320 THE ACTION OF NATURAL 



development of man out of some lower type of animal, 

 must have occurred before his intellect had raised him 

 above the condition of the brutes, at a period when he 

 was gregarious, but scarcely social, with a mind per- 

 ceptive but not reflective, ere any sense of right or 

 feelings of sympathy had been developed in him. He 

 would be still subject, like the rest of the organic 

 world, to the action of 6t natural selection," which 

 would retain his physical form and constitution in har- 

 mony with the surrounding universe. He was pro- 

 bably at a very early period a dominant race, spreading 

 widely over the warmer regions of the earth as it then 

 existed, and in agreement with what we see in the 

 case of other dominant species, gradually becoming 

 modified in accordance with local conditions. As he 

 ranged farther from his original home, and became 

 exposed to greater extremes of climate, to greater 

 changes of food, and had to contend with new enemies, 

 organic and inorganic, slight useful variations in his 

 constitution would be selected and rendered permanent, 

 and would, on the principle of a correlation of growth," 

 be accompanied by corresponding external physical 

 changes. Thus might have arisen those striking char- 

 acteristics and special modifications which still distin- 

 guish the chief races of mankind. The red, black, 

 yellow, or blushing white skin ; the straight, the curly, 

 the woolly hair ; the scanty or abundant beard ; the 

 straight or oblique eyes; the various forms of the 

 pelvis, the cranium, and other parts of the skeleton. 

 But while these changes had been going on, his 



