184 NATURAL SELECTION vin 



By his superior sympathetic and moral feelings he becomes 

 fitted for the social state ; he ceases to plunder the weak and 

 helpless of his tribe ; he shares the game which he has caught 

 with less active or less fortunate hunters, or exchanges it for 

 weapons which even the weak or the deformed can fashion ; 

 he saves the sick and wounded from death ; and thus the 

 power which leads to the rigid destruction of all animals who 

 cannot in every respect help themselves, is prevented from 

 acting on him. 



This power is natural selection ; and, as by no other 

 means can it be shown that individual variations can ever 

 become accumulated and rendered permanent, so as to form 

 well-marked races, it follows that the differences which now 

 separate mankind from other animals must have been pro- 

 duced before he became possessed of a human intellect or 

 human sympathies. This view also renders possible, or even 

 requires, the existence of man at a comparatively remote 

 geological epoch. For, during the long periods in which other 

 animals have been undergoing modification in their whole 

 structure, to such an amount as to constitute distinct genera 

 and families, man's body will have remained genetically, or even 

 specifically, the same, while his head and brain alone will have 

 undergone modification equal to theirs. We can thus under- 

 stand how it is that, judging from the head and brain, Pro- 

 fessor Owen places man in a distinct sub-class of mammalia, 

 while as regards the bony structure of his body, there is the 

 closest anatomical resemblance to the anthropoid apes, " every 

 tooth, every bone, strictly homologous which makes the 

 determination of the difference between Homo and Pitliecus 

 the anatomist's difficulty." The present theory fully recog- 

 nises and accounts for these facts ; and we may perhaps 

 claim as corroborative of its truth that it neither requires us 

 to depreciate the intellectual chasm which separates man from 

 the apes, nor refuses full recognition of the striking resem- 

 blances to them, which exist in other parts of his structure. 



In concluding this brief sketch of a great subject, I would 

 point out its bearing upon the future of the human race. If my 

 conclusions are just, it must inevitably follow that the higher 



