Lombroso assigns toatavism a position of pre-eminence in the etiology of crime.
But here I only point out that atavism and degeneration account for from thirty to forty per cent, of the criminals of the present day.
In cases of psychic atavism the actual form of the brain, or the skull, is more or less like that of the older and lower type to which the luckless atavist has been cast back.
That is to say, genius andatavism do not "persist.
Whether associated with obvious physical reversions or not, psychic atavism is the dominant characteristic of the criminal.
Those who have made a scientific study of crime tell us that "psychic atavism is the dominant characteristic of the born criminal.
The atavism of criminals, he now believed, may largely be explained by morbid causes.
Atavism in dental anomalies is well recognised among the races of man; a fourth molar, for instance, found generally among the platyrhine apes, is occasionally found in man: in what proportion is it found among criminals?
It may at the same time be to some extent explained by arrest of development or atavism leading to the deficiency of beard which in its fully developed form marks, with few exceptions, only the highest human races.
When an original vice of organic constitution has thrown an individual into a more primitive and remote strata of society, the influence of environment will itself simulate the effects of atavism and exaggerate its significance.
Atavism is the constant quantity, and the force of variation is the perpetually changing unknown factor.
He will know that Mr Kipling is not profoundly and instinctively an atavistic prophet, because his atavism is more atavistic than the atavismof the first man who ever was born.
It is not atavism or a sinister resolution to stand in the way of progress and gentility.
We shall be driven more particularly to consider Mr Kipling's atavism in discussing his tales of the British Army.
What will come of a variation when you breed from it, when Atavism comes, if I may say so, to intersect variation?
Take the case of the races which are known to be produced by the operation of atavism and variability, and the conditions of existence which check and modify these tendencies.
He was so profoundly impressed with the stamp of mediæval atavism that political journalism--hitting the mark with unconsciously scientific correctness--designated him as a Sir Percival come to life again.
Mancinism or leftsidedness is to-day regarded as a character of atavism and degeneration.
Here we have evidently a kind of atavism explicable by arrested development of some one organ, and a corresponding backwardness in the products of that organ.
Atavism is not so much the persistence of the earlier, as the absence of the later stages of psychical development.
Atavism therefore is not so much the persistence of the earlier as the absence of the later stages.
Is it not going beyond reason, going beyond the little that is known to us as certain, if we grant to atavismthis strange power, of which our present world knows no instance?
I leave to evolutionism, atavism and other transcendental "isms" the honour and also the risk of explaining what I humbly recognize as being too far beyond my grasp.
Perforce, because he was born in our horde he stayed with us; but in actuality he was an atavism and his place was elsewhere.
What to you the friendship of Lop-Ear, the warm lure of the Swift One, the lust and the atavism of Red-Eye?
Every one of their qualities is atavistic, and we know, moreover, thatatavism is one of the most constant marks of degeneracy.
Smellers among degenerates represent an atavism going back, not only to the primeval period of man, but infinitely more remote still, to an epoch anterior to man.
To abandon it and return to primitive promiscuity would be the most profound atavism of degeneracy.
The artist is the child of his times, the conception dominant in the world is his also, and in spite of all his tendency to atavism his method of expression is that with which contemporary culture furnishes him.
Modesty and restraint are dead superstitions of the past, and appear only as atavism and among the inhabitants of remote villages.
Atavism is a return to an earlier state, which cannot have been diseased, because the men who existed under those conditions have developed themselves and progressed.
Impressionism in literature is an example of that atavism which we have noticed as the most distinctive feature in the mental life of degenerates.
It had reared its head in the eighteenth century, recalling, to go back no farther, by a simple phenomenon of atavism the impious practices of the Sabbath, the witches' revels of the Middle Ages.
Such cases of atavismmay [661] be observed either as specific marks, or in the way of anomalies.
As a last example of systematic atavism I will refer to the reversionary changes, afforded by the tomatoes.
Bracts and analogous organs afford similar cases of systematic atavism in quite a number of other families.
Some instances ofatavism of this kind are well known, as they are often repeated by individuals that are multiplied by buds or by grafting.
But the domain ofatavism is not restricted to the cases described.
Atavism in Ribes sanguineum Albidum, in conifers, in Iris pallida.
To this form of atavism pertain, on the basis of our definition, those phenomena by which species assume one or more characters of allies, from which they are understood to have descended by the loss of the character under discussion.
Only the very rare occurrence of instances of atavism in varieties that are for the rest known to be absolutely constant, is to be considered.
Used in this way, this term has the same bearing as the word atavism of the breeders, but it has the advantage of indicating the true cause thereof.
Proceeding on this line of speculation we at once see that a very adequate opportunity for systematic atavism is offered here.
Many instances of so-called atavism are of purely morphologic nature.
After considering these rare instances of more widely known reversions, we may now examine the question of atavism from a broader point of view.
Systematic atavism by this means leads us to a closer examination of the internal and concealed causes, which rule the affinities and divergencies of [633] allied species.
The ancientatavism had surely been at work, the sumptuous mausoleums of the Appian Way had here sprung up afresh, making death a pretext for the display of pomp and pride.
If the theory of atavismwere stretched so far, it would soon do away with free will altogether.
Atavism also is a new word, instead of family likeness, but unless carefully defined, the word is very apt to mislead us.
The facts were wrong, and the theory of atavism perfectly unreasonable as applied to such a case.
But atavism means really a very different thing, if indeed it means anything at all.
I must ease my conscience once for all on this point, and say what I feel aboutatavism and environment.
That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good--the atavism of an old ideal.
Atavism in my day was a word applied to the cases of persons in whom some trait of a remote ancestor recurred in a noticeable manner.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "atavism" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
