Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/472

 mcgee] THE TREND OF HUMAN PROGRESS 4*3

dull savage to the vivacious civilian, yet the aggregate of pleasure always exceeds the total of pain, so that smiles and laughter and music and poesy grow up while the dark faith of Moloch yields to optimistic light — save in the sporadic Jeremiah whose bodily generations have apparently outrun the cerebral growth of his stock.

Somatic coordination is expressed in that combination of neu- ral and manual capacities sometimes called faculty. It is matter of CQmmon observation that the white man can do more and better than the yellow, the yellow man more and better than the red or black ; and the record of handiwork found in the archeology of the world tells that faculty has grown steadily from age to age, while the written records of industrial history prove increasingly rapid development of faculty from generation to generation among the peoples of the world. A part of the improvement may indeed be ascribed to augmented knowledge (itself the high- est expression of coordination), yet only a part can be so ex- plained ; for those who know the races realize that the average white man is stronger of limb, fleeter of foot, clearer of eye, and far more enduring of body under stress of labor and hardship than the average yellow or red or black — despite the special pro- ficiency along a few narrow lines sometimes displayed by the lower type and drawn large in travelers' tales. So, too, those who trace the generations through history realize that the later are stronger than the earlier ; Rollin perpetuates the staggering records of Milo the Champion and other marvels of the classic arena, yet the witnessed feats of Milo are outdone by living Sandow, while American athletes defeat the descendants of gladi- ators on their own ground ; the average Briton or American is too big for the armor of the mail-clad hero of medieval history ; the rough-riding scion of enlightenment appals by his superior stature the puny soldiery of unprogressive monarchism ; it is a poor modern year that does not mark the breaking of one or more world-records in athletics ; and the citizen artisan habitually

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