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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



facta of human history, with a skill which 

 brings out some novel results of prime sci- 

 entific importance. One of those results, 

 regarding the social development of man, 

 is so significant as to justify some fullness 

 of explanation. 



The idea which determines the course 

 of inquiry in the chapters referred to was 

 first suggested by Mr. Wallace ; and it is 

 that, when the intelligence of an animal has 

 arrived at a certain stage of flexibility, 

 natural selection will begin to prefer mental 

 to physical variations. That is to say, 

 when an animal has become so intelligent 

 that he can meet some of the exigencies of 

 life by varying his intelligent contrivances 

 instead of by incurring some slight physi- 

 cal change, there will then be a tendency 

 for the more flexible intelligences to sur- 

 vive in the struggle for life : and obviously 

 so much more can be done, and so much 

 better done, by securing variations in men- 

 tal rather than in physical structure, that 

 after a while the amount of mental change 

 will become enormously great and rapid as 

 compared with the amount of physical 

 change. Hence a man may be very much 

 like an ape in physical structure, while his 

 thoughts may be as- much higher than the 

 ape'6 thoughts " as the heavens are higher 

 than the earth." 



This is not only a very brilliant but a 

 very useful suggestion. Mr. Wallace, how- 

 ever, has never followed it up, but has left 

 it over for Mr. Fiske, who has applied it 

 with such striking effect to the specific 

 problem of the genesis of man, that he 

 may almost be said to have made it his 

 own. Before the problem of man's vast 

 intellectual and moral superiority, Mr. Wal- 

 lace retreats discomfited, even after having 

 hit upon the idea which, when thoroughly 

 considered, goes quite half-way toward ex- 

 plaining it ; and, like other discomfited in- 

 quirers, past and present, he appeals to 

 the supernatural for aid and comfort, when 

 he was bound to go on and overcome the 

 difficulties of the inquiry. Just here the 

 question is taken up in the work before 

 us. Having shown, in accordance with 

 Darwin and Spencer, the general evidences 

 for the evolution of the higher forms of 

 life and intelligence from the lower forms, 

 Mr. Fiske recognizes that the special ques- 



tion of the evolution of man's great mental 

 preeminence requires a special mode of 

 treatment. Some factor has come in which 

 has greatly modified the phenomena with 

 which we have to deal when considering 

 the development of the animal kingdom in 

 general. And this factor, Mr. Fiske main- 

 tains, is the existence of social combina- 

 tion, by which man is most conspicuously 

 different from auy other animal. The gen- 

 eral question of the evolution of society is, 

 therefore, treated preliminary to the ques- 

 tion of the origin of man. Having ascend- 

 ed, zoologically and psychologically, from 

 the primitive marine vertebrate to the point 

 of departure of man from the apes, the line 

 is changed, and a descent is made, psycho- 

 logically and historically, from the higher to 

 the lower phases of human society, with the 

 view of reaching, as nearly as may be, the 

 same point of departure. This inquiry into 

 social evolution gives a formula for human 

 progress, and lands us in the same general 

 theory of primitive society which has been 

 so well illustrated by Maine, Lubbock, and 

 McLennan. The state, in its grandest com- 

 plications, having been shown to be a de- 

 velopment from the primeval clan or family 

 group, very much as a complex organism ia 

 developed from the aggregation of amoeba- 

 like units, the question comes up, How did 

 permanent family groups arise ? Here we 

 come to the very marrow of the problem, for, 

 having passed from a race of primates in 

 which each individual lives for himself, to a 

 race of primates in which the conduct of the 

 individual is determined with reference to the 

 needs of a permanent group of which he is 

 a member, we have then passed from man- 

 like ape to apelike man. Both the intellect- 

 ual and the ethical supremacy of man have 

 been brought about by social'conditions, of 

 which this formation of permanent family 

 groups was the earliest in order. How, 

 then, was this great step taken ? 



Mr. Fiske gives an entirely new answer 

 to this question, though when once suggested 

 it is so obvious that it seems as if it ought to 

 have occurred spontaneously to every one 

 who has thought upon this subject. A pre- 

 liminary to the answer is given in the chap- 

 ter on the "Evolution of Mind," where it is 

 briefly pointed out that the increase of in- 

 telligence in an animal, beyond a certain 



