A very interesting question in connection with the origin and significance of pygmy races of men is, "Why is any race smaller in size than another?" Every species among the higher animals has its standard size from which only in the rarest cases are there departures. That in itself is a curious fact. How was the standard size determined, and how is it maintained? The whole question lies there. At first sight it seems to many people quite simple to account for "pygmies"; they will tell you that the poor creatures are half-starved and so unable to grow to full size. That explanation does not, however, meet the case, for the African and Asiatic pygmy races are just as well nourished as most of their neighbours. Also if we look a little further we find that the women of every race are smaller than the men, and often much smaller. That is not because they are ill-nourished as compared with the men. And, again, we find very closely similar species of animals existing side by side, one a large species and the other a small one, having the same opportunities of obtaining regular nourishment. There are many instances, but take for example the beautiful Great Koodoo antelope of Africa, with its fine spiral horns, which measures 5 ft. at the shoulder, and the Little Koodoo, a complete miniature of it existing alongside of it, and standing only 3 ft. 5 in. at the shoulder. Take the two common white butterflies of this country, the Large White and the Small White, also the Large Tortoiseshell butterfly and the small. Take the instance of many plant genera of which larger and smaller species are found growing side by side. The difference in size in these cases cannot be traced to any insufficiency of nutrition in the smaller kind.
It is evident that difference of size in animals has some deep-lying cause, which is not merely the greater or less abundance of food. Numerous specimens of a perfectly well-formed elephant, closely allied in structure to the Indian elephant, but only 3 ft. high, are found fossil in Malta and the neighbouring Mediterranean region, and in Liberia a species of hippopotamus, distinct from that of other African regions, is common, which is not bigger than a common pig. Pygmy hogs, pygmy deer, pygmy buffaloes (and many other pygmy animals) are known as thriving wild species, so that it seems clear that there are other causes at work than semi-starvation in the production of pygmy races.
A second suggestion which is sometimes made is that the smaller race, or smaller species of two allied forms, is the original one, and that the larger forms have developed from these and established themselves, without completely destroying the smaller original race. This view has at various times been favoured in regard to the pygmy race of man. There is something plausible in the view that these little men are nearer than normal mankind are to the monkeys, and the fur-like hairiness of their skin has been cited in support of it; but a fatal objection is that the men of the pure pygmy race of Africa and Asia are really not more, but less, monkey-like than many full-sized savages. They have heads and faces nearer in shape to those of Europeans than have the Australians, the Tasmanians, and the negroes. They are more intelligent, shrewd, and skilful than their full-sized neighbours. It is quite possible that they are a very ancient race—more ancient, in their isolation and freedom from complicated customs, habits, and mode of life than other savages—but they are not primitive in the sense of being ape-like in structure or in want of mental capacity.
A third possibility in regard to the pygmy people is that they have been "selected" by natural conditions which favoured the survival of small individuals, and thus established a small race—just as man has established small races of horses, dogs, cattle, or what not, by continually selecting small individuals for breeding, until he has produced such races as the Shetland pony, the toy terrier, and the Kerry cow. It is necessary to discover or to suggest (if this explanation is to be accepted) what precisely is the advantage, in a state of nature, to a small-sized race in being of small size. The guess is made that the small people can more easily hide, whether in forest or among the rocks and caves of mountainous regions, from aggressive larger-sized mankind. The objection to this view is that though it may explain the present habits and dwelling-places of some of the pygmy race, it is not capable of explaining their first segregation and formation as a distinct race. Another general advantage which small animals have over larger ones of the same species is that if the food of the species is widely distributed but limited in amount, a hundred individuals weighing 5 st. each will secure more of it than fifty individuals weighing 10 st. each. The total weight of individuals is the same, but the smaller series will cover twice the area and have twice as much opportunity to secure the limited amount of food, whilst, in proportion to their size, requiring less. It cannot be doubted that, other things being equal, this obvious relation must tend to limit the increase in size of animals which have to search for their special food, and must favour small races.
Some writers have supposed that small limited areas, such as small islands, favour the production of small races by some mysterious law of appropriateness similar to that which lays down that "who drives fat oxen should himself be fat." The pygmy buffalo of the island of Celebes, the Anoa, is cited as an instance, and the pygmy men of the Andaman Islands as another. But there are plenty of facts which would lead to an exactly opposite conclusion. Gigantic tortoises are found in the Galapagos Islands and in the minute islands of the Indian Ocean, and never on the big continents. Gigantic birds bigger than ostriches abounded in the islands of New Zealand and Madagascar. Some of the tallest races of men are found in the Pacific islands, whilst the tallest European population is that of the north of the island called Great Britain. Probably the real relation of islands to the matter is that owing to their isolation and freedom from the general competition of the vast variety of living things in continental areas, they offer unoccupied territory in which either exceptionally small or exceptionally big races may flourish—if once they reach the island shelter, or are by variation produced there—without competitive interference.
An important consideration in regard to the formation and segregation of a human variety or race is that mankind shows a tendency to segregate in groups, like with like. To a large extent this is true also of animals, but in man it acquires a special dominance, owing to the greater activity in him of psychical or mental influences in all his proceedings. The "cagots" of mid-France are the descendants of former leper families. They remain separated from the rest of the population, and do not now know why, nor do their hostile neighbours. Such "outcast" or "accursed" tribes and family groups are found also in Great Britain, and throughout the world. Possibly the "pygmies" owe their preservation to this tendency. Virchow regarded the Lapps as a race produced by disease—a pathological product. It is possible that former liability to disease and present immunity from it is the final explanation of the tropical pygmy race. In the United States black pigs are able to eat, without harm, a common marsh herb, the "Red-root" Lachnanthes tinctoria, which kills other pigs. Hence a black race is established, not because it is black, but because, in it, blackness is "the outward and visible sign of an inward and chemical grace"—that is to say, of a physiological or chemical power of resistance to, and immunity from, the poison of an otherwise nutritious plant. Such "correlations" were described by Darwin, and are of extreme importance and interest—far more so than is, at present, recognised by naturalists. I am inclined to the supposition that the obvious outward signs, the round head, bombous forehead, furry skin, and diminutive size of the pygmies are the outcome of an inward physiological condition peculiar to them, which has enabled them to resist disease or to eat certain kinds of food, or possibly to develop great mental acuteness, and so has led to the establishment of these peculiar small people as a race, without their smallness itself having anything to do with their selection and preservation. In that case smallness would be a "by-product," a "correlated" character, not the "effective life-saving" character.
[8] "Science from an Easy Chair," Methuen, 1909.