Pedagogical Anthropology - English Restoration ## Chapter 10 - The Application of Biometry to Anthropology for the Purpose of Determining the Medial Man *Theory of the Medial Man.*—*Measurements* are used not only in anthropology but in zoology and botany as well; that is, they are applied to all living creatures; therefore anthropometry might to-day be regarded as a branch of *biometry*. The measurements obtained from living beings, and the statistical and mathematical studies based upon them, tend to determine the *normality* of characteristics; and when the biometric method is applied to man, it leads to a determination of the normal dimensions, and hence of the *normal* forms, and to a reconstruction of the *medial man* that must be regarded as the man of perfect development, from whom all men actually existing must differ to a greater or less extent, through their infinite normal and pathological variations. This sort of touch-stone is of indisputable scientific utility, since we cannot judge of *deviations* from the norm, so long as normality is unknown to us. In fact, when we speak of normality and of anomalies, we are using language that is far from exact, and to which there are no clear and positive corresponding ideas. Whatever has been accomplished in anthropology up to the present time in the study of the morphology of degenerates and abnormals, has served only to illustrate this principle very vaguely—that the *form* undergoes alteration in the case of pathological individuals. It is only now that we are beginning to give definite meaning to this principle, by seeking to determine what the *form* is, when it has not undergone any alteration at all. From this fundamental point a new beginning must be made, on more certain and positive bases, of the study of *deviations from normality* and their etiology. As far back as 1835, Quétélet, in his great philosophical and statistical work, *Social Physics or the Development of the Faculties* *of Man*, for the first time expounded the theory of the "medial man," founded on statistical studies and on the mathematical laws of errors. He reached some very exact concepts of the morphology of the medial man, based upon measurements, and also of the intellectual and moral qualities of the medial man, expounding an interesting theory regarding *genius*. But inasmuch as Quétélet's *homme moyen* was, so to speak, at once a mathematical and philosophical reconstruction of the *non-existent perfect man*, who furthermore could not possibly exist, this classical and masterly study by the great statistician was strenuously combatted and then forgotten, so far as its fundamental concepts were concerned, and remembered only as a scientific absurdity. The thought of that period was too analytical to linger over the great, the supreme synthesis expounded by Quétélet. Mankind must needs grow weary of anatomising bodies and tracing back to origins, before returning to an observation of the whole rather than the parts, and to a contemplation of the future. In fact, the thought of the nineteenth century was so imbued with the evolutionary theories as set forth by Charles Darwin, that it believed the reconstruction of the *Pithecanthropus erectus* from a doubtful bone a more positive achievement than that of the *medial man* from the study of millions of living men. But to-day the researches that we have accomplished in the biological field regarding evolution, regarding natural heredity, regarding individual variability, are leading biology as a whole toward eminently synthetic conclusions; and studies which remained neglected or which were combatted in the past, are beginning to be brought into notice and properly appreciated: such studies, for instance, as Mendel's theory and that of Quétélet. Galton, Pearson, Davenport, Dunker, Heinke, Ludwig, and above all others De Vries, are in the advance guard of modern biological thought. But beyond all these scientists, there is one who has an interest for us not only because he is an Italian, but because he has reestablished Quétélet's ancient theory of the *medial man*, under the present-day guidance of biometry: I mean Prof. Giacinto Viola. *The Importance of Seriation.*—Under the statistical method, the basis of biometry is furnished by a regrouping of measurements in the form of series. We have seen that Quétélet's binomial curve represents the symmetrical distribution of subjects in relation to some one central anthropometric measurement. Let us suppose, for instance, that the curve here described represents the distribution of the stature. If we mark upon the abscissæ the progressive measurements, 1.55; 1.56; 1.57; 1.58; 1.59; 1.60, etc.... 1.75; 1.76; 1.77; 1.78; 1.79; 1.80, and on the axis of the ordinates the number of individuals having a determined stature, the path of the curve will show that there is a majority of individuals possessing a mean central measurement; and that the number of individuals diminishes gradually and symmetrically above and below, becoming extremely few at the extremes (exceptionally tall and low statures). When the total number of individuals is sufficiently large, the curve is perfect (curve of errors): Fig. 156.  Fig. 156.—The highest part of this curve corresponds to the medial centre of density. In such a case, the *general mean* coincides with the *median*, that is, with the number situated at the centre of the basal line, because, since all the other measurements, above and below, are perfectly symmetrical, in calculating the mean average they cancel out. There is still another centre corresponding to the mean: the *centre of density* of the individuals grouped there, because the maximum number corresponds to that measurement. Accordingly, if, for example, in place of half a million men whose measurements of stature, when placed in seriation, produced a perfect binomial curve, we had selected only ten men or even fewer from those corresponding to the median line; the general mean stature obtained from those half million men and that obtained from the ten individuals would be identical. For we would have selected *ten individuals* possessing that mean average stature which seems to represent a *biological* *tendency*, from which many persons deviate to a greater or less extent, as though they were erroneous, aberrant, for a great variety of causes; but these aberrant statures are still such that by their excess and their deficiency they perfectly compensate for each other; so that the mean average stature precisely reproduces this *tendency*, this centre actually attained by the maximum number of individuals. Supposing that we could see together all these individuals: those who belong at the centre being numerically most *prevalent*, will give a definite *intonation* to the whole mass. Anyone having an eye well trained to distinguish differences of stature could mentally separate those prevalent individuals and estimate them, saying that they are of *mean* *average stature*. This curve is the mathematical curve of errors; and it corresponds to