AS APPLIED TO MAN. 351 



could not therefore have been acquired by means of 

 natural selection. 



The Origin of some of Man's Mental Faculties, by the 

 preservation of Useful Variations, not possible. 



Turning to the mind of man, we meet with mariy 

 difficulties in attempting to understand, how those 

 mental faculties, which are especially human, could 

 have been acquired by the preservation of useful 

 variations. At first sight, it would seem that such 

 feelings as those of abstract justice and benevolence 

 could never have been so acquired, because they are 

 incompatible with the law of the strongest, which is 

 the essence of natural selection. But this is, I think, 

 an erroneous view, because we must look, not to indi- 

 viduals but to societies ; and justice and benevolence, 

 exercised towards members of the same tribe, would 

 certainly tend to strengthen that tribe, and give it 

 a superiority over another in which the right of the 

 strongest prevailed, and where consequently the weak 

 and the sickly were left to perish, and the few strong 

 ruthlessly destroyed the many who were weaker. 



But there is another class of human faculties that 

 do not regard our fellow men, and which cannot, 

 therefore, be thus accounted for. Such are the capa- 

 city to form ideal conceptions of space and time, of 

 eternity and infinity the capacity for intense artistic 

 feelings of pleasure, in form, colour, and composition 

 and for those abstract notions of form and number 

 which render geometry and arithmetic possible. How 



