178 NATURAL SELECTION j- vni 



made him rise in a few centuries from the condition of the 

 wandering savage, with a scanty and stationary population, to 

 his present state of culture and advancement, with a greater 

 average longevity, a greater average strength, and a capacity 

 of more rapid increase, enable him when in contact with the 

 savage man to conquer in the struggle for existence, and to 

 increase at his expense, just as the better adapted increase at 

 the expense of the less adapted varieties in the animal and 

 vegetable kingdoms just as the weeds of Europe overrun 

 North America and Australia, extinguishing native produc- 

 tions by the inherent vigour of their organisation, and by 

 their greater capacity for existence and multiplication. 



The Origin of the Races of Man 



If these views are correct, if in proportion as man's social, 

 moral, and intellectual faculties became developed, his physical 

 structure would cease to be affected by the operation of 

 natural selection, we have a most important clue to the 

 origin of races. For it will follow that those great modifica- 

 tions of structure and of external form, which resulted in the 

 development of man out of some lower type of animal, must 

 have occurred before his intellect had raised him above the 

 condition of the brutes, at a period when he was gregarious, 

 but scarcely social, with a mind perceptive but not reflective, 

 ere any sense of right or feelings of sympathy had been 

 developed in him. He would be still subject, like the rest of 

 the organic world, to the action of natural selection, which 

 would retain his physical form and constitution in harmony 

 with the surrounding universe. He was probably at a very 

 early period a dominant race, spreading widely over the 

 warmer regions of the earth as it then existed, and in agree- 

 ment with what we see in the case of other dominant species, 

 gradually becoming modified in accordance with local con- 

 ditions. As he ranged farther from his original home, and 

 became exposed to greater extremes of climate, to greater 

 changes of food, and had to contend with new enemies, organic 

 and inorganic, slight useful variations in his constitution 

 would be selected and rendered permanent, and would, on 

 the principle of " correlation of growth," be accompanied by 

 corresponding external physical changes. Thus might have 



