THE DESCENT OF MAN.

 A New Theory.

"The Mongol in Our Midst," by F. G. Crookshank. M.D., F.R.C.P., published by E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, is the third book in the "To-day and To-morrow" series of scientific monographs, from which we have come to expect some very daring and interesting speculations. The first was Professor J. B. S. Haldane's "Baealus," (says Burton Rascoe in the New York Herald Tribune"), wherein he envisaged a near-future when the population will be regulated by the manufacture of babies by ectogenesis, life will be entirely urban, all foods will be synthetic, and mankind will derive its heat, light and power from the wind. The second book "Icarus," by Bertrand Russell, the mathematician and moral philosopher, foretold cruel wars of competition and aggression until the United States of America will have controlled all the sources of economic power and laid the beginning of World State, which would be tyrannical at first and later establish international peace and liberal government.

 Very much as if he had felt called upon to go his predecessors in the series one better, Dr. Crookshank has written a book of a highly revolutionary character. True or false, it has vast anthropological, medical, biological and social significance, for the reason that Dr. Crookshank's eminence in his profession is such that his theories cannot be ignored, but must neither be accepted in part or in toto nor refused in part or in toto.

 White, Black, and Yellow Races. 

As a matter of general interest, it is probably important first to report that the book not only completely demolishes the notorious Lothrop-Stoddard-Madison theory of the superiority of the "Nordic blonds" but also turns the tables on the "Nordic" contenders with a vengeance. The smooth, dry, white, or sallow skin, straight, blond hair egg shaped cranial vaults and brachycephalic skulls which the Messrs. Stoddard and Grant would have us believe set the "Nordic" apart as superior being are really, according to Dr Crookshank, the stigmata of imbecility. Indeed, he quotes Dr. Reginald Langdon-Down and other members of the British Royal Society of Medicine in support of his contention that the only observed and recorded imbeciles have invariably revealed some of those identifying characteristics. There have been no recorded cases of Jewish imbeciles derived from unmixed Semitic stock. Atavism and degeneracy in the Semitic race, he contends, takes another form. That these men have no prepossessions or prejudices in the matter is obvious from the fact that they are themselves "Nordic."

 The hypotheses established by Dr. Crookshank and bulwarked by an impressive array of biological data are these:—There are three irreducible stocks in the human race—the white, black, and yellow. These are offshoots from three different stocks of primates, which also separately gave off the three different types of the great ape—the chimpanzee, the gorilla, and the orang-utan. The white race corresponds to and is descended from the same stock as the chimpanzee; the black race and the gorilla are from the same stock, and the yellow race is blood cousin to the orang-utan. The chimpanzee-white stock is highest in the scale of development: the gorilla-black stock is the lowest, and the orang-utan-yellow is intermediary. The chimpanzee-white stock includes the Semitic races and the so-called Indo-Aryans and so-called Caucasians. The Gorilla-black stock includes the negroes, bushmen, and Hottentots. The orang-utan-yellow stock includes the Chinese peoples, Siberians, Japanese, Eskimos, Malays, and Southern Mongols; and the North and South American Indians.

 The Mongol Type.

 The methods whereby he arrived at these conclusions are curious and intricate. In the first place, Robert Chambers, a precursor of Darwin, in 1844 had separated the human species into three divisions in a scale of development, putting the white race first, the yellow second, and the black third. Like the Fundamentalists, Chambers believed that the three races had derived from one primary human stock, but, unlike those who trace the three divisions back to the sons of Noah, he believed that the white race had developed through stages still represented by the yellow and black races. Chambers' monophyletic theory of the origins of the human race was outmoded, but in supporting it he compared the black race to the Caucasian foetus, the yellow race to the new-born infant and the white race to adult man, but, more importantly, he alleged that "parents too nearly related tend to produce offspring of the Mongolian type—that is, persons who in maturity still are a kind of children."

