AS APPLIED TO MAN. 357 



of the human foot and hand seem unnecessarily perfect 

 for the needs of savage man, in whom they are as 

 completely and as humanly developed as in the highest 

 races. The structure of the human larynx, giving the 

 power of speech and of producing musical sounds, and 

 especially its extreme development in the female sex, 

 are shown to be beyond the needs of savages, and from 

 their known habits, impossible to have been acquired 

 either by sexual selection, or by survival of the fittest. 



The mind of man offers arguments in the same direc- 

 tion, hardly less strong than those derived from his 

 bodily structure. A number of his mental faculties 

 have no relation to his fellow men, or to his material 

 progress. The power of conceiving eternity and in- 

 finity, and all those purely abstract notions of form, 

 number, and harmony, which play so large a part in 

 the life of civilised races, are entirely outside of the 

 world of thought of the savage, and have no influence 

 on his individual existence or on that of his tribe. 

 They could not, therefore, have been developed by any 

 preservation of useful forms of thought ; yet we find 

 occasional traces of them amidst a low civilization, and 

 at a time when they could have had no practical effect 

 on the success of the individual, the family, or the 

 race ; and the development of a moral sense or con- 

 science by similar means is equally inconceivable. 



But, on the other hand, we find that every one of 

 these characteristics is necessary for the full develop- 

 ment of human nature. The rapid progress of civi- 

 lization under favourable conditions, would not be 



