Anthropophagy

“ But what reason is there to expect that natural and sexual selection, or the advance of civilization, or the extermination of the savage races of mankind, or all such causes combined, are going to change essentially the structure of the human body to something superior to or fundamentally different from the Caucasian individual? We have had a tolerably long recorded history of the human [Pg 105] body as it has existed in all states of civilization or barbarism. ”

“ To examine what man is with respect to the highest orders of mammalia, and in a more general manner, to animals, is the primordial question which presents itself in anthropology. It seems at first sight that it would suffice, in order to settle it, to throw a glance on this complete body, formed of the same anatomical elements, absolutely submitted to the same exigences of development, nutrition, and reproduction, as animals. ”

“ For the whole arrangement of the bodily organs and limbs has been constructed with one end in view, and that is, the continuance in life of humanity; and while the other organs of the body conserve the present actual vitality of men, each being apportioned to a different operation, and by their means the faculties of sense and action are exercised, the generative organs on the contrary involve a forecast of the future, introducing as they do, by themselves, their counteracting transmission for our race. ”

“ I was preparing to publish in several volumes the reorganized science as the Pathognomic System, when the consummation of my researches, by a brilliant discovery, led me into a new world of knowledge—to the full development of the science of Anthropology, according to which the brain gives organic expression to functions which are essentially located in the soul, and the body gives organic manifestation to functions which are controlled in the brain, while the body reacts upon the brain and the brain upon the soul. ”

“ We believe very little in biology, or in demonstrations by similarities. Every animal, every organ, every anatomical element, has its own life, its own laws of birth, development, nutrition, and reproduction. At the commencement of science, everything is clear and easy, like the cellular theory, for instance, in the elements of anatomy ”

“ This points to bodily heredity as a natural rule governing the bodies we must inhabit, just as the houses in a city will show the mind of the builders. And as we as well as our parents were the makers and influencers of bodies, took part in and are responsible for states of society in which the development of physical body and brain was either retarded or helped on, debased or the contrary, so we are in this life responsible for the civilization in which we now appear. But when we look at the characters in human bodies, great inherent differences are seen. ”

“ Here belong the physiological effects of diet, housing, clothing, occupation, education, etc., which have not yet been taken up and incorporated into the innate physiological constitution by biological heredity. The physiological effects of social heredity are through the daily physical life and activity of each individual, in accordance with the requirements of the social order in which he is reared; and these are reached through its influence on the acquired psychical habits, which are transmitted through association, imitation, and the control of activities by language and education. ”

“ To understand these modifications, we require a knowledge of individual anatomy, physiology, and psychology, because the establishment of a characteristic social group can be brought about only by a parallel development which occurs in all the individuals exposed to similar influences.
Thus it appears that the genesis of the types of man, considered from an anatomical, physiological, and psychological point of view, is the chief object of anthropological research. ”

“ But in this study we had in view mainly the structure of the body and its various organs. We touched very briefly on the evolution of the human mind, or the immaterial soul that dwells in the body for a time, according to a venerable tradition. To-day we turn chiefly to the development of the soul, and consider whether man's mental development is controlled by the same natural laws as that of his body, and whether it also is inseparably bound up with that of the rest of the mammals. ”

“ Acute and indefatigable anatomists have been busy watching Nature in all her movements, from the first moment of her calling the rudiments of a human embryo into existence, until her magnificent work has been completed by the production of a new, life-gifted, individual of the species. ”

“ The race is not, in fact, analogous to the higher organism, which forms a whole separated from all similar wholes, but to an organism of the lower [Pg 129] type, which consists of mutually connected parts spreading independently in dependence upon external conditions, and capable of indefinite extension, not of united growth. We may consider the race, thus, as forming social tissue, rather than constituting an organism. The tissue is built up of men, as the tissue of physiology is said to be built up of cells. ”

“ In other words, filiation, nutrition, birth and death, are so many characteristics of the organised being, of which no trace is found in inanimate bodies. I agree with Pallas in making inanimate bodies compose the Inorganic Empire, and organised beings the Organic Empire. ”

“ After thus clearing away the racial prejudice, the most formidable obstacle to a clear understanding of our problem, we turned to an investigation of the question whether human types are stable, more particularly whether environment may change the anatomical structure of man, and thus of his mental make-up, and to the correlated question, what man owes to heredity. In treating the general question of the stability of human types, we described some rudimentary organs and some peculiar anatomical traits which prove a phylogenetic development of man, traces of which were found in all races. ”

“ If the human body had been made at once out of hand, it would not have been there. How came it, then? It is the rudimentary remnant of an organ—a greatly enlarged cæcum—which has served, and in some mammals still serves, a useful purpose. All these cases are survivals; they are organs which, like many customs in society, have outlived their usefulness, but still continue by heredity. ”

“ Pathology, therefore, is really nothing else than modified physiology. Physiological development is the evolution of organs and the growth of organisms under the impression of natural external conditions; pathological development is the evolution of organs and the growth of organisms under the impression of unnatural external conditions. Adaptation of structure to function—of organisms to surrounding media—is the designed conservative purpose of both kinds of growth. ”

