INSTINCT AND REASON. 79 



would be useless, to uncultivated human beings. The 

 inference he draws ' from this class of phenomena is, 

 that a superior intelligence has guided the develop- 

 ment of man in a definite direction and for a special 

 purpose, just as man guides the development of many 

 animal and vegetable forms/ 



In this illustration he overlooks the circumstance 

 that man's selection is after all nothing more nor 

 less than part and parcel of natural selection. In his 

 argument from the various uses and powers of the 

 hand and brain, which could have been of no service 

 to men in a wild state, he neglects the consideration 

 that what is selected through being useful in one 

 direction may incidentally become useful in another. 

 Had he employed his usual ingenuity on the question 

 of man's hairless skin, he might have seen the pos- 

 sibility of its ' selection' through its superior beauty 

 or the health attaching to superior cleanliness. At 

 any rate it is surprising that he should picture to 

 himself a superior intelligence plucking the hair from 

 the backs of savage men, (to whom according to his 

 own account it would have been useful and beneficial) 

 in order that the descendants of the poor shorn wretches 

 might, after many deaths from cold and damp, in the 

 course of many generations take to tailoring and dab- 

 bling in bricks and mortar. In regard to the voice 

 he makes an assertion which is surely impossible for 

 himself or any one else to prove, namely, that { savages 

 certainly never choose their wives for fine voices.' But 

 upon this assertion the whole of his argument about 



