26Section III.A. Niceforo.
THE CAUSE OF THE INFERIORITY OF PHYSICAL AND
MENTAL CHARACTERS IN THE LOWER SOCIAL CLASSES.
(Abstract.)
By Professor Alfredo Niceforo,
Of the University of Naples.
The author has compared the physical, demographic, and mental char
acters of the upper and leisured classes with the same characters in
individuals of the inferior and poor classes. He has made use of several
methods : (i) A comparison between the well-to-do and the poor children in
schools; (2) a comparison between individuals belonging to different pro
fessions ; (3) a comparison between the rich and the poor quarters of the
same city.
He has also studied 4,000 children of the schools of Lausanne; Italian
peasants; conscripts of different countries, classified according to their
occupation; and the rich and the poor quarters of Lausanne, Paris, etc.
He has found that individuals of the lower classes show a smaller
development of stature, of cranial capacity, of sensibility, of resistance to
mental fatigue, a delay in the period when puberty makes its appearance,
a slackening in growth, a very large number of anomalies, etc.
The causes of these differences ascertained in comparing the two groups
are of the mesological and individual order.
Of the mesological order because the conditions of life where men of the
lower classes are forced to live constitute one of the causes of the deteriora
tion of their physical and mental characters.
Of the individual order because, thanks to biological variation, every
man is born different from all other men, and men who are born with
superior physical and mental characters tend to rise in the superior classes,
while men who are born with inferior physical and mental characters tend
to fall in the most wretched classes.
However, in studying the catalogues of measurements and observations,
the author has found that in the mass of men belonging to the superior
classes one finds a small number of men with inferior qualities, while in
the mass of men forming the inferior classes one finds a certain number of
men presenting superior characters.
It is between these two exceptional categories that social exchanges
should be made, allowing the best and most capable of the lower stratum
to ascend, and compelling the unadapted who are found above to fall to the
lower stratum.
