466 
DARWINISM 
CHAP. 
to them we are limited to two possible theories. Either pre¬ 
historic and savage man did not possess this faculty at all 
(or only in its merest rudiments) ; or they did possess it, but 
had neither the means nor the incitements for its exercise. 
In the former case we have to ask by what means has this 
faculty been so rapidly developed in all civilised races, many 
of which a few centuries back were, in this respect, almost 
savages themselves ; while in the latter case the difficulty is 
still greater, for we have to assume the existence of a faculty 
which had never been used either by the supposed possessors 
of it or by their ancestors. 
Let us take, then, the least difficult supposition — that 
savages possessed only the mere rudiments of the faculty, such 
as their ability to count, sometimes up to ten, but with an 
utter inability to perform the very simplest processes of 
arithmetic or of geometry— and inquire how this rudimentary 
faculty became rapidly developed into that of a Newton, a 
La Place, a Gauss, or a Cayley. We will admit that there is 
every possible gradation between these extremes, and that 
there has been perfect continuity in the development of the 
faculty ; but we ask, What motive power caused its develop¬ 
ment 1 
It must be remembered we are here dealing solely with 
the capability of the Darwinian theory to account for the 
origin of the mind, as well as it accounts for the origin of the 
body of man, and we must, therefore, recall the essential features 
of that theory. These are, the preservation of useful varia¬ 
tions in the struggle for life ; that no creature can be improved 
beyond its necessities for the time being; that the law acts by 
life and death, and by the survival of the fittest. We have to 
ask, therefore, what relation the successive stages of improve¬ 
ment of the mathematical faculty had to the life or death of 
its possessors ; to the struggles of tribe with tribe, or nation 
with nation; or to the ultimate survival of one race and the 
extinction of another. If it cannot possibly have had any 
such effects, then it cannot have been produced by natural 
selection. 
It is evident that in the struggles of savage man with the 
elements and with wild beasts, or of tribe with tribe, this 
faculty can have had no influence. It had nothing to do with 
