inward) movements normal to primitive men. The yellow or red or black artisan draws his cutting tool toward his body, the white artisan pushes knife and saw and plane outward ; the primitive weapon is hooked, the more advanced weapon curved outward, and the javelin and boomerang and bow mark great advance along the way toward the aimed projectile ; the lower fighter clinches, the higher pugi- list strikes and parries ; the less cultured scribe writes from the

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