78 INSTINCT AND REASON. 



of thought, the same routine seems to prevail from 

 generation to generation. Fashion in dress changes but 

 slowly when the dress itself is nothing but a girdle ; 

 and the fashions of the mind change with as little 

 facility when ideas and wants, and the means of ex- 

 pressing the one and gratifying the other, are all 

 alike few and extremely simple. 



So simple are the wants and ideas of the savage, so 

 little above those of the elephant and the ape, that 

 Mr. Wallace finds himself driven to the conclusion 

 that the savage f in his large and well-developed brain 

 possesses an organ quite disproportionate to his actual 

 requirements an organ that seems prepared in ad- 

 vance, only to be fully utilized as he progresses in 

 civilization/ But anything quite disproportionate to its 

 actual place in nature cannot have been produced ac- 

 cording to the theory of development. This theory 

 therefore Mr. Wallace deems and declares inapplicable 

 to the brain and mind of man. In support of his 

 view he adduces several circumstances both of man's 

 bodily and mental constitution, which he considers 

 this theory incapable of explaining. He maintains 

 that natural selection will not account for those rudi- 

 ments of logical, moral, and aesthetic faculties which 

 are to be found in uncivilized man ; for the naked- 

 ness of the human skin, though hair upon the back 

 would be of essential service to the unclad savage ; 

 for the absence of prehensile power from the human 

 foot, a power which he thinks would be useful, or for 

 those perfections of hand and voice which he thinks 