that constructed upon the exponents of Newton's binomial theorem and to the calculation of *probability*. It corresponds to the curve of errors in mathematics: for example, to the errors committed in measuring a line; or in measuring the distance of a star, etc. Whoever takes measurements (we have already seen this in anthropometrical technique and in the calculation of personal error) commits errors, notwithstanding that the *object to be measured* and the individual making the measurements remain the same. But the most diverse causes; nerves, the weather, weariness, etc., causes not always determinable and perhaps actually more numerous than could be discovered or imagined, all have their share in producing errors of too much and too little, which are distributed in gradations around the real *measurement* of the object. But since among all these measurements taken in the same identical way we do not know which is the true one; the seriation of errors will reveal it to us, for it causes a maximum number of some one definite measurement (the true one) to fall in the centre of the aberrations that symmetrically grade off from the centre itself. Viola gives some very enlightening examples in regard to errors. Suppose, for instance, that an artist skilled in modeling wished to reproduce in plaster a number of copies of a leaf, which he has before his eyes as a model. The well-trained eye and hand will at one time cause him to take exactly the right quantity of plaster needed to reproduce the actual dimensions of the leaf; at another, on the contrary, he will take more and at another less than required. By measuring or superimposing the real leaf upon the plaster copies, the sculptor will be able to satisfy himself at once which of his copies have proved successful. But supposing, on the contrary, that the real leaf has disappeared and that a stranger wishes to discover from the plaster copies which ones faithfully reproduce the dimensions of the leaf? They will be those that are numerically most prevalent. The same thing holds true for any attempt whatever to attain a *predetermined object*. For example, shooting at a mark. A skilful marksman will place the maximum number of shots in the centre, or at points quite near to the centre; he will often go astray, but the number of errors will steadily decrease in proportion as the shots are more aberrant, *i.e.*, further from the centre. If a marksman wished to practise in like manner against some wall, for example, on which he has chosen a point that is not marked, and hence not recognisable by others, this point *thought* of by the marksman, may be determined by studying the cluster of shots left upon the wall. In the same way an observer could determine the hour fixed for a collective appointment, such as a walking trip, by the manner in which the various individuals arrive in groups; some one will come much ahead of time because he has finished some task which he had expected would keep him busy up to the hour of appointment; then in increasing numbers the persons who come a few minutes ahead of time because they are provident and prompt; then a great number of people who have calculated their affairs so well as to arrive precisely on time; a few minutes later come those who are naturally improvident and a little lazy; and lastly come the exceptional procrastinators who at the moment of setting forth were delayed by some unexpected occurrence. Causes of error in the individual and in the environment interfere in like manner with the astronomer who wishes to estimate the distance of the stars and it is necessary for him to repeat his measurements and calculations on the basis of those which show the greatest probability of being exact. Accordingly, such *distribution* of errors is *independent* of the causes which produce them and which, whatever they are, remain practically the same at any given time, and consequently produce constant effects and symmetrical errors; but it is dependent upon the fact of the existence of some pre-established thing (a measurement, the dimensions of an object to be copied, an appointed hour, the centre of a target, etc.). In short, whenever a *tendency* is established the *errors* group themselves around the objective point of this tendency. In the case of anthropometry, as for instance, in the curve of stature given above, we find that the resulting medial stature was *predetermined*, *e.g.*, *for a given race*; but many individuals, for various causes, either failed to attain it or surpassed it to a greater or less extent; and therefore in the course of their development they have acquired an erroneous stature. Consequently, this medial stature which still corresponds to the mean average of a very large number of persons, is the stature that is biographically pre-established, the normal stature of the race. If we select individuals presumably of the same race and in sound health, the serial curve of their statures ought to be very high and with a narrow base, because these individuals are *uniform*. When a binomial curve has a *very wide* basis of oscillations in measurements, it evidently contains elements that are not uniform; thus, for example, if we should measure the statures of men and women together, we should of course obtain a curve, but it would be very broad at the base and quite low at the centre of density; and a similar result would follow if we measured the statures of the rich and the poor without distinguishing between them. Since normal stature, including individual variations, has an exceedingly wide limit of oscillation (from 1.25 m. to 1.99 m.), if we should measure all the men on earth, we should obtain a very wide base for our binomial curve, which nevertheless would have a centre of density corresponding to the median line and to the general mean average. Now this mean stature, according to Quétélet, is the mean stature of the European; and it is that of the *medial man*. But if we should take the races separately, each one of them would have its own binomial curve, which would reveal the respective mean stature for each race. In the same way, if we took the complex curve of all the individuals of a single race, and separated the men from the women, the two resulting groups would reveal the *mean average male stature* and the *mean average female stature* of the race in question. An analogous result would follow if we separated the poor from the rich, etc. Every time that we draw new distinctions, the base of the curves, or in other words the limits of oscillation of measurements, will contract, and the *centre of density* will rise; while the intermediate gradations (due, for example, to the intermixture of tall women and short men; or to the overlapping standards of stature of various kindred races, etc.), will diminish. In short, if we construct the binomial curve from individuals who are uniform in sex, race, age, health, etc., it not only remains symmetrical around a centre but the eccentric progression of its groups is steadily determined in closer accordance with the order and progression of the exponents Of Newton's binomial. However, a *symmetrical grading off* from the centre is not the same thing as a symmetrical grading off from the centre *in a predetermined* *mode*, *i.e.