 The second factor in Dr. Crookshank's deductions was the discovery by Dr. Langdon-Down, a distinguished physician in London Hospital, that the majority of congenital idiots which had come under his observation possessed marked resemblances to racial Mongols. Dr. Langdon-Down's minute description of the Mongol type of imbecile gave currency to the descriptive "'Mongol imbecile" which is employed in hospitals for children and in asylums.

 The next point in Dr. Crookshank's deductions was his own observation of the high frequency among the English, French, and other peoples of Western Europe of persons who display the physical characteristics of the Mongolian races. "Adult Mongoloids are in England more numerous than might be thought," he writes, "and many sub-types may be distinguished. Roughly speaking, there is a high and a low grade. The low-grade individuals, who have almost always some simian stigmata rank among life's failures. A criminal doctor, a bankrupt parson or a more than commonly knavish solicitor is not infrequently of this class. The women are ineffectual persons, even in vice. Superficially attractive when young, after middle life they become myxoedematous, while their male homologues degenerate into paunchiness. Many such may be even in the shabby-genteel suburbs and in the country courts. Micawber was one of them and Dickens' description with Phiz's etchings serve well to illustrate one kind thereof. And again: "Mongoloids of the higher grade sometimes achieve marked success on the stage, in the professions, and even in Parliament. But they remain, in a very real sense, a race apart. For better or for worse, they are not quite as other men or women around them. They are, indeed, Mongols expatriate." A Mongoloid of the higher grade, according to Dr. Crookshank, is Clemenceau, accurately called "le vieux Tartar," who, upon his retirement from political life, appropriately devoted himself to the writing of Buddhist plays.

 Homologies Between Apes and Man.

 With these data in mind, Dr. Crookshank began to make comparative studies of the homologies between the three great apes and man. These homoiogies turned out to be not only morphologically significant, but also significant psychologically, physiologically, and functionally. Most important, perhaps, was his finding in regard to posture. The Mongolians in sitting down naturally arrange their lower limbs horizontally in the Buddha or hieractic position, one hand on a thigh and the other in the lap. The orang-utans alone amongst apes naturally place themselves in the Buddha or hieratic position and none other. The members of the black division of humanity arrange their lower limbs vertically, with knees brought together under the chin and spine curved, with the arms either resting on the knees or clasped around the knees. The only difference between the black and white divisions of humanity in the natural adoption of these postures is that with the blacks the ischial tuberosities rest on the ground, while with the others (commonly seen among the Polynesians, Egyptians, and the natives of India) the buttocks do not rest on the ground, and the individual is said to squat on his heels or on his hams. The gorilla commonly adopts the black variant of the vertical disposition of the lower limbs, while the chimpanzee commonly adopts the white variant.

 Other homologies traced minutely by Dr. Crookshank involve hand-markings and gestures as well as skeletonal and facial characteristics. They are too numerous to be taken up here: but important among them is the fact that the Mongols, the Mongolian imbeciles, and the Mongoloids usually display instead of a distinct "life line" and a distinct "head line" (in the phraseology of the palmists) one traverse line only and that among the great anthropoid apes this single transverse line is found in only one—the orang-utan. 

A Theory of Atavism. 

The next important discovery of Dr. Crookshank was that:— "Frequent among the white races generally there is a mental disorder, associated with certain marked physical characteristics, that occupies a middle place between acquired insanity and congenital imbecility and is known as dementia praecox. The persons so afflicted, if deprived of chairs or permitted to squat upon the ground, squat not as orang-utans or Mongols, but as chimpanzees. 

"But, if compelled to sit upon benches or chairs, the chimpanzee attitude becomes at once converted into what Dr. Steen has called the 'ancient Egyptian attitude.' It is interesting to note that, as a rule, in the apes, and in the dements, the arm arrangement (as sometimes in the Egyptian statues) is one of rigid symmetry. Yet, when the Egyptian artists desired to convey the idea of power or intelligence and a symmetrical disposition was featured, that is seen to say when a king is represented on a throne holding a sceptre in a semi-pronated right hand and an orb in a fully supinated right hand. Symmetry of disposition in respect to the arms, we must recognise as correlated with an arrest of mental activity. We see it in death, in idiocy, in senility and among the apes."

