VI PREFACE 



muscular strength and greater powers of endurance. 

 Yet the superior mental capacity of the European 

 secures him an easy victory over the savage in what- 

 ever field he happens to be opposed to him. The 

 European is the master of the world. By what 

 means has he attained his superiority ? Not by 

 physical selection, for not only are the Englishman, 

 the Eed Indian, and the Zulu similar in point of 

 physique, but even the evidence of the Egyptian 

 tombs does not warrant us in supposing that within 

 any measurable period of time man was ever physi- 

 cally less developed than now. These considerations 

 prompted Wallace some years ago to put forward the 

 speculative opinion that with the origin of mind in 

 the human race selection with regard to physical 

 form and structure ceased, man as an animal remain- 

 ing stationary, because all changes in his environment 

 were met by mental instead of corporeal adaptation 

 — that is to say, he made clothes instead of growing 

 fur to suit a particular climate, he learnt to cope with 

 the strength and the agility of other animals by in- 

 venting weapons, when food was scarce he produced 

 it artificially, and so on. 



The results of an inquiry into the operation of 

 marriage and heredity from the earliest times and 