*, that of the binomial exponents. The binomial symmetry is obtained through calculations of mathematical combinations. Now, if the *fact* of the centrality of a prevailing measurement is to be proved in relation to the predetermination of the measurement itself: for example, in regard to *racial heredity*, and hence is a fact that reveals *normality*, the manner of distribution of errors—namely, in accordance with calculations of *probability*—might very well be explained by Mendel's laws of heredity, which serve precisely to show how the prevailing characteristics are distributed according to the mathematical calculation of probabilities. Accordingly, the *normal characteristic of race* would coincide with the dominant characteristic of Mendel's hereditary powers. The characteristic which has been shown as the stronger and more potent is victorious over the recessive characteristics that are latent in the germ. Meanwhile, however, there are various errors which, artificially or pathologically, cause a characteristic, which would naturally have been recessive, to become dominant, or, in other words, most prevalent.  Fig. 157.—The shaded portion represents the eccentricity of the curve, due to the presence of cretins. Whenever a binomial curve constructed from a large number of individuals is found to be eccentric; and shows, *e.g.*, in the case of stature, a deviation toward the low statures, it reveals (see De Helguero's curves) the presence of a heterogeneous intermixture of subjects, for example, of children among adults, or, as in the case demonstrated by De Helguero, an intermixture of *pathological individuals* with normal persons (Fig. 157). The binomial curve obtained by De Helguero from the inhabitants of Piedmont included, as a matter of fact, a great number of *cretins*; they formed within the great normal mass of men, a little mass of individuals having a stature notably inferior to the normal. By correcting the eccentric curve on the left of the accompanying figure, and by tracing a dotted line equal and symmetrical to the right side, we obtain a normal binomial curve; well, this curve will actually be reproduced if we subtract all the cretins from the whole mass of individuals. The section distinguished by parallel lines represents that portion of the curve which departs from the normal toward the low statures, and is due to the cretins; it may be transformed into a small dotted binomial curve at the base, which is constructed from the statures of the cretins alone. Accordingly, the symmetrical binomial curve gives us a *mean* *average value* in relation to a specified measurement. What has been said regarding stature serves as an example; but it may be repeated for *all the anthropometric measurements*, as Viola has proved by actual experiment. The sitting stature, the thoracic perimeter, the dimensions of an entire limb or of each and every segment of it; every particular which it has seemed worth while to take into consideration, comports itself in the same manner; and this is also true of all the measurements of the head and face. That is to say, if we make a seriation of measurements relating to the sitting stature of an indeterminate number of individuals, we find a numerical prevalence of those corresponding to the medial measurement marked upon the axis of the abscissæ; and the number of individuals will continue to decrease with perceptible symmetry on each side of the centre, *i.e.*, toward the higher and lower statures. If we take into consideration the significance of the sitting stature, this binomial curve relates to individuals who possess a normal physiological mass (the bust; centre of density) and to individuals who fall below or exceed that mass. We have already, in speaking of the types of stature, taken the bust under consideration in relation to the limbs, in order to judge the more or less favourable reciprocal development; but here we obtain an *absolute datum of normality*, independent of proportional relations to the body as a whole; *in other words, there* *exists a physiological mass* for the human body which is *normal* in itself. The individuals whose sitting stature corresponds to the medial measure of the binomial curve, are precisely those who have the normal development of bust. The same thing repeats itself in the case of the thoracic perimeter, or the weight, or the length of the leg, or the cranial circumference, etc. Hence we have a means of obtaining the *normal medial measurements* by the seriation of a number of measurements actually obtained from living individuals the number of whom should be sufficiently large to enable us to construct a perceptibly symmetrical and regular binomial curve. Such medial measurements, although they correspond to the true mean average (as we have already seen), are not for this reason *unreal*, like arithmetical means which represent a synthetic entirety that does not correspond to the single individuals actually existing; the medial measurements obtained by seriation are, on the contrary, measurements that really belong to living individuals; namely, to that group of individuals that possess this particular measurement. Therefore, it is not a combination, or fusion, or abstraction. --- But individuals who have one medial measurement, do not necessarily have all the other medial measurements; that is to say, the individuals who find that they belong on the medial abscissæ in relation to stature, do not find themselves similarly placed in relation to the sitting stature, or the thoracic perimeter, or the weight, or the cranial circumference, etc. Indeed, it is *impossible* that all the bodily measurements of the same individual should be *medial measurements*: or, to express it better, there has not been found up to the present among living individuals, in the whole wide world, a man so constructed. Such a man would represent anthropologically the *medial man*. It is also very rare to find a man quite lacking in medial measurements: everyone has a few central measurements and certain others that are eccentric. At the same time it must be admitted that there are men who have many, and even a large majority, of the central measurements; while the rest of their measurements are eccentric or paracentral. One of the objections which used to be made was that if we should wish to unite all the medial measurements, they would not fit together, or rather, that a man could not be constructed from them; but that the result would be a monstrosity. Nevertheless, this assertion or objection has proved to be absolutely fantastic and contrary to the actual fact. Professor Viola has observed that men who have a very large number of medial measurements are singularly *handsome*. More than that: the medial man reconstructed from medial measurements really gathered from