Expansion of races / by Charles Edward Woodruff.

  • Woodruff, Charles E. (Charles Edward), 1860-1915.
Date:
[1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Expansion of races / by Charles Edward Woodruff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/516 page 13
    EXPANSION OF RACES CHAPTER I POPULATION A FLUID MAN SUBJECT TO NATURAL LAW—THE EARTH SATURATED WITH LIFE—EQUALITY OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS—MIGRATION IS NATURAL AND UNIVERSAL—MOVEMENTS IN CONFINED FLUIDS AND POPULATIONS—WAVE MOTIONS—PRESENT CRISIS IN POP¬ ULATION MOVEMENTS. MAN SUBJECT TO NATURAL LAW Man, being an animal, is under the influence of all the nat¬ ural laws governing the evolution, increase and spread of other species. The possession of intelligence is generally, though falsely, assumed to upset law, yet the brain is a material thing, after all is said, and its functions are natural phenomena. In¬ telligence merely makes new phenomena and modifies old ones, but does not change any laws. The invention of balloons and aeroplanes has not upset gravitation. The great saurians once overran the earth, but later a few frail mammals became domi¬ nant because possessed of enough intelligence to survive con¬ ditions which killed the more stupid saurians. In like manner man became the dominant mammal, and the more intelligent races have long been exterminating or controlling the lower. The basic fact, governing the evolution and spread of any species, is the fact that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive to raise offspring of their own. The sur¬ plus are killed off in one way or another, and only the fittest for survival remain. If these fittest are markedly different from the parent forms there is a new species, though biologists have not yet determined why offspring vary from ancestral types. l
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