XV 
DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 
457 
the modification of other mammalian species would also have 
led to a change in man. But this argument overlooks the 
fact that man differs essentially from all other mammals in 
this respect, that whereas any important adaptation to new 
conditions can be effected in them only by a change in bodily 
structure, man is able to adapt himself to much greater 
changes of conditions by a mental development leading him 
to the use of fire, of tools, of clothing, of improved dwellings, of 
nets and snares, and of agriculture. By the help of these, 
without any change whatever in his bodily structure, he has 
been able to spread over and occupy the whole earth ; to 
dwell securely in forest, plain, or mountain; to inhabit alike 
the burning desert or the arctic wastes • to cope with every 
kind of wild beast, and to provide himself with food in 
districts where, as an animal trusting to nature’s unaided 
productions, he would have starved. 1 
It follows, therefore, that from the time Avhen the ancestral 
man first walked erect, with hands freed from any active part 
in locomotion, and when his brain-power became sufficient to 
cause him to use his hands in making weapons and tools, 
houses and clothing, to use fire for cooking, and to plant seeds 
or roots to supply himself with stores of food, the power of 
natural selection would cease to act in producing modifications 
of his body, but would continuously advance his mind through 
the development of its organ, the brain. Hence man may 
have become truly man—the species, Homo sapiens—even 
in the Miocene period; and while all other mammals were 
becoming modified from age to age under the influence of ever- 
changing physical and biological conditions, he would be 
advancing mainly in intelligence, but perhaps also in stature, 
and by that advance alone would be able to maintain himself 
as the master of all other animals and as the most widespread 
occupier of the earth. It is quite in accordance with this view 
that we find the most pronounced distinction between man 
and the anthropoid apes in the size and complexity of his 
brain. Thus, Professor Huxley tells us that “ it may be 
doubted whether a healthy human adult brain ever weighed 
1 This subject was first discussed in an article in the Anthropological 
Revieiv, May 1864, and republished in my Contributions to Natural Selection, 
chap, ix, in 1870. 