 From all this Dr. Crookshank proceeds to account for the frequent presence of "Mongolian imbeciles," and Mongoloids among the peoples of Western Europe on the theory that they are atavistic or reversionary offspring of debilitated or exhausted parents in whom can be traced an orang-mongol ancestry. The individuals afflicted with dementia praecox, on the other hand, are atavistic or reversionary offspring of chimpanzee white, or gorilla-black ancestry. However it may be said that there is no evidence that pure Semites ever gave birth to "Mongols, " and cases of Mongolian imbecility "are not seen among the blacks and are not known to occur among the Aryan populations of Asia, or even among the Arabs and pure Jews. They do occur, on the other hand, among those 'white' people, so generally spoken of as Nordic as Alpine, and as Mediterranean."

 By his placing this classification of white people within quotation marks it will be seen that Dr. Crookshank does not subscribe to a very general ethnic classification. Throughout his book he identifies the white race with the Semites: —"White—I am tempted to say Semitic, "what may be called the Semitic or Aryan variant," and "most profitably we may reduce the present and part racial types to three: Semite, Mongol, and negro. They are reflected for us in the chimpanzee, the orang, and the gorilla." In another place he says that if we are to reject the evidential value of the homologies between "the Semite and the chimpanzee, the Mongol and the orang, the negro and the gorilla . . . . we may as well adopt at once the hypothesis of belief of a creative origin, and a later dispersal into Semitic or 'white,' Hamitic, or black, and Japhetic, or yellow races." 

New Biological Classifications.

 Of the three great apes. Dr. Crookshank tells us that the chimpanzee is the most intelligent. The apes also have distinguishing marks of temperament, which is reflected in their faces, and also in the three faces of mankind. These three faces are described by Linnaeus as—

Homo Europaeus, Levis, argustus, inventor, regitur ritibus.

[The European man, light, clever, inventor, is governed by rituals.]

 Homo Asiaticus, Severus, fastuosus, avarus, regitur opiniouibus.

[The Asiatic man, Severus, is proud, avaricious, and governed by his opinions.]

 Homo Afer, Vafer, segnis, negligens regular arbitrio.

[A lazy, lazy man, neglectful of regular judgment.]

 "We can take our stand at Charing Cross," writes Dr. Crookshank among his interesting generalisations, "and can see these three faces of mankind born by native Londoners; we can visit our public asylums and see them in degraded form, and we can, at the Zoo and the Natural History Museum, see them caricatured by the noisy, mischievous and lascivious chimpanzee, the dignified, philosophic and self-sufficient orang, and the slow, cunning and brutal gorilla.

 "Everywhere among us do these types segregate out, seeking their appropriate milieu. Homer Afer find partners in the jazz-loving women of the night clubs; Homo Europaeus (regitur ritibus), is seen participating with his kind in social and religious ceremony at the Ritz and the Cathedral; and Homo Asiaticus, after predency among the elder statesmen, may retire to semi-monastic seclusion and write Buddhist plays.

 "The 'white' Hottentot Venus from the Midi still plies her trade in Soho; the 'ex-service man ' in the gutter exposes his frowsy cap for an obulus in the very attitude of the Hindu fakir and the asylum dement; in garrets at Chelsea clever people squat on cushions in a fashion that can be forecast from an examination of their heads, their eyes, their ears, their hands, and their ideas. . . .

 "Man because what he now is when he learned to set and really think how to act, and the ways in which men think are still indicated by the ways in which they sit when they think."

 It will be seen that Dr. Crookshank has devised not only an entirely new biological classification of the human race, but has also indicated new classifications of imbeciles, misfits, dements, and "queer" people of exceptional endowments and so has established a new scheme for classifying human ideas.

Advertiser (Adelaide, SA ),  1924, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article43247023