living persons, has the identical proportions of the famous statues of Greek art. Here, for example, in Figs. 158 and 159, facing page ([464](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46643/46643-h/46643-h.htm#Page_464)), we have the medial man and the Apollo; even to the eye of the observer, they show a marked similarity in proportions. The medial man is very nearly the portrait of an exceedingly handsome young Roman, studied by Viola; this person possessed a great majority of the mean average measurements; but some of his measurements did not correspond to the normal averages, and accordingly Viola had them corrected by an artist under the guidance of anthropological biometry; and the figure thus corrected is represented in the drawing here given. Well, this drawing corresponds perfectly to the proportions of the Apollo. Consequently, the mean average measurements do not pass unnoticed; it is not alone the anthropological instrument or mathematical reconstruction that reveals them; when presented to the eye of the intelligent man, they *notify him that* they exist, they arouse in him an *æsthetic emotion*, they give him the alluring impression of the *beautiful*. When the mean average measurements are found accumulated in large numbers in the same person, they render that person the centre of a mysterious fascination, the admiration of all other men. Now, this coincidence of the *beautiful* with the average is equivalent to a coincidence of the beautiful with *normality*. "This unforeseen demonstration," says Viola, "throws a vivid light upon the hitherto obscure problem of the æsthetic sense.... If a man evolves according to normal laws, his proportions arouse an exceptional æsthetic enjoyment." Anyone having an eye trained to recognise the *beautiful*, is able through his æsthetic sensations, to pick out *normality* from the great crowd of biological errors, which is precisely what the scientist does with great weariness of measurements and calculations. In fact, the great artists recognise the *beautiful parts* of a number of beautiful individuals, and they unite them all together in a single work of art. The Greeks did this, they reconstructed the medial man, on a basis of actual observation, and by extracting all the normalities, all the measurements most prevalent in individuals, and forming from them a single ideal man. The Greek artists were observers; we might call them the positivists in art. Their art is supreme and immortal, because they simultaneously interpreted what is *beautiful* and what is *true* in life. In short, medial measurements are true measurements, actually existing in individuals. No one can acquire a true æsthetic taste by contemplating works of art. The æsthetic sense is trained and refined by observing the truth in nature and by learning to separate instinctively the normal from the erroneous. No other form of art reproduces the *subject* so faithfully as the Greek; medieval and modern artists have incarnated their own personal inspiration, without training themselves to that accurate observation which refines the sense of the *beautiful*, when we are in the presence of the *truth*, represented by normality, which is the triumph of life. Accordingly, we may reconstruct the *medial man* from the truth as found in nature. Within the wide scale of individual variations we pass from men possessing few medial measurements (ugly men) to men possessing many of them (handsome men), and even a majority of such measurements (extremely handsome). Our sensation in the presence of the ugly man is repulsion, *biological* *pain*; in the presence of the handsome man we feel an æsthetic contentment, *biological pleasure*. In this way we take part in the mysterious failures and triumphs of nature, as children in the great family of life. Now, as Viola says, the individual variations that group themselves symmetrically around the medial measurement may be divided into *groups* or *types*, *e.g.*, central, paracentral and eccentric, both above and below the mean.[\[49\]](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46643/46643-h/46643-h.htm#Footnote_49_49) Such types are considered by Viola chiefly from the *pathological* point of view, or rather, that of the *physical constitution* and relative predisposition to disease. It is only the central type that has such perfect harmony of parts as to embody the perfection of strength and physical health; as the type diverges from the centre, it steadily loses its power of resistance and becomes less capable of realising a long life.  Fig. 158.—Viola's medial man.  Fig. 159.—Apollo. Since the measurements are extremely numerous, it is necessary, in order to proceed to a separation of types, to select some one measurement to be regarded as fundamental, and in respect to which all others have a secondary importance; and such a measurement is found in the one which is associated with the development of the physiological man; namely, the *sitting stature*. In the centre there is the medial measurement; little by little, as we withdraw from the centre, we approach on the one side toward macroscelia and on the other side toward brachyscelia. It is possible to determine to within a millimetre the *normality* of any measurement whatever. When this fundamental datum has once been accepted as a *basis* for the construction of *types*, let us assume that we next add another and secondary measurement; for instance, that of the lower limbs. By the method of seriation we obtain a measurement that is *absolutely normal when considered by itself*; it is the central measurement. A perfectly formed and healthy man ought to possess both the medial sitting stature and the medial length of lower limbs; in actual cases, however, it is difficult to find so favourable a union, and the two series of measurements *combine* in various ways; showing a tendency, however, to unite in such a way that a short bust goes with long legs, and *vice* *versa*. The degree to which this rule is carried out produces two types that steadily tend to become more eccentric; they are the macroscelous and brachyscelous types, or, as De Giovanni calls them, *morphological combinations*. We have only to calculate the *type of stature*, and that also groups itself according to the binomial curve; and thus gives us a gradation of the *combinations of parts*. Viola notes that the paracentral individuals show characteristics quite different from those of the eccentrics; their constitution is more favourable, and they differ in respect to their characteristic proportions between thorax and abdomen, and in certain other physiological particulars that are of pathological importance. In this way a *method* has been built up for determining mathematically the one absolute normality; as well as the anomalies in all their infinite variety, which may, however, be regrouped under *types*, on the basis of their eccentricities. Here then we have, thanks to Viola, and under the guidance of the glorious school of De Giovanni, a pathway indicated, that is