THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 95 



several thousand years,in which are depicted the Ethiopian, Caucasian, 

 and the like, which are in some instances striking likenesses of the 

 present-day Egyptians. 



Universal distribution is, in animals, another mark of antiquity: 

 in man, it is probably less so because of his greater intelligence. 

 And yet before transportation had become a science man's spread 

 over land and sea was extremely slow. 



High intelligence as compared with that of the anthropoids is also 

 a mark of antiquity, for the brain, especially the type of brain found 

 in the higher human races, must have been very slow of development. 

 Our study of fossil man shows this. 



Communal life, division of labor and all of the complicated 

 interactions which it brings about, and the development of law and 

 religions all have taken time. When we realize that Babylonian texts, 

 twice as remote as the patriarch Abraham, give evidence of highly 

 perfect laws and of a civilization which must have antedated their 

 production by centuries, we gain another yet more emphatic im- 

 pression of human antiquity. Add to all this the palaeontological 

 evidence of man's association with various genera and numerous 

 successive species of prehistoric animals of which he alone survives, 

 and the evidence is complete. 



FUTURE OF HUMANITY 



Because of his intelligence and communal co-operation man is no 

 longer subject to the laws which govern the adaptation of animals 

 to their environment. Osborn's law of adaptive radiation, which, as 

 we have seen, applies equally well to the insects, reptiles, and mam- 

 mals, fails in its application to mankind; and yet man has become as 

 thoroughly adapted to speed, flight, to the fossorial and aquatic as 

 they; but his adaptation is artificial and to a very small extent only 

 affects his physical frame, while theirs is natural and the stamp of 

 environment is deeply impressed upon the organism. 



Man's physical evolution has virtually ceased, but in so far as any 

 change is being effected, it is largely retrogressive. Such changes are: 

 Reduction of hair and teeth, and of hand skill; and dulling of the 

 senses of sight, smell, and hearing upon which active creatures depend 

 so largely for safety. That sort of charity which fosters the physi- 

 cally, mentally, and morally feeble, and is thus contrary to the law of 

 natural selection, must also in the long run have an adverse effect upon 

 the race. 



