i4 4 THE MISMEASURE OF MAN
Recapitulation also provided an irresistible criterion for any sci-
entist who wanted to rank human groups as higher and lower. The
adults of inferior groups must be like children of superior groups, for
the child represents a primitive adult ancestor. If adult blacks and
women are like white male children, then they are living represen-
tatives of an ancestral stage in the evolution of white males. An
anatomical theory for ranking races—based on entire bodies, not
only on heads—had been found.
Recapitulation served as a general theory of biological deter-
minism. All "inferior" groups—races, sexes, and classes—were
compared with the children of white males. E. D. Cope, the cele-
brated American paleontologist who elucidated the mechanism of
recapitulation (see Gould, 1977, pp. 85-91), identified four groups
of lower human forms on this criterion: nonwhite races, all women,
southern as opposed to northern European whites, and lower
classes within superior races (1887, PP-^29 1-293—Cope particu-
larly despised "the lower classes of the Irish"). Cope preached the
doctrine of Nordic supremacy and agitated to curtail the immigra-
tion of Jews and southern Europeans to America. To explain the
inferiority of southern Europeans in recapitulatory terms, he
argued that warmer climates impose an earlier maturation. Since
maturation signals the slowdown and cessation of bodily develop-
ment, southern Europeans are caught in a more childlike, hence
primitive, state as adults. Superior northerners move on to higher
stages before a later maturation cuts off their development:There can be little doubt that in the Indo-European race maturity in
some respects appears earlier in tropical than in northern regions; and
though subject to many exceptions, this is sufficiently general to be looked
upon as a rule. Accordingly, we find in that race—at least in the warmer
regions of Europe and America—a larger proportion of certain qualities
which are more universal in women, as greater activity of the emotional
nature when compared with the judgment.... Perhaps the more northern
type left all that behind in its youth (1887, pp. 162-163).Recapitulation provided a primary focus for anthropometric,
particularly craniometric, arguments about the ranking of races.
The brain, once again, played a dominant role. Louis Agassiz, in a
creationist context, had already compared the brain of adult blacks
with that of a white fetus seven months old. We have already cited