Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 12.djvu/858

* MAN. 764 MAN. JfnnifDstlv anthropology as thus defined can- not be treated in detail within moderate limits. Accordingly Momatology may be passed over with little more than mere reference to the treatment of its subdivisions elsewhere; while psychology (q.v.) is also treated elsewhere, and needs no special consideration herein beyond constant emphasis of the facts that man is Die psychic organism of the known universe, and lliat his distinctive attributes as a creature and more espeeially as a creator of natural interactions grow out of his essentially uniciue possession of mentality. Even demology, with its subsciences, is not easily treated in brief space, since each group of the human activities forms a field of no less extent than that of any of the older sciences; but it may suffice to outline the science and its subdivisions in terms of that trend of development broiglit out liy a general survey of tli<' human realm. Cla.sses of ilANKixD. The genus Homo of Linmi'Us comprised two species, lloniu sapiens nnd Homo monstrusus, the former including several varieties or races and the latter certain peoples supposed to have been modified by local conditions or habits. The varieties of Homo .sdpirns have been much discussed, and many systems of classi- fication have been jiroposed ; in the most practical the varieties are denoted and described as (1) the Caucasian or While race. (2) the Mongolian or Yellow race, (.'!) the ilalayan or Hrown race, (4) the Amerind or Kcd race, and (5) the Afri- can or Black race. This arrangement is open to objections of which the most serious grow out of the existence of aberrant or intermediate forms; and to meet these, more elaborate classi- fications, including greatly increased numbers of races, have been proposed. (Typical classi- fications of races are given in the article Eth- NOLOCY. ) Another mode of defining and classifying man- kind rests on psychic ratlicr than ])liysical char- acteristics. Hy it peoples are grouped according to habitual conduct, or, in the last analysis, accord- ing to habitual thought as inferred from conduct; and, while the grouping may rest on any or all of the activities, that commonly employed expresses the social activities. Arranged in this way all know'n peoples fall into the classes of ( 1 ) sav- agery, in which the laws are based on consan- guinity tra<ed in the female line: (2) barbarism, or patriarchy, in which the social laws rest on real or assumed consanguinity reckoned in the male line; (,3) civilization, in which laws and institutions rest on property right, especially in land; and (4) enlightenment, in which the jaws are based on the right of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This sys- tem of classifying mankind is no uku'c free from difficulties than that based on physical char- acters; yet it has the merit of increasing value with the multiplying interactions of peoples as against the diminishing accuracy and utility of the classification by race, and also the special merit of expressing the normal trend of develop- ment in the human realm. The Coirse of Hum. De^'elopment. The fundamental fact that human generations are not closed cycles, but that each springs from the culminating portion of the last, cannot be too strongly emphasized; it follows that human de- velopment is progressive. While it would be premature to attempt final analysis of the ele- ments in this progression, it is easy to trace the general course, which lies in the direction of increasing mentality. A similar tendency seems to aU'ect animal and vegetable life, and may per- vade all nature; yet it is so especially character- istic of the launan realm as first to distinguish man from lower animals, and then to atl'ord a basis for classifying mankind. While the dominant factor of human progress is mentality, the psychic forces must interact with the physical forces concerned in bodily grow th and heredity and progressively shape both functions and organs; so that, e.g. cranial capac- itv increases and prognathism decreases from the lower races to the higher and from primitive culture to enlightenment. In the domain of mind the progressive tend- ency is cons]iicuous. Gallatin and Turner were led to the study of aboriginal languages largely as indices to iirimitive minds, which seemed to them unlike those of their own fellows ; Tylor's conclusions as to primitive belief imply constant dill'erences between the mental o])erations of tribesmen and those of peoples living in organized nations; Powell perceived that while the minds of l)rimitive men ditler from those of advanced men there are striking coincidences in the men- tality of unrelated tribes, and was thereby led to the classiti<'atiiin of peoples by stages of culture; Brinton inirsueil the inquiry with special refer- ence to coincidences of belief among unrelated peoples, and was led to a concepticm of the unity of mind; while McGee extended the ol)Scrvatious and summed them up in a law of the resjionsivity of mind (foreshadowed by Bacon in the first Aphorism of the Xotuiin Orffaninii ) . in which the mind becomes a more or less perfect mirror of external nature, and knowledge merely an in- tegration of experience with such rellections as earlier experiences may have produced. These successive generalizations are accordant, and the last agrees with the common obser'ation that in any human group experienc/;s accumulate in such manner that the possession of each generation is greater than that of the last. This accumulation is itself cimiulative with increasing capacity, and operates through a specific process, of which the distinctive feature resides in the fact that it involves no loss, but constant gain. In the physical realm any mass or velocity con- veyed from one body to another is lost to the first body when gained by the seconil. but in the realm of mentality the transmission of knowledge from one individual to another involves no loss to the giver, however great the gain to the receiver. It follows that human knowledge is influenced by contact with individuals and groups, its aggre- gate increasing in a geometric ratio; also that mental acquisitions mice made are seldom Inst, though often assimilated in complexer combina- tions in which original features may not be recog- nizable; and, furthermore, that those groups of mankind possessing the greater capacity or the larger accumulation of experiences think the more congi-imusly with both external nature and human character, i.e. their mental operations are the more just and the more humane. The demotic classification of mankind, or the definition by culture-grades, is an application of the principle of cumulation of knowledge, itself a corollary of the law of mental responsivity. Savagery is hut the stage of extreme provincial- ism in which thought and fellow-feeling are