exceedingly rich in its opportunities for research, and that may advance the importance of anthropometry side by side with that of biometry, the development of which is to-day so earnestly pursued, especially in England. --- One of the objections which may be raised to the theory of the medial man is that there cannot be any one perfect, human model because of the diverse races of mankind, each with its own established biological characteristics. For instance, I believe that I have proved that what we consider as *beautiful* is distributed among *different races*; in other words, perfect beauty of all the separate parts of the body is never found united in any one race, any more than it is in any one person. The women of Latium who are dark and dolichocephalic have most beautiful faces, but their hands and feet are imperfect; the brachycephalic blondes, on the contrary, are coarse-featured, while their hands and feet are extremely beautiful. The same may be said regarding their breasts and certain other details. Furthermore, the stature of the dolichocephalics is too low as compared with what is shown to be the *average stature*, while the brachycephalics are similarly too tall. Nevertheless, it is *extremely* *difficult* to discover racial types of such comparative purity as to establish these differences: it was by a lucky chance that I succeeded in tracing out, at Castelli Romani and at Orte, certain groups of the races that were very nearly pure. The rest of the population are, for the most part, hybrids showing a confused intermingling of characteristics. In fact, pure *types of race* no longer exist, least of all where civilisation is most intense. In order to speak of *types of race*, it is necessary to go among barbaric tribes; and even this is a relative matter, because all the races on earth are more or less the result of intermixture. Yet in civilised countries an occasional group of pure racial stock may be discovered in isolated localities, as though they had found refuge, so to speak, from the vortex of civilisation which is engulfing the races. Throughout the history of humanity we may watch this absorption of racial and morphological characteristics, and the formation of more and more intimate intermixtures, leading to the final disappearance of the original *types of* *race*. When a primitive race emigrated, when men crossed over from Africa to the European coast of the Mediterranean, or Aryans from oriental Asia traversed the mountains and steppes of Russia and the Balkan countries, they were on their way to conquer territory and to subjugate peoples, but they were also on their way to lose their own type, the characteristics of their race. Yet even this sacrifice of *race* was not without compensation: indeed, it seems as though the *race* loses through hybridism a large part of its *ugly* characteristics, but retains and transmits for the most part the characteristics that are pleasing. Unquestionably, the more civilised peoples are better looking than the barbarians, although the history of emigration would seem to indicate an almost common racial origin. When we remember that in human hybridism the result is not always a true and complete *fusion* of characteristics, but for the most part an intermixture of them—so that, for example, the hybrid has the type of cranium belonging to one race, and the stature belonging to another race—we have the explanation of the fact that throughout thousands of years certain morphological characteristics have remained fixed, to such an extent as to permit anthropologists to use them as a basis upon which to trace out the origins of races. But these characteristics, while fixed in themselves, are *interchanged* among individual hybrids, who form more or less felicitous *combinations* of characteristics belonging to several races. When we recall what was said in this regard concerning heredity (general biological section) it is necessary to conclude that Mendel's law must be invoked to explain the phenomenon. Human hybridism, like all hybridism throughout the whole biological field, falls under this law. But there is still another phenomenon that should be noted: civilised men, who are the most hybrid of all hybrids upon earth, have formed a *new type* that is almost unique, the *civilised race*, in which one and all resemble one another. It is only logical to believe that, in proportion as facilities of travel become easier and intermarriage between foreign countries more widespread, it will become less and less easy to distinguish the Englishman from the Frenchman, or the Russian or the Italian; provided that the various hybridisms in the respective countries have developed an almost uniform local type, so that the general characteristics of French hybridism may be distinguished from those of English hybridism, etc. Even these local hybrid types, determining, as it were, the physiognomy of a people, will disappear when Europe finally becomes a single country for civilised man. In short, we are spectators of this tendency: a fusion or intermixture of characteristics that is tending to establish one single human type, which is no longer an original racial type, but the *type of civilisation*. It is the unique race, the *resultant human* *race*, the product of the fusion of races and the triumph of all the elements of beauty over the disappearance of those ugly forms which were characteristic of primitive races. Are the dominant forces in the human germinative cells those which bring a contribution of beauty? One would say "yes," on the strength of the morphological history of humanity. There is no intention of implying by this that humanity is tending toward the incarnation of perfectly beautiful human beings, all identical in their beauty; but they will be harmonious in those skeletal proportions that will insure perfect functional action of their organism. Harmony is fundamental; the soft tissues, the colour of hair and eyes, may upon this foundation give us an infinite *variety* of beauty. "Even in music," says Viola, "so long as the laws of harmony are respected, there are possibilities of melodic thoughts of infinite beauty in gradation and variety; but the first condition is that the aforesaid laws shall be respected." The soft and plastic tissues are like a *garment* which may be infinitely varied: because life is richer in normal forms than in abnormal; richer in triumphs than in failures; and hence more impressive in the varieties of its beauties than in its monstrosities. Such philosophic concepts of the *medial man* are exceedingly fertile in moral significance. The ugly and imperfect races have gone on through wars, conquests, intellectual and civil advancement unconsciously preparing new intermarriages and higher forms of love, which eliminated all that is harsh and inharmonic, in order to achieve the triumph of human beauty. In fact, quite aside from the heroic deeds of man, the constructor of civilisation, we are witnessing the coming of the unique man, the man of perfect beauty, such as Phidias