March, 1897. HUMAN EVOLUTION. 185 



difficulty, and the a posteriori difficulty that the evolution of man 

 physically is proof of his wonderful plasticity, Mr. Wells ignores, while 

 bringing forward an a priori argument dependent on the unproved 

 assumption that man's constitution is stable and not prone to great 

 variability. 



But, setting aside all the foregoing considerations, is Mr. Wells' 

 argument unassailable ? No ! for his conclusion that each of us 

 at birth is scarcely distinguishable, mentally and morally, from 

 Palaeolithic Man, necessarily implies, either: — (i) That we are at 

 least equally indistinguishable from one another, and that all the 

 huge differences between modern man and man (of the same race) are 

 attributable to differences in training and nurture ; or (2) that there 

 were differences between new-born Palaeolithic babies, quite as great, 

 and — with som.e allowance for comparatively recent psychical 

 selection — proportionately as frequent, as those obtaining to-day. 



The mere acceptance of the former alternative as the corollary of 

 Mr. Wells' argument disproves his thesis ; for that corollary is 

 contradicted by every man's daily experience. In the moral sphere, 

 everybody recognises that some children are born naturally good, 

 and, though with a minimum of moral training, become the pioneers 

 of moral evolution ; whilst others are born naturally vicious, and, in 

 spite of the most careful training, inevitably go to the bad. Even in 

 the same family, and under practically identical conditions of training, 

 we may find both black sheep and white. Mr. Wells' argument 

 from the Wolf-Boys is futile, since there is no proof that a boy with a 

 strong inborn moral bent would sink to the same level as the recorded 

 Wolf-Boys. 



In the intellectual (' mental ') sphere, to accept this corollary would 

 land us in results so obviously absurd that merely to mention them is 

 sufficient ; for it has become a truism that genius is inborn, and that 

 no training, or want of training, can eradicate the inborn differences 

 between a genius and a dunce. 



The acceptance of the former alternative being thus fatal to Mr. 

 Wells' argument, let us see what follows from the second. Here I am 

 willing to concede him something in the intellectual sphere ; for it has 

 long been my conviction that some intellectual geniuses at any rate 

 must have appeared from time to time among primitive races, and 

 that this ' great-man-theory ' may explain such discoveries as the 

 boomerang and the use of fire. But from this admission to the 

 assumption set forth above is too long a stride to be taken without a 

 good deal more evidence than we yet possess. Of course, Mr. Wells 

 cannot afford to admit that the mental differences between Palaeolithic 

 babies were similar in kind, but different in degree, to those between 

 modern babies ; for that would be to invoke the very potency of 

 selection which his article was written to disprove. 



Moreover, there are still two very awkward facts for Mr. Wells 

 to reckon with. First, is it not a fact that individuality is less marked 



