The big man’s belief in himself is not surprising, and in respect of
a trial of muscular strength it is well founded, but the preference
of all nations, their parliaments and people, for tall soldiers is a
“survival,” an inherited faith held without examination. Men in battle
no longer come into actual personal contact with their enemies in such
a way that superior weight and strength are advantageous; and superior
size is a disadvantage, for it means a larger mark for bullets.
In our civil war the big men were soonest invalided and sent home. They
soonest gave in to the fatigues of campaign and charge. The little
fellows, more “wiry” and enduring were the better material. I am
compelled to affirm this from personal observation, knowing no other
authority, though for so obvious a fact other authority must exist.
Incidentally, I may explain that I am nearly six feet long.
What is true of men is true of horses. Strength, which implies size, is
necessary in the horse militant, particularly in the artillery; but it
is got at the expense of agility and endurance. The “toughest” American
horse is the little Western “cayuse,” the “Indian pony” of our early
literature.
This matter of so-called “degeneration” in the stature of men and
animals has a more than military interest. It is not without meaning
that all peoples have traditions of giants, and that all literatures
are full of references to a remote ancestry of superior size and
strength. Even Homer tells of his heroes before the walls of Troy
hurling at one another such stones as ten strong men of his degenerate
day could not have lifted from the earth.
The kernel of truth in all this is that the human race is actually
decreasing in size. But this is not “degeneration.” It is improvement.
Where are the megatherium, the dinosaurus, the mammoth and the
mastodon? Where is the pterodactyl? What has happened to the moa and
the other gigantic bird whose name I do not at this moment recall—maybe
the epiornis? Condemned and executed by Nature for unfitness in the
struggle for existence. The elephant, the hippopotamus and the
rhinoceros are traveling the same road to extinction, and the late
American bison could show them the way.
What is the disadvantage of bulk in animals? Feebleness. For an animal
twice as heavy as another of the same species to have the same activity
it would have to be not twice as strong, but four times as strong; and
for some reason to this deponent unknown, Nature does not make it so.
If four times as large, it would need to be sixteen times as strong.
Observe the large birds; the little ones, the swallows and “hummers,”
can fly circles around them. The biggest of them can not fly at all
and their wings, from disuse, are vestigial. Many insects can fly, not
only proportionately faster and farther than even the humming-bird,
but actually. Is there, possibly, a lesson in this for the ingenious
gentlemen who expect the freight and passenger business of the future
to be done in the air?
We are all familiar with the fact that if a man were as strong and
agile in proportion as a flea he could leap several miles; one can
figure out the exact number for oneself. If as strong as an ant he
could shoulder and lug away a six-inch rifle and its carriage.
Doubtless in the course of evolution (if evolution is permanent) man
(if man is spared) will have the ant’s strength—and the ant’s size.
Considering the advantages that the smaller insects and animalculæ
have in the struggle for existence and the wonderful powers and
capacities it must have developed in them—which we know, indeed, from
such observers as Sir John Lubbock it actually has developed in the
ant—I can see no reason to doubt that some of them have attained a high
degree of civilization and enlightenment.
To this view it may be said in objection that we, not they, are masters
of the world. That has nothing to do with it; to insect civilization
dominion may not be at all desirable. But are we masters? Wait till we
have subdued the red flea and the house-fly; then, as we lay off our
armor, we may more becomingly boast.
1903.