THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. 107 



3. INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION. 



The mathematical, the musical and the 

 artistic faculties, the metaphysical faculty and 

 "the peculiar faculty of wit and humour" are 

 considered by Mr. Wallace to supply the 

 strongest arguments for the insufficiency of 

 natural selection to account for mental evolu- 

 tion. They are, he argues, of no use to 

 savages, and yet men must have these faculties 

 latent in them, because they appear, though in 

 very different degrees, among civilised races. 

 Now, in the first place, is it true that the 

 mathematical faculty and the musical faculty 

 are of no use to the lower races in their 

 struggle for existence ? Undoubtedly, the 

 primitive savage who became abstracted over 

 a mathematical problem, like Archimedes, 

 would die of starvation, if he did not rather 

 help to ward off the same calamity from wild 

 beasts or other wild men ; but the savage who 

 could count more than five would have an 

 advantage over his rivals who never g^ot 

 beyond the fingers of one hand ; the mother 

 who could not count her children would 

 succeed in rearing- fewer than the mother 