“ Modern anthropogeny has raised the theory of evolution to the rank of an historical fact. All the various organs of our body resemble those of our nearest relatives, the anthropoid apes, in their structure and composition. They only differ from them in details of form and size, which are determined by inherited variations [333] of growth. But the functions as well as the organs have been inherited by man from his primate ancestors. This applies to the mind also, which is merely the collective function of the phronema, the central organ of thought. ”

“ One of the properties of living bodies is that of attaining a determinate development, whose limits, both in regard to the quantity of its mass and the harmony of its form, are defined by that biological final cause which is implanted in the race and transmitted by heredity. ”

“ That most wonderful organization, the marvelous structure of bones and muscles, the outward organic frame, is, as it were, the body in a narrower sense, the pre-eminently material constituent of living bodies. The soul of man—here consequently the organic soul—is in the blood and in the five or six organs whose functions are first of all to elaborate the blood and afterward to provide for its circulation—or perhaps by maintaining a perpetual interchange of the breath and the external air, to keep the vital flame constantly burning on the hearth of life within. ”

“ The study of embryology has lately shown us clearly how the clothing of our Physical Ego has been formed, during the past millions of years, from the lowest forms of life. Each one of us has, during what may be called his lifetime, gone through all the different stages of evolutionary development which, since the beginning of life on this planet, have been employed to build up the human body in its present form. ”

“ The philosophers of the Orient in reply to those of the western world say: Let us suppose that the human anatomy was primordially different from its present form, that it was gradually transformed from one stage to another until it attained its present likeness, that at one time it was similar to a fish, later an invertebrate and finally human. This anatomical evolution or progression does not alter or affect the statement that the development of man was always human in type and biological in progression. For the human embryo when examined microscopically is at first a mere germ or worm. ”

“ But we hesitate to say how many of these powers or characteristics of free and independent personality can be assigned to the unicellular organisms, such as the amoeba or the corpuscles of our blood. These one-celled creatures are also alive, are just as truly alive as are those composed of many cells. Even the corpuscles of which our bodies are composed move, and eat, and grow, and seem really endowed with intelligence like the higher forms of life. ”

“ The higher we go in the scale of organic existence, the greater the division of labour, the more marked the specialisation of physiological function. One organ thinks, another acts, one digests, another breathes. Now is there such a thing as an animal with only one organ, or rather is there any animal, consisting of only one organ, which breathes and thinks and digests all at the same time? ”

“ The growing stem—proliferating cells without number, which are born and die in a kind of even 236 uniformity within the limits of the stem—corresponds to the race-self in its early stages; the formation of knobs and buds in various degrees of clustered development corresponds to the partial growth of human souls out of the race-soul; and the liberation of the buds and germs corresponds to the liberation of the human souls into the freedom of a universal life. ”

“ Physics and chemistry in particular have proved that all phenomena that come under our observation depend on physical and chemical laws, and that all can be traced to the comprehensive and unified law of substance. Anthropogeny has taught us the evolution of man from animal ancestors. Comparative anatomy and physiology have shown that his mind is a function of the brain, and his will not free; and that his soul, absolutely bound up with its material organ, passes away at death like the souls of other mammals. ”

“ All of these phenomena appear, in a word, to be explicable on the ground of development. We have already seen that various leading animal forms represent stages in the embryotic progress of the highest—the human being. Our brain goes through the various stages of a fish’s, a reptile’s, and a mammifer’s brain, and finally becomes human. There is more than this, for, after completing the animal transformations, it passes through the characters in which it appears, in the Negro, Malay, American, and Mongolian nations, and finally is Caucasian. ”

“ It is difficult to be conceived, that a living entity can be separated or produced from the blood by the action of a gland; and which shall afterwards become an animal similar to that in whose vessels it is formed; even though we should suppose with some modern theorists, that the blood is alive; yet every other hypothesis concerning generation rests on principles still more difficult to our comprehension. ”

“ Que l’homme d’homme sera Antropophage. English.
The noise of the unwonted Bird having been heard,
Upon the Canon of the highest story,
The Bushel of Wheat shall rise so high,
That man of man shall be Antropophage. ANNOT. This is a prediction of a mighty Famine, wherein men shall eat up one another, when an unwonted Bird shall be seen and heard to cry, being perched upon one of the biggest pieces of Ordinance.
Antropophage is a Greek word, signifying a Man-eater, from ἄνθροπος, homo, and φαγος, comedens, of which sort of men there be too many already.
LXXVI.
French. ”

“ Man, himself, was examined and was found to contain traces of an older mode of life. Only in this way could certain atrophied organs, like the appendix, be understood. Before long, comparative embryology arose and it was seen that the embryo passes through certain stages of development which roughly indicate the past life of the organism. On all lines, investigation taught the same conclusion. That there was evolution in nature, so that new forms of life developed while old forms passed away, no one who knew the facts doubted. ”

“ Yours are the strong genes, the viable strains—mine are the deadly ones. A child of mine would kill itself and you in a natural birth, if it managed to live to term. You're forgetting that you are the original Homo sapiens. ”

“ To all this, Anthropology will put an end, for it will give to each a definite conception of the full normal development of humanity, and of the organization or brain development by what it is sustained. To those who fall far short of that development, it gives the means of a definite measurement of the defect, and shows by cranioscopy and psychometry what is to be done in self-culture, as clearly as we learn in the gymnasium what muscles need greater development. ”