THE .HISTORY OF LIFE 175 



struggle continues. 1 When a type, or as it is called a 

 species, has once got its footing in existence or, as it is 

 called, is " created," it tends to part from and leave 

 behind the type or species from which it sprang, hence 

 the connecting links are rare. And this is markedly 



1 " No motives appear to be able to stay the progress of such 

 movements, humanise them how we may. We often, in a self- 

 accusing spirit attribute the gradual disappearance of aboriginal 

 peoples to the effects of our vices upon them ; but the truth is that 

 what may be called the virtues of our civilisation are scarcely less 

 fatal than its vices. Those features of Western civilisation which are 

 most distinctive and characteristic, and of which we are most proud, 

 are almost as disastrous in their effects as the evils of which complaint 

 is so often made. There is a certain grim pathos in the remark of the 

 author of a paper on the New Zealand natives, which appeared in the 

 Journal of tlie Anthropological Institute a few years ago " (1887), 

 " who, amongst the causes to which the decay of the natives might 

 be attributed, mentioned, indiscriminately, drink, disease, European 

 clothing, peace and wealth. In whatever part of the world we look, 

 amongst civilised or uncivilised peoples, history seems to have taken 

 the same course. Of the Australian natives ' only a few remnants 

 of the powerful tribes linger on. . . . All the Tasmanians are gone, 

 and the Maoris will soon be following. The Pacific Islanders are 

 departing childless. The Australian natives as surely are descending 

 to the grave. Old races everywhere give place to the new.' There 

 are probably, says Mr. F. Galton, ' hardly any spots on the earth that 

 have not, within the last few thousand years, been tenanted by very 

 different races.' Wherever a superior race comes into close contact 

 and competition with an inferior race, the result seems to be much 

 the same, whether it is arrived at by the rude method of wars of 

 conquest, or by the silent process which we see at work in Australia, 

 New Zealand, and the North American Continent, or by the subtle, 

 though no less efficient method with which science makes us 

 acquainted, and which is in operation in many parts of our civilisation, 

 where extinction works slowly and unnoticed through the earlier 

 marriages, the greater vitality, and the better chance of livelihood of 

 the members of the superior race." (" Social Evolution," Benjamin 

 Kidd, 1895, p. 51.) 



