Hooton's Horrors

Like thousands of other people, Professor Earnest Albert Hooton of Harvard University believes that the world of men is in bad shape. What distinguishes Anthropologist Hooton from most other calamity-howlers, however, is that his unflattering comments are backed up by a great store of information on the biological history and present condition of Homo sapiens, and that although he is a scientist he speaks not only with clarity but with wit.

Dr. Hooton believes in the tremendous importance of an individual's biological heritage, that superior minds and superior bodies usually go together, and that "the quality of any individual mind is probably inherent and immutable." As a profound student of evolution, he knows that in so highly evolved an animal as man evolution does not stand still. The species either progresses or degenerates. Since he discerns no improvement since the end of the Glacial Period and since the signs of deterioration are already apparent to his trained eye, he concludes that the present course of man is downhill.

Yet there is a touch of the reformer about Dr. Hooton, and beyond his immediate pessimism a sort of long-sighted optimism. "We must improve man," he says, "before we can perfect his institutions and make him behave. The human improvement required is primarily biological and we do not yet know how to effect it. But there are enough clever youngsters to find out, if only they can be shown the necessity of tackling the problem. They at any rate will know the truth, and perhaps it will make them free. Free from what? From imbeciles and morons who are allowed to reproduce their kind, and to subsist upon the labors of others, from psychopaths who lead the mentally inferior mass of civilized populations into purposeless wars and social revolutions, from the ever increasing numbers of biological and mental inferiors who are anti-social and criminalistic. If the generations to come can be emancipated from these worthless and deleterious elements, it will be a comparatively simple matter to perfect social and political institutions and to adjust human relations to a reasonable harmony."

This philosophy pervades the book which Dr. Hooton published last week, entitled Apes, Men and Morons.* The author denies that he gets any pleasure out of making public addresses, but he does so frequently and the book is for the most part a collection of such talks delivered during the past several years. Other chapters are essays originally printed in magazines. Some of the material is straightforward anthropological exposition: descriptions of such famed forerunners of Homo sapiens as Peking Man, Piltdown Man and Pithecanthropus erectus, and of the confused state of anthropological opinion about them.

"As a matter of fact," says Dr. Hooton, "if I were asked in what occupations the United States indubitably leads the world, I should reply without hesitation, dentistry and plumbing." Yet in the mouth of civilized man he finds a chamber of horrors which shows perfectly well which way human evolution is going. Caries, pyorrhea and malocclusion (failure of upper and lower teeth to engage properly) are rare among savages--"at least until the savage comes in contact with civilization, missionaries, canned foods, groceries and candy.... In my opinion there is one and only one course of action which will check the increase of dental disease and degeneration which may ultimately cause the extinction of the human species. This is to elevate the dental profession to a plane where it can command the services of our best research minds to study the causes and seek for the cures of these dental evils.... No effective measures of public education in care of the teeth can be taken until dental practitioners cease to be tinkers and learn to be scientists."

Other Hootonisms in Apes, Men and Morons:

Feminine Longevity. "Short of homicide, a man has practically no chance of outliving his wife; females, after attaining a certain age, become almost immortal."

Human Hairlessness. "If you were respectable anthropoid apes catching your first glimpse of a specimen of man, your modesty would be shocked by the spectacle of his obscene nakedness. Indeed, even to man himself it is a well-nigh insupportable sight, unless he be a savage devoid of culture, or a nudist devoid of sensibility."

Tooth-brushing. "Brushing the teeth is like buttering the baby's heel; it cannot do any harm and it may do some good."

Democracy & Fascism. "Democracy is making the world safe for morons and fascism is making it unsafe for everyone else."

Human Sensibilities. "I find it rather difficult to understand why human beings are so inordinately sensitive about themselves as animal organisms, as contrasted with their comparative callousness in regard to their conduct, their institutions, and all of their extra-organic manifestations."

"Progressive" Education. '"I cannot reconcile myself to a primary education which equips a child with the Eskimo technique of making a snow-house, but does not teach him how to spell. . . . Man has to earn his intellectual bread by the sweat of his brow. Why should primary education attempt to convert our children into little lotus-eaters?"

Pretensions of Science. "I am . . . convinced that science pursues a foolish and possibly fatal policy when it tries to keep up its bluff of omniscience in matters of which it is still woefully ignorant. Sooner or later the intelligent public is going to call that bluff, as it has already done in the case of ... other deflated specialists."

Evolution for the Masses? "An inept presentation of evolution to persons of limited mentality is likely to destroy their religious beliefs and fears, and to free them of inhibitions which make them socially tolerable. A knowledge of . . . evolution ought perhaps to be reserved for those of sufficient intellect to enable them to reconcile it with their religious convictions or to those who, having no religious beliefs, at least possess sufficient character and fastidiousness to maintain and practice a system of ethics without supernatural props."

*G. P. Putnam's Sons ($3).

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