iU NATURAL SELECTION AND 



allow, not useful, except, indeed, in so far as 

 saying clever things keeps people from doing 

 foolish ones ; and since wit is only a bye-pro- 

 duct of a complex brain, and not a variation 

 useful to the species, we can easily account for 

 its sporadic appearance and for the fact that 

 most men "joke wi' deeficulty." Wit can only 

 exist where there is a general high average of 

 brain power, which is useful. When life can 

 be taken with some amount of ease, then, and 

 only then, do this and the other bye-products 

 get a chance and escape destruction. 



4- CONCLUSION. 



Thus natural selection, which is a true cause, 

 seems a perfectly adequate cause to account for 

 the appearance of all those intellectual capa- 

 cities of human nature ; and, if social evolution 

 be rightly understood, there is nothing contra- 

 dictory to natural selection in the occasional 

 appearance of very high forms of them. The 

 spiritual world need not be summoned as a 

 mysterious counterpart to the material world, 

 intruding itself into the latter, wherever the 

 scientific investigator finds a difficulty at first 

 sight, or the person who is afraid of science 



