310 THE ACTION OF NATURAL 



There is one point, however, in which nature will 

 still act upon him as it does on animals, and, to some 

 extent, modify his external characters. Mr. Darwin 

 has shown, that the colour of the skin is correlated 

 with constitutional peculiarities both in vegetables and 

 animals, so that liability to certain diseases or freedom 

 from them is often accompanied by marked external 

 characters. Now, there is every reason to believe 

 that this has acted, and, to some extent, may still 

 continue to act, on man. In localities where certain 

 diseases are prevalent, those individuals of savage races 

 which were subject to them would rapidly die off; 

 while those who were constitutionally free from the 

 disease would survive, and form the progenitors of a 

 new race. These favoured individuals would probably 

 be distinguished by peculiarities of colour, with which 

 again peculiarities in the texture or the abundance 

 of hair seem to be correlated, and thus may have 

 been brought about those racial differences of colour, 

 which seem to have no relation to mere temperature 

 or other obvious peculiarities of climate. 



From the time, therefore, when the social and sym- 

 pathetic feelings came into active operation, and the 

 intellectual and moral faculties became fairly deve- 

 loped, man would cease to be influenced by " natural 

 selection " in his physical form and structure. As an 

 animal he would remain almost stationary, the changes 

 of the surrounding universe ceasing to produce in him 

 that powerful modifying effect which they exercise 

 over other parts of the organic world. But from the 



