Chap. I V.J MANNER OF DEVELOPMENT. 151 



for himself weapons, tools, etc., and secondly by his social 

 qualities which lead him to give aid to his fellow-men and 

 to receive it in return. No country in the world abounds 

 in a greater degree with dangerous beasts than Southern 

 Africa; no country presents more fearful physical hard- 

 ships than the Arctic regions ; yet one of the puniest races, 

 namely, the Bushmen, maintain themselves in Southern 

 Africa, as do the dwarfed Esquimaux in the Arctic 

 regions. The early progenitors of man were, no doubt, 

 inferior in intellect, and probably in social disposition, to 

 the lowest existing savages ; but it is quite conceivable 

 that they might have existed, or even flourished, if, while 

 they gradually lost their brute-like powers, such as climb- 

 ing trees, etc., they at the same time advanced in intellect. 

 But granting that the progenitors of man were far more 

 helpless and defenceless than any existing savages, if they 

 had inhabited some warm continent, or large island, such 

 as Australia or New Guinea, or Borneo (the latter island 

 being now tenanted by the orang), they would not have 

 been exposed to any special danger. In an area as large 

 as one of these islands, the competition between tribe and 

 tribe would have been sufficient, under favorable con- 

 ditions, to have raised man, through the survival of the 

 fittest, combined with the inherited effects of habit, to his 

 present high position in the organic scale. 



