viii THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RACES 179 



arisen those striking characteristics and special modifications 

 which still distinguish the chief races of mankind. The red, 

 black, yellow, or blushing white skin ; the straight, the curly, 

 the woolly hair; the scanty or 'abundant beard; the straight 

 or oblique eyes ; the various forms of the pelvis, the cranium, 

 and other parts of the skeleton. 



But while these changes had been going on, his mental 

 development had, from some unknown cause, greatly advanced, 

 and had now reached that condition in which it began power- 

 fully to influence his whole existence, and would therefore 

 become subject to the irresistible action of natural selection. 

 This action would quickly give the ascendency to mind : 

 speech would probably now be first developed, leading to a 

 still further advance of the mental faculties ; and from that 

 moment man, as regards the form and structure of most parts 

 of his body, would remain almost stationary. The art of 

 making weapons, division of labour, anticipation of the future, 

 restraint of the appetites, moral, social, and sympathetic feel- 

 ings, would now have a preponderating influence on his well- 

 being, and would therefore be that part of his nature on 

 which natural selection would most powerfully act; and 

 we should thus have explained that wonderful persistence of 

 mere physical characteristics which is the stumbling-block of 

 those who advocate the unity of mankind. 



We are now, therefore, enabled to harmonise the conflict- 

 ing views of anthropologists on this subject. Man may have 

 been indeed I believe must have been once a homogeneous 

 race ; but it was at a period of which we have as yet dis- 

 covered no remains at a period so remote in his history that 

 he had not yet acquired that wonderfully developed brain, 

 the organ of the mind, which now, even in his lowest examples, 

 raises him far above the highest brutes at a period when 

 he had the form but hardly the nature of man, when he 

 neither possessed human speech, nor those sympathetic and 

 moral feelings which in a greater or less degree everywhere 

 now distinguish the race. Just in proportion as these truly 

 human faculties became developed in him would his physical 

 features become fixed and permanent, because the latter would 

 be of less importance to his well-being ; he would bo kept in 

 harmony with the slowly changing universe around him, by 



