88 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[February 1, 1888. 



and other anthropoid apes, including the progenitor of 

 ancestral savage man, were developed, was one ; and these 

 diverse forms resulted from the effects of environment and 

 natural selection laading to the survival of the fittest. 



In any case we must remember this, that even if we 

 regard men and existing apes as directly descended from a 

 common ancestral race, we must recognise not merely the 

 probability but the certainty that all the races of apes have 

 changed as much from that ancestral type as man has, or as 

 have all races of men if we regard Caucasian, Semite, 

 Nubian, Malay, and Polynesian as races having each their 

 origin from some definite section of the primeval anthropoid 

 stock. Even if the gorilla is the nearest among our ape 

 cousins, it by no means follows that there have not been 

 several races which— descended from the same common 

 stock — would have been far nearer to man, had not circum- 

 stances led to their extinction. And whichever, even 

 among such races, had been nearest to us if continued till 

 now, would still probably have shown about twice the 

 divergence which the common ancestral race bad undergone 

 on its progress towards man, since its progress towards that 

 ape race (as it would now be) would have involved as much 

 divergence in one direction as its progress towards man had 

 involved in the other. 



When we consider the real way in which Darwin re- 

 garded the development of a new race, and compare it with 

 the way in which Professor Miiller regards man as descended 

 from a single pair, we shall recognise on the one hand the 

 impossibility of a single pair being arrived at (except in a 

 dying-out race), and on the other the impossibility of a single 

 pair, even if of the most stalwart frame and of the soundest 

 constitution, becoming the progenitors of a thriving race. 



A new race is only developed when an old race which has 

 perhaps continued long without change is exposed to new 

 conditions, owing to some change in the environment. 

 Then, and then only, comes into action the principle of the 

 survival of the fittest (for when the conditions have long 

 been unchanged, the bulk of the community are well 

 fitted to survive). Now the very nature of the doctrine of 

 the survival of the fittest requires that there should be 

 many of the more fit or less fit, or of the more or less unfit, 

 on whom the environment should exert its selective in- 

 fluence. 



Ob.serve that if the influences of the environment are too 

 searching, the fittest indeed survive, but those thus fit are 

 few, and at each successive generation the total number 

 diminishes until extinction ensues. On the way towards 

 .such extinction there might well be at last only one pair 

 left ; but assuredly that pair would not save the race from 

 extinction. The fact that a race once numerous had 

 dwindled to a pair would suflice to render the extinction of 

 the race certain. But when the influences of the environ- 

 ment, though potent, are not destructive, the numbers of 

 the race, though they may be afiected at first, are not 

 diminished in the long run ; and so soon as the process of 

 development, whatever it may be, which is necessary to fit 

 the race for its surroundings, has been accomplished, the 

 race will begin to increase and thrive. So that the modified 

 race resulting from the principle of natural selection will be 

 numerous and thriving even at the beginning of its career, 

 and gi-ow more numerous while the conditions remain un- 

 changed, to be again sifted out in some degree with further 

 change in the developments, yet always eventually to grow 

 and thrive — progressing towards greater and greater corre- 

 spondence with its altered environment. 



So much is true of all races developed by the process of 

 natural selection. Many races necessarily perish in the 

 process. But the principle of the sur\nval of the fittest 

 applies to races as to individuals. And so far as the 



biological problems actually before us are concerned, we 

 have to consider only the i-aces which have survived, not 

 those which have died out. 



Taking man, a race which, whether his origin was single 

 or multiple, has most assuredly survived, we see that, what- 

 ever the conditions under which that particular race or 

 those particular races which preceded savage man existed, 

 there arose in some way a struggle for existence through 

 changes in the surrounding conditions. This struggle 

 caused some anthropoid creatures, very great in number, 

 very thriving in habitudes, and well fitted to withstand 

 change, to undergo marked development through the opera- 

 tion of natural selection, in such sort as to become men — 

 uncouth, cave-dwelling, tree-climbing — in fine, savage, but 

 still very certainly men. Besides those qualities, absolutely 

 essential to their survival, the primeval anthropoids from 

 whom man descended must have been very numerous, 

 whether they belonged to one race and were to give birth 

 to all varieties of men, or to several races, and were to give 

 birth severally to several distinct human races. Not other- 

 wise can a healthy, thriving oS"spring-race be even imagined, 

 except by the operation of miracle, which science (never 

 seeing miracles in operation) very properly and completely 

 rejects. 



Thus, while a numerous and a healthful race was reached 

 before man began, from which race man was to be developed 

 — not by the dying out of all save a pair, but by the sur. 

 vival of the fittest by hundreds of thousands — since the 

 descent of the human or any other race from a single 

 pair is, in fact, entirely inconsistent with all which expe- 

 lience has taught us — man may have descended from one 

 ancestor, meaning one ancestral type, or from several, as is 

 in my judgment (viewing the matter mathematically) alto- 

 gether the more probable. But that man can have descended 

 from a single pair is disproved doubly, first by the feet that, 

 along the line of biological descent under crucial conditions 

 of environment, no single healthful pair can ever have 

 been reached, and secondly by the circumstance that if a 

 healthful pair were artificially selected (all other membera of 

 the jace being destroyed) to start a race, no healthy race 

 could po.ssibly descend from them (excepting always by 

 miracle). 



And now having attained a stage where some advanced 

 form of anthropoid ape is likely to undergo a marked pro- 

 cess of development, not necessarily including the acquisi- 

 tion of some kind of language, we see how the developing 

 race might, as the very condition of their existence, have to 

 form societies for mutual protection. Men, even in the 

 beginning of their existence as such, and therefore their 

 immediate progenitors, can never have been physically com- 

 paiable with suiTounding races. I am aware that the 

 gorilla is so comparable ; but that shows merely how he has 

 diverged from the ancestral ape from whom man descended. 

 Along the human line of descent social qualities were 

 developed as essential to successful existence : the gorilla 

 and kindred apes have made their successful struggle for 

 strength through mere strength ; and probably they have 

 paid for it by a process of intellectual degradation as marked 

 as the process of intellectual elevation by which their kins- 

 folk, men, have secured survival, and eventually thriving 

 sui'vival by social interrelations. 



Imagine, then, a race of arboreal apes, weaker and gentler 

 than the gorilla or orang-outang (even than these probably 

 were before their present powerful frames were developed), 

 and suppose such a race exposed to a struggle for existence 

 constantly increasing in stringency, owing to the develop- 

 ment of swift and strong carnivorous races around them, or 

 in their midst. We may even perhaps imagine, further, the 

 gradual retreat of this race of Pithecanthropoids, or ape- 