visioned in a paroxysm of æsthetic emotion. A living man who incarnates supreme beauty, supreme health, supreme strength: almost as though it were Christ himself whom humanity was striving to emulate, through a most intimate brotherhood of all the peoples on earth. --- On the analogy of the medial morphological man, Quétélet also conceived of the *medial intellectual man* and the *medial moral* *man*. The medial intellectual man is closely bound to the thoughts of his century; he incarnates the prevailing ideas of his time; he vibrates in response to the majority. He is to his nation and century, says Quétélet, "what the centre of gravity is to the body—namely, the one thing to be taken into consideration in order to understand the phenomena of equilibrium and movement." Considered from the ideal side, the medial man ought to centralise in himself and keep in equilibrium the movement of thought of his period, giving it harmonic form, in works of art or of science. And it is the capacity for accomplishing this work of synthesis that constitutes the *inborn quality* in the man of genius. He does not create; he reassembles in one organism the *scattered* *members*, the medial vibrations of the crowd; he feels and expresses all that is new and beautiful and great that is in process of formation in the men who surround him, who are frequently unconscious of the beauty which is in them, just as they are unconscious of having those normal predetermined measurements of their bodies. But whenever they discover in a creation of thought *something of themselves*, they are stirred to enthusiasm at recognising this something belonging to them as forming part of a harmonious whole: and they applaud the work of art or of science which has stirred their enthusiasm. The medial intellectual man who has produced it is a beneficent genius to humanity because he aids its upward progress by appealing to the better part in each individual. Now, there has never existed a medial intellectual man who sums up all the thought of his time: just as there does not exist a living man so beautiful as to incarnate all the medial measurements. But the man of genius is he who does embody the greater part of such ideas: and he produces a masterpiece when he succeeds in shedding his own individuality in order to assume what is given him from without. Goethe said that it was not he who composed *Faust*, but a spirit which invaded him. And the same thought is expressed in the autobiographies of many men of genius. A well-known writer told me that it sometimes happened to him, while he was writing, to forget himself completely; at such times he no longer wrote the truth as he saw and felt it consciously, but transmitted pure and unforeseen inspiration. Such portions, said this author, are judged by the public as containing the greatest degree of beauty and truth. When a great orator thrills a crowd, he certainly does nothing more than repeat what is already in the thoughts of each member of that crowd; every individual present had, as it were, in his subconsciousness, the same thought that is expressed by the orator, which was taking form within him but had not yet *matured* and which he would not have had the knowledge or the ability to express. The orator, as it were, matures and extracts from him that new thought which was taking shape within him; his better part, which after light is shed upon it will have the power to elevate him. But no orator could ever persuade a crowd with ideas that do not already exist in that crowd, and which consequently, are not part of the truth of their age. The orator is like the centre of gravity, inasmuch as he gives form and equilibrium to the scattered and timid thought of the crowd. Carducci[\[50\]](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46643/46643-h/46643-h.htm#Footnote_50_50) says "the art of the lyric poet consists in this: to express what is common to all in the form in which he has created it anew and specially in his mind; or rather to give to the thought which is peculiar to himself an imprint of universal understanding, so that each one looking into it may recognise himself." --- When we think of the brilliant concept of the medial man, we behold a fundamental and profound principle: the necessity of hybridism and consequently of a profound intermixture of races; all of which goes side by side with the spread of civilisation, and the increased facilities of traveling and of communication between different communities. Connected with these material advantages is the moral progress which leads to a realisation of perfect brotherhood between men that is rendered steadily more possible by environment, and is sanctioned little by little by laws and customs; whereas at the start it was only an ethical or mystical theory. While the physical formations of the races are becoming merged, the racial customs are also blending and disappearing in a single civilisation, in one sole form of thought. If, at one time, the powerful race was the one united to its territory, faithful to its customs, adhering to its moral code and its religion, all this melts away in the presence of universal hybridism which actually means the birth of a new generation of men and a new outlook upon life. When we contemplate the morphologically medial man, he seems to stand as a symbol of unlimited universal progress. His realisation seems to demand very lofty standards of morality and civilisation. Whereas, on the contrary, the survival of types and of customs and sentiments peculiar to separate races, is the expression of local conditions that are inferior both in morality and in civil progress. As for the innumerable *paracentral errors* which form to-day a large proportion of individual varieties, they are due directly to the imperfection of the environment, which does not permit of the natural development of human life, and consequently interferes through a wide range of methods and degrees with the development of ideal normality. Hence, the extreme eccentric errors are the consequence of diseases and far-reaching social imperfections which lead to genuine deviations from the normal, including *pathological* and *degenerate malformations*, and associated with them the lowest forms of individual degradation, both intellectual and moral. All the paracentral errors and malformations are a physical burden which retards the perfectionment of man. Admitting that hybridism will eventually result in complete beauty, it will be greatly delayed in its attainment through the accumulation of errors that surround the characteristics of race. They form a heavy ballast, if the phrase may be permitted, that impedes the progress of its ascension. Consequently, the long awaited social progress which is gradually bringing about the "brotherhood of man" is not in itself sufficient for the attainment of the ideal mean. There are certain errors that must more or less necessarily be encountered along the pathway of humanity; and that act either directly or indirectly upon posterity, deforming and