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��416 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s. f 1, 1899
ure of these laws of lower life has led to the inquiry, by Powell and others, whether they are not annulled by higher laws per- taining to the genus Homo in his demotic attributes. The in- quiry is made pertinent when certain human characters which manifestly reflect demotic functions are noted — e. g., the organs of speech, which are highly differentiated among the better races and in the more advanced culture-grades, much cruder in the lower races and in primitive culture, and but rudimentary in sub- human animals. The inquirer soon finds a clue in the specific modification of hands, fingers, arms, and other organs connected with special occupations, particularly when hereditary, for the numberless facts of such experience show that the somatikos is susceptible of reshapement through exercise — and the suggestion has been actually applied by intelligent leaders of gymnasia who habitually reshape the bodies of their pupils to their liking by carefully devised courses of exercise. These and other experi- ences seem to show that the reconstructive forces in effect since man became human are the demotic activities, and that the efficiency of these forces in the reconstruction of the somatikos is proportional to the intensity of the activity at the time of action. The black- smith develops muscle and bone, not in sleep or noonday idle- ness, not even in waiting by the forge for the iron to heat, but in the actual exercise of forging, and, in some obscure way, the frequent alternation between vigorous effort and complete rest harmonizes with the rhythm of the organism and renders the ex- ercise peculiarly constructive ; so, too, the soldier coordinates body and mind and attains his peculiar powers, not by resting or reading tactics, but by supreme action, the action first of simu- lated and then of real strife. It is the lesson of experience — even though quantitative data are lacking — that the efficiency of the human activities increases in more than an arithmetic ratio with the intensity of the action: the poem written in an hour may consume the stored-up energy of a month, the noble paint- ing is the product of inspiration, the great invention is the
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