[THE CAUSE OF THE INFERIORITY OF PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHARACTERS IN THE LOWER SOCIAL CLASSES.]
(Abstract.)
By Professor Alfredo Niceforo,
Of the University of Naples.
The author has compared the physical, demographic, and mental characters of the upper and leisured classes with the same characters in individuals of the inferior and poor classes. He has made use of several methods: (1) A comparison between the well-to-do and the poor children in schools; (2) a comparison between individuals belonging to different professions; (3) a comparison between the rich and the poor quarters of the same city.
He has also studied 4,000 children of the schools of Lausanne; Italian peasants; conscripts of different countries, classified according to their occupation; and the rich and the poor quarters of Lausanne, Paris, etc.
He has found that individuals of the lower classes show a smaller development of stature, of cranial capacity, of sensibility, of resistance to mental fatigue, a delay in the period when puberty makes its appearance, a slackening in growth, a very large number of anomalies, etc.
The causes of these differences ascertained in comparing the two groups are of the mesological and individual order.
Of the mesological order because the conditions of life where men of the lower classes are forced to live constitute one of the causes of the deterioration of their physical and mental characters.
Of the individual order because, thanks to biological variation, every man is born different from all other men, and men who are born with superior physical and mental characters tend to rise in the superior classes, while men who are born with inferior physical and mental characters tend to fall in the most wretched classes.