Survival of the Fittest. 449 



greatest number of offspring, and that the tribes which 

 included the largest number of men possessed of such supe- 

 rior endowments would increase in number and eventually 

 supplant the other tribes. Numbers depend primarily on 

 the means of subsistence, and this on the physical nature of 

 the country, but in a much higher degree upon the arts 

 therein practised. As a tribe increases and is victorious, it 

 is often still further increased by the absorption of other 

 tribes, and after a time the tribes which are thus absorbed 

 into another tribe assume, as has been remarked by Mr. 

 Maine in his " Ancient Law," that they are the co-descend- 

 ants of the same ancestors. Stature and strength in the 

 men of a tribe are also of importance in its success, and 

 these are dependent in part upon the character and the 

 quantity of food that can be obtained. Men of the Bronze 

 Period in Europe were supplanted by a larger-handed and 

 more powerful race, but their success was probably due in a 

 much higher degree to their superiority in the arts. All 

 that is known by savages, as inferred from their traditions 

 and from old monuments, shows that from the most remote 

 times successful tribes have supplanted others. Relics of 

 extinct tribes have been found on the wild plains of America 

 and on the isolated islands in the Pacific Ocean. Civilized 

 nations are everywhere at the present time supplanting bar- 

 barous peoples, excepting where climate opposes a fatal 

 barrier, and they thus succeed in a great measure, though 

 not exclusively, through the arts, which are the products of 

 the intellect. With mankind, then, it is highly probable 

 that the intellectual faculties have been gradually perfected 

 through Natural Selection. Undoubtedly it would have 

 been interesting to have traced the development of each 

 separate faculty from the state in which it exists in the lower 

 animals to that in which it exists in man, but this would 

 have been a task of no easy accomplishment. As soon, 

 however, as the progenitors of man became social, and this 

 probably occurred at a very early period, the advancement of 