destroying its resistance to life; and it is these that must be taken under consideration, because they delay the normal progress of human society. They are conscious and well recognised errors; hence up to a certain point the *active* agency of man may combat them and succeed little by little in mitigating them and overcoming their disastrous influence upon biological humanity. There are, in general, two influences developing and promoting that improvement which leads toward the *medial man*: in proportion as the real and practical intermarriage of races approaches its realisation, social errors diminish; and as the brotherhood of humanity is promoted, it leads to social reforms by which the "sins of the world" are little by little overcome. But these may also be *actively* combated; and in this direction education has a task of inestimable importance to civilisation. We ought to know not only the thought of our century, which is the luminous torch in the light of which we advance along the path of progress; but also the *moral needs* of our time, and the errors which may be conquered through our conscious agency. To know "the faults of our century," which are destined to be conquered in the coming century, and to make preparation for the victory—such is our moral mission. The ethical movement of human society has continued to advance from conquest to conquest, and in looking backward the more civilised part of mankind have been horrified at the conditions that have been outgrown and have called them "barbarous." Thus, for example, slavery was an unsurmountable obstacle to progress, and had to be crushed out by civilisation; the license to *kill* is also a form of barbarism which to-day we are boasting of having just outgrown—or, at least, of having reached the final limit of its duration. In early times it was not only permissible to kill, but in many of its forms murder was considered honourable, as, for instance, in wars and in duels; it was also one form of justice to kill for vengeance, either social or individual; the condemnation to death of a criminal, the murder of an adulterous wife, the murder of anyone who has attacked the *honour* of the family, all this seemed just in the past. Lastly, murder was committed for pure diversion, as in the auto-da-fè and in the games of the circus. Our civic morality seems to have attained its extreme altitude in having sanctioned the inviolability of human life; and the present-day struggle against the death penalty, against war, against revolutions, against uxoricide, in the case of adultery, and against duelling, shows us the triumph of a new and loftier conception of humanity in the upward progress of man. The intermixture of races and the intermingling of national interests, have aroused a sort of collective sentiment actually existing as a normal form of conscience, namely, "human solidarity." But we are still in a state of complete *barbarity*, still sunk in the most profound unconsciousness, all of us partners in the same great sin that threatens the overthrow of so-called civilised humanity; namely, *barbarity toward the species*. We are ignorant, we are almost strangers, in regard to our *responsibility* toward those who are destined to issue from us as the continuation of humanity downward through the centuries; those who form the ultimate scope of our biological existence, inasmuch as each one of us is merely a connecting link between certain portions of past and future life. We are all so engrossed with the progress of our environment and of the ideas embodied in it, that we have not yet turned our attention inward toward ourselves: toward *life*. This solidarity which we recognise as existing among men at the present moment, ought to be extended to the men of the future. And since the species is closely bound up in the individual who is destined to reproduce it, this gives us at once the basis for a code of *individual moral conduct*, such as would assure to everyone the integrity of the fruit of his own reproduction. Sexual immorality which is the stigma of the barbarity of our times, entails the most ignominious form of slavery; the slavery of women through prostitution. And emanating from this form of barbarity, the slavery has expanded and spread to all women, more or less oppressive, more or less conscious. The wife is a slave, for she has married in ignorance and has neither the knowledge nor the power to avoid being made the instrument for the birth of weakly, diseased or degenerate children; and still more deeply enslaved is the mother who cannot restrain her own son from degradations that she knows are the probable source of ruin of body and soul. We are all silently engaged in an enormous crime against the species and against humanity; and like accomplices we have made a tacit agreement not to speak of it. Indeed, the mysterious silence regarding sexual life is absolute; it is as though we feared to compromise ourselves in the sight of that great and powerful judge, our own posterity; we hide under an equal silence the good and the bad in relation to sexual life. This sort of terror goes by the name of shame and modesty. Such an excuse for silence certainly sounds like pure irony, coming as it does in the full midst of the orgy, at a time when we all know that every man is laden with his sins, and that we are all either accomplices or slaves in the common fault. It would seem that a race so modest as to blush at the mere mention of sexual life ought to be eminently chaste, and far removed from the age of foundling asylums and houses of ill fame; the age in which infanticide exists as proof of absolute impunity in regard to sexual crimes. What we call shame and modesty, is in reality not shame or modesty in regard to sexual acts and phenomena, but only in regard to sins against them. These acts and phenomena, being directly related to creation and the eternity of the species, ought to be regarded by men as in the nature of a lofty religious culte, equally, for instance, with that which from the earliest prehistoric times placed the symbol of maternity, *the mother and the child*, side by side with the *scythe*, symbol of labour, in places of worship. We cannot admit that *love*, sung by the poets as a divine sentiment, is the moral exponent of unworthy and shameful acts. It is the error, the perversion of sexual life, the source of degeneration, of degradation and of the death of the species, that makes us keep silent, conceal and blush with shame. In reality, all this ought to stir us, not to embarrassment and shame, but to a formidable rebellion, a sharp awakening of conscience, a redemption from a state of inferior civilisation. It was a barbarous sovereign who, in the delusive hope that it would cure him of eczema, caused the throats of little children to be cut, so that he might immerse himself in the warm bath of their blood. To-day anyone who would sacrifice the lives of children to allay the itching of his own skin, would be in our eyes a monster of criminality. And yet almost equally