Half Hours With Modern Scientists: Lectures and Essays

by Thomas Henry Huxley; George F. Barker; E. D. Cope; James Hutchison Stirling; John Tyndall

In this department the fact of development from the simple to the complex has been so satisfactorily demonstrated by philologists as scarcely to require notice here. The course of that development has been from monosyllabic to polysyllabic forms, and also in a process of differentiation, as derivative races were broken off from the original stock and scattered widely apart. The evidence is clear that simple words for distinct objects formed the bases of the primal languages, just as the ground, tree, sun and moon represent the character of the first words the infant lisps. In this department also the facts point to an infancy of the human race.

δ. Development of the Fine Arts.

If we look at representation by drawing or sculpture, we find that the efforts of the earliest races of which we have any knowledge were quite similar to those which the untaught hand of infancy traces on its slate or the savage depicts on the rocky faces of hills. The circle or triangle for the head and body, and straight lines for the limbs, have been preserved as the first attempts of the men of the stone period, as they are to this day the sole representations of the human form which the North American Indian places on his buffalo robe or mountain precipice. The stiff, barely-outlined form of the deer, the turtle, etc., are literally those of the infancy of civilized man.

The first attempts at sculpture were marred by the influence of modism. Thus the idols of Coban and Palenque, with human faces of some merit, are overloaded with absurd ornament, and deformed into frightful asymmetry, in compliance with the demand of some imperious mode. In later days we have the stiff, conventionalized figures of the palaces of Nineveh and the temples of Egypt, where the representation of form has somewhat improved, but is too often distorted by false fashion or imitation of some unnatural standard, real or artistic. This is distinguished as the day of archaic sculpture, which disappeared with the Etruscan nation. So the drawings of the child, when he abandons the simple lines, are stiff and awkward, and but a stage nearer true representation; and how often does he repeat some peculiarity or absurdity of his own! So much easier is it to copy than to conceive.

The introduction of the action and pose of life into sculpture was not known before the early days of Greece, and it was there that the art was brought to perfection. When art rose from its mediæval slumber, much the same succession of development may be discovered. First, the stiff figures, with straightened limbs and cylindric drapery, found in the old Northern churches—then the forms of life that now adorn the porticoes and palaces of the cities of Germany.

ε. Rationale of the Development of Intelligence.

The history of material development shows that the transition from stage to stage of development, experienced by the most perfect forms of animals and plants in their growth from the primordial cell, is similar to the succession of created beings which the geological epochs produced. It also shows that the slow assumption of main characters in the line of succession in early geological periods produced the condition of inferiority, while an increased rapidity of growth in later days has resulted in an attainment of superiority. It is not to be supposed that in “acceleration” the period of growth is shortened: on the contrary, it continues the same. Of two beings whose characters are assumed at the same rate of succession, that with the quickest or shortest growth is necessarily inferior. “Acceleration” means a gradual increase of the rate of assumption of successive characters in the same period of time. A fixed rate of assumption of characters, with gradual increase in the length of the period of growth, would produce the same result—viz., a longer developmental scale and the attainment of an advanced position. The first is in part the relation of sexes of a species; the last of genera, and of other types of creation. If from an observed relation of many facts we derive a law, we are permitted, when we see in another class of facts similar relations, to suspect that a similar law has operated, differing only in its objects. We find a marked resemblance between the facts of structural progress in matter and the phenomena of intellectual and spiritual progress.

If the facts entering into the categories enumerated in the preceding section bear us out, we conclude that in the beginning of human history the progress of the individual man was very slow, and that but little was attained to; that through the profitable direction of human energy, means were discovered from time to time by which the process of individual development in all metaphysical qualities has been accelerated; and that up to the present time the consequent advance of the whole race has been at an increasing rate of progress, This is in accordance with the general principle, that high development in intellectual things is accomplished by rapidity in traversing the preliminary stages of inferiority common to all, while low development signifies sluggishness in that progress, and a corresponding retention of inferiority.

How much meaning may we not see, from this stand-point, in the history of the intelligence of our little ones! First they crawl, they walk on all fours: when they first assume the erect position they are generally speechless, and utter only inarticulate sounds. When they run about, stones and dirt, the objects that first meet the eye, are the delight of their awakening powers, but these are all cast aside when the boy obtains his first jackknife. Soon, however, reading and writing open a new world to him; and finally as a mature man he seizes the forces of nature, and steam and electricity do his bidding in the active pursuit of power for still better and higher ends.

So with the history of the species: first the quadrumane—then the speaking man, whose humble industry was, however, confined to the objects that came first to hand, this being the “stone age” of pre-historic time. When the use of metals was discovered, the range of industries expanded wonderfully, and the “iron age” saw many striking efforts of human power. With the introduction of letters it became possible to record events and experiences, and the spread of knowledge was thereby greatly increased, and the delays and mistakes of ignorance correspondingly diminished in the fields of the world’s activity.