164 The Evolution of Arms and Armor. 



orders that were provided with its massive outside varieties, 

 and the survival and supremacy of those that have been 

 equipped with its inner and finer forms. Orthoceras and 

 Dinichthys, Megalosaur and Megathere, Icthyosaur and 

 Iguanodon, monsters armed with shell and scale, tooth and 

 claw, enormous and terrible, have all without exception 

 gone down in the great life-battle ; while those whose 

 weapons were the finer skeleton, the keener sense, the 

 quicker nerve, the larger brain and the stronger social in- 

 stinct, faculties good for peace as well as war, and some 

 that apparently have had no outward fighting-apparatus at 

 all, nothing but inner shrewdness and wisdom, are the 

 races that have been victorious, and survived. Even the 

 armed ones whose descendants are still on the field, as the 

 lion and the tiger, the eagle and the shark, have evidently 

 held on by virtue of their quickened inner powers, rather 

 than through their outward strength; or else, as with the 

 oyster and the clam, by reason of their insignificance and 

 unprogressiveness, rather than because of their hardened 

 shells. And man, the one that has progressed most of all, 

 that has become the head of the animal kingdom and 

 the lord and master of the earth, he is the one that, out- 

 Avardly, is the most unweaponed and defenseless of all ; the 

 one whose claws are taper fingers, whose skin every mos- 

 quito can puncture, and whose armor of thought has no size 

 or weight whatever. 



What is the reason of this result, what the underlying 

 causes why inward development should thus prove itself 

 more effective in the struggle for life than outside strength ? 

 They are not hard to find. To begin with, the animals 

 that trusted to exterior arms and armor were less able to 

 adapt themselves to the ever-changing conditions of the 

 earth and of food supply, than those Avhose weapons were 

 within. The very things which protected them against one 

 set of elements made them often the more exjjosed to be 

 overcome by another set, as the heavy fur, so warm lor 

 AVinter, becomes an intolerable burden under the heats of 

 Summer. The endowments that were efficient against one set 

 of enemies, by reason of their bulk, were inefficient against 

 another set by reason of their unwieldiness, as the huge 

 frigates, so ])owerful against each other broadside to, are 

 helpless against the lively little ram that rakes them turn- 

 ing round. And as the struggle went on between thi'-ker 