criminal are the men of our time, lords, in a barbaric sense, of sexual life; and we silently acquiesce in customs which in the future centuries will perhaps be remembered as a monstrous barbarism. The whole moral revival which awaits us, revolves around the struggle against the sexual sins. The emancipation of woman, the protection of maternity and of the child, are its most luminous exponents; but no less efficacious evidences of such progress are all the efforts directed against alcoholism and the other vices and diseases which are reflected in their unhappy consequences to posterity. There is just one side of the question that has hitherto been scarcely touched at all, and that is the chastity of man and his responsibility as a father; but even this has already come to be felt as an imperative necessity for progress. In place of reducing other human beings to slavery and prostituting them; instead of betraying them and shattering their lives by seduction and the desertion of their offspring, the man of the future will choose to *become chaste*. He will feel that otherwise he is dishonoured, morally lost. Man will not be willing to be so weak as to confess himself dragged down to degradation and crime because unable to conquer his own instincts; man who has nothing but victories on the credit side of his history, and who even succeeded in overcoming the greatest of all his irresistible instincts, that of self-preservation, in showing himself capable of going into combat and dying for the ideals of his fatherland. Man is capable of every great heroism; it was man who found a means of conquering the formidable obstacles of his environment, establishing himself lord of the earth, and laying the foundations of civilisation. He will also teach himself to be chaste, within sufficiently narrow limits to guarantee the dignity of the human race and the health of the species; and in this way he will prescribe the ethics for the centuries of the near future: *sexual* *morality*. There are customs and virtues, lofty ethical doctrines that stand in direct accord with the conservation and the progress of life. Bodily cleanliness, temperance in drink, the conquest of personal instincts, human brotherhood in the full extent of the thought, the feeling, and the practice, chastity; all these are just so many forms of the defense of life, both of the individual and of the species. To-day, in hygiene, in pathology and in anthropology, science is showing us the truth through positive proofs, through experiments and statistics. But these virtues which are paths leading to *life*, are simply being reconfirmed by science; just as they are being little by little attained by civil progress, which prepares their practical elements; but they were always intuitively recognised by the human heart: nothing is older in the ethics of mankind than the principal of brotherhood, of victory over the instincts, of chastity. Only, these virtues, *intuitively perceived*, could not be universally *practised*, because universal practice demanded time for preparation. But they survived partly as affirmations of absolute virtue and partly as *prophesies* of a future age and were considered as constituting the *highest* good. Just as the æsthetic sense led to the recognition of *normality* at a time when this scientific concept was very far from being understood as it is to-day; in the same way the ethical and religious sense was able to feel intuitively and to separate from customs and from sentiments belonging to an evanescent form of transitory civilisation or from the temporary racial needs, those others that relate fundamentally to the biological preservation of the individual and the species and the practical attainment of human perfection. And while the medial intellectual man or the artistic genius combines wholly or in part the thoughts of his time, the medial moral or religious man sums up the guiding principles of life which everyone feels profoundly in the depth of his heart; and when he speaks to other men it seems as though he instilled new vigour into the very roots of their existence, and he is believed, when he speaks of a happier future toward which humanity is advancing. If the intellectual genius is almost a reader of contemporaneous thought as it vibrates around him, the religious genius interprets more or less completely and perfectly the universal and eternal spirit of life in humanity. Accordingly, the medial men incarnate the *beautiful*, the *true*, and the *good*: in other words, the theories of positivism arrive at the selfsame goals as idealism, those of poetry, philosophy and art. By following the path of observation, we reach a goal analogous to that sought along the path of intuition. The theory of the medial man constructed fundamentally upon positive bases of *measurements* and *facts*, represents the limit[\[51\]](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46643/46643-h/46643-h.htm#Footnote_51_51) of perfection of the human individual associated with the limit of perfection of *human society*, which is formed in a two-fold way: a close association between all human beings, or the formation of a true social organism (complete hybridism in body; human brotherhood in sentiment), and the steadily progressive emancipation, of every individual member from anxiety concerning the *defense of life*, in order to enjoy the triumph of the *development of* *life*. All that was formerly included under *defense* will assume collective forms of a high order (repressive justice replaced by more varied forms of prevention: which have for their final goal a widespread education and a gradual amelioration of labour and social conditions); and in this *reign of peace* there will arise the possibility *of developing all* the forces of life (biological liberty). In such a conception, the individual organism depends more and more upon the social organism: just as the cells depend upon the multicellular organism; and we may almost conceive of a new living entity, a *super-organism* made up of humanity, but in which every component part is allowed the maximum expansion of its personal activity emancipated from all the obstacles that have been successively overcome. This conception of *biological* *liberty*, in other words, the triumph of the free and peaceful development of life, through the long series of more or less bitter *struggles and defenses of life*, constitutes, in my opinion, the very essence of the new pedagogy. And the evolution of modern thought and of the social environment can alone prepare for its advent, perhaps at no distant day. --- FOOTNOTES: [\[49\]](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46643/46643-h/46643-h.htm#FNanchor_49_49)Viola, *The Laws of Morphological Correlation of the Individual Types*. [\[50\]](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46643/46643-h/46643-h.htm#FNanchor_50_50)Cited by Viola. [\[51\]](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46643/46643-h/46643-h.htm#FNanchor_51_51)Limit, in the mathematical sense. ---