vin THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RACES 185 



the more intellectual and moral must displace the lower 

 and more degraded races ; and the power of " natural selec- 

 tion," still acting on his mental organisation, must ever lead 

 to the more perfect adaptation of man's higher faculties to 

 the conditions of surrounding nature, and to the exigencies 

 of the social state. While his external form will probably 

 ever remain unchanged, except in the development of that 

 perfect beauty which results from a healthy and well organised 

 body, refined and ennobled by the highest intellectual faculties 

 and sympathetic emotions, his mental constitution may con- 

 tinue to advance and improve, till the world is again inhabited 

 by a single nearly homogeneous race, no individual of which 

 will be inferior to the noblest specimens of existing humanity. 

 Our progress towards such a result is very slow, but it 

 still seems to be a progress. We are just now living at an 

 abnormal period of the world's history, owing to the marvel- 

 lous developments and vast practical results of science having 

 been given to societies too low morally and intellectually to 

 know how to make the best use of them, and to whom they 

 have consequently been curses as well as blessings. Among 

 civilised nations at the present day it does not seem possible 

 for natural selection to act in any way, so as to secure the 

 permanent advancement of morality and intelligence ; for it is 

 indisputably the mediocre, if not the low, both as regards 

 morality and intelligence, who succeed best in life and multiply 

 fastest. Yet there is undoubtedly an advance on the whole 

 a steady and a permanent one both in the influence on public 

 opinion of a high morality, and in the general desire for in- 

 tellectual elevation ; and as I cannot impute this in any way 

 to " survival of the fittest," I am forced to conclude that it 

 is due to the inherent progressive power of those glorious 

 qualities which raise us so immeasurably above our fellow 

 animals, and at the same time afford us the surest proof that 

 there are other and higher existences than ourselves, from 

 whom these qualities may have been derived, and towards 

 whom we may be ever tending. 



