Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/471

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4 12 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899

right, the more cultured toward the right; the plodding coolie plants his feet in the line of his path, the high-bred mandarin turns his toes outward at right angles to his front ; the clumsy cook wipes the dish toward her and often drops the crockery, the deft dishwasher wipes outward and can be trusted with costly china ; the self-centered subject swills his soup from bowl tipped toward him, the out-seeing sovereign and citizen instinctively tip the soup-plate outward — in short the way of progress is from the egocentric to the open and free in manual motion as in cere- bral action. It is true that few of the data of cheirization are in the books ; but they overflow the poor work-sites of savage skin- dressers and ancient arrow-makers, the simple laboratories of barbaric stone-workers and semi-barbaric smiths, the mines and mills of civilization, and the elaborate manufactories of enlight- enment — they are far too voluminous for books, yet within con- stant sight of all whose eyes are open.

While cephalization and cheirization stand out among the factors of somatic development, they are little more than charts to that highroad of human progress which lies in coordination — the conjustment of hand and brain, or more exactly of the initia- tive and directive faculties. Expressed summarily, the somatikos includes the osseous framework, the alimentary and respiratory and circulatory systems by which internal relations are main- tained, the muscular system by which external relations are de- veloped and extended, and the dermal system by which the structure is protected ; and over against these the neural system, culminating in the brain, by which both internal and external relations are regulated. Now, somatic progress might be meas- ured, were the means of measurement available, by the advance in neural structure and function found invariably in passing from infancy to maturity, from the lower races to the higher, from the earlier culture-grades to the later, and in each race and grade from the human flotsam to the leaders of their kind ; with this advance the capacity for pleasure and pain grows acute from the

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