22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



4 



THE DOCTRINE OF NATURAL SELECTION. 1 



By ALFEED E. WALLACE. 



"ATTOTWITHSTANDING the objections which are still made to the 

 -L^l theory of Natural Selection, on the ground that it is either a 

 pure hypothesis not founded on any demonstrable facts, or a mere truism 

 which can lead to no useful results, we find it year by year sinking 

 deeper into the minds of thinking men, and applied, more and more 

 * frequently, to elucidate problems of the highest importance. In the 

 works now before us we have this application made by two eminent 

 writers, one a politician, the other a naturalist, as a means of working 

 out so much of the complex problem of human progress as more espe- 

 cially interests them. 



Mr. Bagehot takes for granted that early progress of man which 

 resulted in his separation into strongly-marked races, in his acquisition 

 of language, and of the rudiments of those moral and intellectual 

 faculties which all men possess ; and his object is to work out the steps 

 by which he advanced to the condition in which the dawn of history 

 finds him aggregated into distinct societies known as tribes or na- 

 tions, subject to various forms of government, influenced by various 

 beliefs and prejudices, and the slave of habits and customs which often 

 seem to us not only absurd and useless, but even positively injurious. 

 Now, every one of these beliefs or customs, or these aggregations of 

 men into groups having some common characteristics, must have been 

 useful at the time they originated ; and a great feature of Mr. Bage- 

 hot's little book is his showing how even the most unpromising of 

 these, as we now regard them, might have been a positive step in ad- 

 vance when they first appeared. His main idea is, that what was 

 wanted in those early times was some means of combining men in so- 

 cieties, whether by the action of some common belief or common 

 danger, or by the power of some ruler or tyrant. The mere fact of 

 obedience to a ruler was at first much more important than what was 

 done by means of the obedience. So, any superstition or any custom, 

 even if it originated in the grossest delusion, and produced positively 

 bad results, might yet, by forming a bond of union more perfect than 

 any other then existing, give the primitive tribe subject to it such a 

 relative advantage over the disconnected families around them as to 

 lead to their increase and permanent survival in the struggle for ex- 



1 " Physics and Politics ; or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of ' Nat- 

 ural Selection ' and ' Inheritance ' to Political Society." By Walter Bagehot. (King & 

 Co., 1872.) 



" Histoire des Sciences et dea Savants depuis deux Siecles, suivie d'autres Etudes sur 

 1.2S Sujets Scientifiques, en particulier sur la Selection dans l'Espece Humaine." Par Al- 

 phonse de Candolle. (Geneve : H. Georg, 1873.) 



