120 The Utility of Mind. 



natural selection. For it enables man to do at 

 once what nature takes ages to accomplish for the 

 other animals ; it enables him to adapt himself 

 to his environment without change in bodily 

 structure and organization. Imagine a group of 

 carnivorous animals suddenly exposed to a severer 

 climate and obliged to capture more powerful 

 prey ; only those with the warmest natural cloth 

 ing and strongest claws and teeth could manage 

 to survive ; and as the battle with their evil star 

 grew fiercer, the group, if not altogether exter 

 minated, must languish through the long course 

 of aeons until their modifying organs and struct 

 ures had become completely adapted to the new 

 requirements through the play of natural selec 

 tion. But the mental powers of man render him, 

 in similar circumstances, independent of nature. 

 He makes thicker clothing, and he fashions 

 sharper weapons or constructs more cunning pit 

 falls. Simple as these performances seem, how 

 infinitely advantageous they must have been in 

 the struggle for life. When the intelligence 

 which made them possible first appeared upon 

 the scene, it effected &quot; a revolution which [to 

 quote the language of Mr. Alfred Russell Wal 

 lace] in all the previous ages of the earth s history 

 had no parallel, for a being had arisen who was 



