Volume 1

A history of the intellectual development of Europe / by John William Draper.

  • John William Draper
Date:
1891-1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history of the intellectual development of Europe / by John William Draper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    30/484 (page 12)
    The Irausitional forms which an animal type is capable of producing on a passage north and south are much more numerous than those it can produce on a passage east and Avest. These, though they are truly transitional as Nature of respects the type from which they have pro- ceeded, are permanent as regards the locality in which they occur, being, in fact, the incarnation of its physical influences. As long, therefore, as those in- fluences remain without cliange the form that has been produced will last without any alteration. For such a ]3ermanent form in the case of man we may adopt the designation of an ethnical element. An ethnical element is therefore necessarily^ of a de Conditions of nature; its durability arises from its change in an perfect Correspondence with its environment. Whatever can affect that correspondence will touch its life. Such considerations carry us from individual man to groups of men or nations. There is a progess for races of jrien as well marked as the progress of one man. There are thoughts and actions appertaining to specific natSn^e periods in the one case as in the other. With- that of indivi- out difficulty we affirm of a given act that it appertains to a given period. We recognize the noisy sports of boyhood, the business application of matu- rity, the feeble garrulity of old age. We express our surprise when we witness actions unsuitable to the ei^och of life. As it is in this respect in the individual, so it is in the nation. The march of individual existence shadows forth the march of race-existence, being, indeed, its representative on a little scale. Groups of men, or nations, are disturbed by the same accidents, or complete the same cycle as the individual. Communities Scarcely pass beyond infancy, some are iSSmiiiS!’ destroyed on a sudden, some die of mere old confusion of events, it might seem ent stages of altogether hopeless to disentangle the law -which advance. guiding them all, and demonstrate it clearly. Of such groups, each may exhibit, at the same moment, an advance to a different stage, just as we see in the same family the young, the middle-aged, the old. It is thus