72 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



possessing great size, strength, and ferocity, and which, 

 like the gorilla, could defend itself from all enemies, would 

 not perhaps have become social: and this would most effect- 

 ually have checked the acquirement of the higher mental 

 qualities, such as sympathy and the love of his fellows. 

 Hence it might have been an immense advantage to man to 

 have sprung from some comparatively weak creature. 



The small strength and speed of man, his want of nat- 

 ural weapons, etc., are more than counterbalanced, firstly, 

 by his intellectual powers, through which he has formed 

 for himself weapons, tools, etc., though still remaining in 

 a barbarous state, and secondly, by his social qualities which 

 lead him to give and receive aid from his fellow-men. No 

 country in the world abounds in a greater degree with dan- 

 gerous beasts than Southern Africa; no country presents 

 more fearful physical hardships than the Arctic regions; 

 yet one of the puniest of races, that of the Bushmen, main- 

 tains itself in Southern Africa, as do the dwarfed Esqui- 

 maux in the Arctic regions. The ancestors of man were, 

 no doubt, inferior in intellect, and probably in social dis- 

 position to the lowest existing savages; but it is quite con- 

 ceivable that they might have existed, or even flourished, 

 if they had advanced in intellect, while gradually losing 

 their brute-like powers, such as that of climbing trees, etc. 

 But these ancestors would not have been exposed to any 

 special danger, even if far more helpless and defenseless 

 than any existing savages, had they inhabited some warm 

 continent or large island, such as Australia, New Guinea, 

 or Borneo, which is now the home of the orang. And 

 natural selection arising from the competition of tribe with 

 tribe in some such large area as one of these, together with 

 the inherited effects of habit, would, under favorable con- 

 ditions, have sufficed to raise man to his present high 

 position in the organic scale. 



