466 DARWINISM chap. 



to them we are limited to two possible theories. Either pre- 

 historic and savage man did not possess this faculty at all 

 (or only in its merest rudiments) ; or they did possess it, but 

 had neither the means nor the incitements for its exercise. 

 In the former case we have to ask by what means has this 

 faculty been so rapidly developed in all civilised races, many 

 of which a few centuries back were, in this respect, almost 

 savages themselves ; while in the latter case the difficulty is 

 still greater, for we have to assume the existence of a faculty 

 which had never been used either by the supposed possessors 

 of it or by their ancestors. 



Let us take, then, the least difficult supposition — that 

 savages possessed only the mere rudiments of the faculty, such 

 as their ability to count, sometimes up to ten, but with an 

 utter inability to perform the very simplest processes of 

 arithmetic or of geometry — and inquire how this rudimentary 

 faculty became rapidly developed into that of a Newton, a 

 La Place, a Gauss, or a Cayley. We will admit that there is 

 every possible gradation between these extremes, and that 

 there has been perfect continuity in the development of the 

 faculty ; but we ask, What motive power caused its develop- 

 ment? 



It must be remembered we are here dealing solely with 

 the capability of the Darwinian theory to account for the 

 origin of the mind, as well as it accounts for the origin of the 

 body of man, and we must, therefore, recall the essential features 

 of that theory. These are, the preservation of useful varia- 

 tions in the struggle for life ; that no creature can be improved 

 beyond its necessities for the time being ; that the law acts by 

 life and death, and by the survival of the fittest. We have to 

 ask, therefore, what relation the successive stages of improve- 

 ment of the mathematical faculty had to the life or death of 

 its possessors ; to the struggles of tribe with tribe, or nation 

 >vith nation ; or to the ultimate survival of one race and the 

 extinction of another. If it cannot possibly have had any 

 such effects, then it cannot have been produced by natural 

 selection. 



It is evident that in the struggles of savage man ^vith the 

 elements and with wild beasts, or of tribe with tribe, this 

 faculty can have had no influence. It had nothing to do with 



