INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 145 



escape detection and danger. When tliey migrate into a 

 colder climate, they must become clothed with thicker fur, 

 or have their constitutions altered. If they fail to be thus 

 modified, they will cease to exist. 



The case, however, is widely different, as Mr. Wallace 

 has with justice insisted, in relation to the intellectual and 

 moral faculties of man. These faculties are variable; and 

 we have every reason to believe that the variations tend to 

 be inherited. Therefore, if they were formerly of high 

 importance to primeval man and to his ape-like progenitors, 

 they would have been perfected or advanced through 

 natural selection. Of the high importance of the intel- 

 lectual faculties there can be no doubt, for man mainly 

 owes to them his predominant position in the world. AVe 

 can see, that in the rudest state of society, the individuals 

 who were the most sagacious, who invented and used the 

 best weapons or traps, and who were best able to defend 

 themselves, would rear the greatest number of offspring. 

 The tribes, which included the largest number of men thus 

 endowed, would increase in number and supplant other 

 tribes. Numbers depend primarily on the means of sub- 

 sistence, and this depends partly on the physical nature of 

 the country, but in a much higher degree on the arts 

 which are there practiced. As a tribe increases and is vic- 

 torious, it is often still further increased by the absorption 

 of other tribes. * The stature and strength of the men of a 

 tribe are likewise of some importance for its success, and 

 these depend in part on the nature and amount of the 

 food which can be obtained. In Europe the men of the 

 Bronze period were supplanted by a race more powerful, 

 and, judging from their sword-handles, with larger hands;f 

 but their success was probably still more due to their 

 superiority in the arts. 



All that we know about savages, or may infer from their 

 traditions and from old monuments, the history of which 

 is quite forgotten by the present inhabitants, show that 

 from the remotest times successful tribes have supplanted 

 other tribes. Relics of extinct or forgotten tribes have been 

 discovered throughout the civilized regions of the earth, on 



* After a time the members or tribes which are absorbed into 

 another tribe assume, as Sir Henry Maine remarks ("Ancient Law," 

 1861, p. 131), that they are the co-descendants of the same ancestors. 



tMorlot, "Soc. Vaud. Sc. Nat," 1860, p. 294. 



