XV 
DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 
469 
ecclesiastical architecture and the illumination of manuscripts, 
but from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries pictorial art 
revived in Italy and attained to a degree of perfection which 
has never been surpassed. This revival was followed closely 
by the schools of Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, France, 
and England, showing that the true artistic faculty belonged 
to no one nation, but was fairly distributed among the various 
European races. 
These several developments of the artistic faculty, whether 
manifested in sculpture, painting, or architecture, are evi¬ 
dently outgrowths of the human intellect which have no im¬ 
mediate influence on the survival of individuals or of tribes, 
or on the success of nations in their struggles for supremacy 
or for existence. The glorious art of Greece did not prevent the 
nation from falling under the sway of the less advanced Roman ; 
while we ourselves, among whom art was the latest to arise, 
have taken the lead in the colonisation of the world, thus 
proving our mixed race to be the fittest to survive. 
Independent Proof that the Mathematical, Musical, and Artistic 
Faculties have not been Developed tinder the Law of Natural 
Selection. 
The law of Natural Selection or the survival of the fittest 
is, as its name implies, a rigid law, which acts by the life or 
death of the individuals submitted to its action. From its 
very nature it can act only on useful or hurtful characteristics, 
eliminating the latter and keeping up the former to a fairly 
general level of efficiency. Hence it necessarily follows that 
the characters developed by its means will be present in all 
the individuals of a species, and, though varying, will not vary 
very widely from a common standard. The amount of varia¬ 
tion we found, in our third chapter, to be about one-fifth or 
one-sixth of the mean value — that is, if the mean value were 
taken at 100, the variations would reach from 80 to 120, or 
somewhat more, if very lai'ge numbers were compared. In 
accordance with this law we find, that all those characters in 
man which were certainly essential to him during his early 
stages of development, exist in all savages with some approach 
to equality. In the speed of running, in bodily strength, in 
skill with weapons, in acuteness of vision, or in power of 
