452 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it is sustained "by intelligence, and those with the best "brains 

 win the victory. While it is doubtful whether Darwin's natural 

 selection can, in the existing conditions of the globe, engender 

 new species separated by physiological barriers, it is certainly 

 very efficacious to the improvement of the types within the 

 species, and it constitutes one of the most powerful factors of 

 progress. In this way to mediocre types have succeeded more 

 and more favored types, whether by the general conformity of 

 these forms to the aim to be met, or by the development of the 

 brain in conformity to the increasing wants of man, and to the 

 various kinds of life which he has made for himself. Adaptation, 

 that marvelous natural force that rules the organic world as uni- 

 versal attraction rules the inorganic world, has performed its part 

 as to him as well as to all animals — to each in view of its peculiar 

 kind of life. With man the peculiar kind of life is the intellec- 

 tual life. 



We may illustrate the relations of man, the anthropoids, and 

 the monkeys by comparing the order of Primates to a tree. The 

 lemurians are the roots, giving rise to one or several stocks. One 

 of these is the stock of the monkeys, one of the limbs of which 

 sends up a higher branch — that of the anthropoids. Another 

 branch, of which the point of its origin or contact with the pre- 

 ceding branch escapes our search, gives the actual human branch, 

 which rises parallel to the anthropoid branch, has no relation to 

 it, and passes beyond it. 



Has man reached his culmination ? Is he at the end of his 

 evolution, or is he a little short of it ? Will he suffer the fate of 

 the paleontological species, which, having reached the maximum 

 height of their lives, halted and perished, or will he continue to 

 advance ? Will his senses acquire greater delicacy, his hand 

 more readiness ? Will his brain gain in volume, or in convolu- 

 tions, or in the number or the quality of its cells ? 



We doubt, regarding the equilibrium of the head and the har- 

 mony of its parts, whether the brain will gain greatly in volume. 

 Its anterior lobes may perhaps increase till the axis of gravity 

 passes the middle of the base of the skull. Dolichocephaly will be 

 replaced by a universal brachycephaly. The quality of the cells 

 is sure to improve. On that side no limits can be discerned, and 

 in that direction man may hope to reach the Buddhist's ideal. 



When man shall have thus been exalted by his intellectual 

 faculties, the lower types nearest to him will have disappeared, 

 and those animals which are now most closely related to him will 

 be no more, and the interval between him and the other types 

 will have widened to an unfathomable gulf. 



Man, with some show of reason at last, intoxicated with his 

 power, and looking down from his giddy height, may come to 



