XV DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 469 



ecclesiastical architecture and the illumination of manuscripts, 

 but from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries pictorial art 

 revived in Italy and attained to a degree of perfection which 

 has never been surpassed. This revival was followed closely 

 by the schools of Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, France, 

 and England, showing that the true artistic faculty belonged 

 to no one nation, but was fairly distributed among the various 

 European races. 



These several developments of the artistic faculty, whether 

 manifested in sculpture, painting, or architecture, are evi- 

 dently outgrowths of the human intellect which have no im- 

 mediate influence on the survival of individuals or of tribes, 

 or on the success of nations in their struggles for supremacy 

 or for existence. The glorious art of Greece did not prevent the 

 nation from falling under the sway of the less advanced Roman ; 

 while we ourselves, among whom art was the latest to arise, 

 have taken the lead in the colonisation of the world, thus 

 proving our mixed race to be the fittest to survive. 



Independent Proof that the Mathematical, Musical, and Artistic 

 Faculties have not been Developed lender the Laiv of Natural 

 Selection. 



The law of Natural Selection or the survival of the fittest 

 is, as its name implies, a rigid law, which acts by the life or 

 death of the individuals submitted to its action. From its 

 very nature it can act only on useful or hurtful characteristics, 

 eliminating the latter and keeping up the former to a fairly 

 general level of efficiency. Hence it necessarily follows that 

 the characters developed by its means will be present in all 

 the individuals of a species, and, though varying, will not vary 

 very widely from a common standard. The amount of varia- 

 tion we found, in our third chapter, to be about one-fifth or 

 one-sixth of the mean value — that is, if the mean value were 

 taken at 100, the variations would reach from 80 to 120, or 

 somewhat more, if very large numbers were compared. In 

 accordance with this law we find, that all those characters in 

 man which were certainly essential to him during his early 

 stages of development, exist in all savages with some approach 

 to equality. In the speed of running, in bodily strength, in 

 skill with weapons, in acuteness of vision, or in power of 



