124 CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE 



siers, who had on a large blue cloak — and he had 

 enough presence of mind to catch and retain a hold of 

 this strong man's cloak. He says, " I caught hold of 

 his cloak, and although he swore at me and cut at and 

 struck me by turns, and at last, when he found he could 

 not shake me off, fell to entreating me to leave go or I 

 should prevent him from escaping, besides not assisting 

 myself, I still kept tight hold of him, and would not 

 quit my grasp until he had at last dragged me through." 

 Here you see was a case of selective saving — if we may 

 so term it — depending for its success on the strength of 

 the cloth of the Cuirassier's cloak. It is the same in 

 nature ; every species has its Beresina ; it has to fight 

 its way through and struggle with other species ; and 

 when well nigh overpowered, it may be that the 

 smallest chance, something in its colour, perhaps — the 

 minutest circumstance — will turn the scale one way or 

 the other. 



Suppose that by a variation of the black race it had 

 produced the white man at any time — you know that 

 the Negroes are said to believe this to have been the 

 case, and to imagine that Cain was the first white man, 

 and that we are his descendants — suppose that this had 

 ever happened, and that the first residence of this 

 human being was on the West Coast of Africa. There 

 is no great structural difference between the white man 

 and the Negro, and yet there is something so singularly 

 different in the constitution of the two, that the malarias 

 of that country, which do not hurt the black at all, cut 

 off and destroy the white, thus you see there would 

 have been a selective operation performed. If the white 

 man had risen in that way, he would have been selected 

 out and removed by means of the malaria. Now there 



