August 1, 1887.] 



♦ KNOWLKDGE ♦ 



221 



although under civilised conditions the weak and diseased 

 are coddled, and even multiply their kind, this check is too 

 local to affect the larger result, while that which the race 

 might gain in physique by its removal is not to be com- 

 pared to the loss that would ensue from the repression of 

 mercy and sympathy. In a barbaric society weakliags 

 like Newton and hu.ichbaeks like Pop3 would have been 

 left to perish ; civilisation spares them, and humanity is 

 enriched by their genius. 



As the chief difference between man and his nearest 

 congeners, the highest apss, is in the size and creases of the 

 brain, brain-capacity being the measure of advance in the 

 life-scale, it follows that he has reached the topmost place 

 through the action of natural selection in the modification 

 of his brain more than of his body, for his erect position 

 and modifiaition of the fore feet into hands were due to his 

 superior intelligence, mind ruling function, and function 

 ruling structure. Whichever among the arboreal creatures 

 from whom he isdescended possessed any favourable variation, 

 however slight, in structure of brain and ."iense-organs, would 

 seciu-e an advantage over less favoured rivals in the struggle 

 for food and place and mates. The qualities which gave 

 them success would be transmitted to their offspring, the 

 distance over their competitors gained in one generation 

 would be increased in the nest, brainpower conquering 

 brute force, skill outwitting strength, till the chasm between 

 man and the highest ape, and ultimately between man 

 savage and man civili.'ied, became impassable. 



For in following the evolution of mind to its highest 

 operations and results, the compai-ison lies between the 

 several races of mankind. Darwin says that he does not 

 believe it possible to describe the difference between savage 

 and civilised man. " It is the difference between a wild 

 and tame animal, and part of the interest in beholding a 

 savage is the .same which would lead every one to desire to 

 see the lion in his desert, the tiger tearing his prey in the 

 jungle, the rhinoceros wandering over the wide plains of 

 Africa." He dc-^cribes the Fuegians, who rank amongst the 

 lowest savages, as men " whose very signs and expressions are 

 less intelh'gible to us than those of the domesticated animals — • 

 men who do not pos,sess the instinct of those animals, nor 

 yet appear to boast of human reason, or at least of arts 

 consequent on that reason." • Such i-aces are much nearer 

 to the ape than to the Caucasian. 



The fundamental likeness between the varieties of 

 man evidence that the physical and mental differences 

 which mark him from the highest apes had been acquired 

 before his migration from the place of his origin and 

 development, wherever that may have been. That migia- 

 tion, however, occurred long enough ago for the play 

 of causes effecting the enormous differences just named. 

 But we can only iijfer from the condition of existing 

 savages what " primitive " man was like. Doubtless 

 he was lower than the lowest of these — a biped, with 

 powerful sense-organs (always keener, in virtue of constant 

 exercise, in the savage than in the civilised, who supple- 

 ments them by science), strong instincts, uncontrolled and 

 fitful emotions, small faculty of wonder and nascent reason- 

 ing power ; unable to forecast to-mcrrow or to comprehend 

 yesterday, living from hand to mouth on the wild products 

 of nature, and finding shelter in trees and caves, ignorant of 

 the simplest arts, sa\-e to chip a stone missile and, perhaps, 

 to produce fire, strong in his need of life and vague sense of 

 right to it and to what he could get, but slowly impelled 

 by common perils and pa.*sions to form ties, loose and hap- 

 hazard at the outset, with his kind, the power of combina- 

 tion with them depending on sound-signs and gestures. 



* " Xatoralist's Voyage Round the World," p. oOi. 



Such, in broad outline, was probably the general con- 

 dition of the earliest known wanderers, the relics of whose 

 presence — rudely-fa.shioned stone tools and weapons — are 

 found associated with the bones of huge extinct mammals, 

 as the mammoth and the cave-lion, in old river-beds and 

 limestone caverns. As the successive deposits and their 

 contents show, not till long ages had pas,sed, bringing new 

 and settled conditions, with knowledge of agriculture, 

 metals, and other useful arts, do we find any marked 

 progress among mankind. Even that progress, great and 

 not unchecked, as both ancient and modern civilisations 

 witness, has been confined to a minority of the species and 

 to a narrow zone, while, compared to the antiquity of man, 

 it is but as yesterday. The enterprise of the higher races 

 has explored and utilised large tracts, and the prR'^sure of 

 population at the centres of civilisation has within quite 

 recent periods vastly extended their radii, but whole em- 

 pires, advancing to a certain stage, have through isolation 

 and the tyranny of custom, or dread of change, stagnated, 

 whilst the lowest races have remained unmodified, like the 

 lowest organisms, and have more or less succumbed before 

 the imported vices and the weapons of the white man. But 

 the c luses of arrest and of advance are alike complex ; man, 

 like every other living thing, is the creature of outward and 

 inward circumstances, and many influences have worked in 

 the shaping of his destiny. Certainly, extremes of climate 

 have been fatal to advance beyond a given stage ; it is in 

 the temperate zones that the incentives exist to continuous 

 and indefinite progress. 



]\Ian by himself is unprogressive ; therefore his advance 

 is due to the cultivation of the social instincts. " There is 

 a wonderful spirit of sociality in the brute creation, inde- 

 pendent of sexual attachment," wrote Gilbert White in 

 177."), and Darwin remarks that " the social animals which 

 stand at the bottom of the scale are guided almost 

 exclusively, and those which stand higher in the scale are 

 Largely guided, by special instincts in the aid which they 

 give to the members of the same community ; but they are 

 likewise in part impelled by mutual love and sympathy, 

 assisted apparently by some amount of reason." * In the 

 degiee that animals are social, we find them higher in the 

 scale, as ants, bees, and wasps among insects ; and, among 

 domestic animals, dogs, whose wild ancestors hunted in 

 packs, as compared with cats, which inherit the more 

 solitai-y and wandering habits of their wild ancestors. 



Man inherits the social instincts of a remote ancestry. 

 Farther back than the records of his presence take us, he 

 found strength in unity, and the more so in virtue of his 

 physical inferiority to many animals. His normal state 

 was one of conflict, both with them and with his own 

 species, for Carlyle's remark that " the ultimate question 

 between every two human beings is, ' Can I kill thee, 

 or canst thou kill me T " is true of every stage of 

 man's history. The struggle is all along the line ; it 

 may change its tactics and its weapons ; among advanced 

 nations the military method may be more or less super- 

 seded by the industrial, and men may be mercilessly starved 

 instead of being mercifully slain, but, be it war of camps or 

 markets, the ultiiuate appeal is to force, and the hardiest 

 and craftiest win. But they that have hope of their kind 

 believe that these shall not always prevail. 



W^e do not know what the earliest social unions were like. 

 Probably there were no family arrangements as we under- 

 stand the term, but only various kinds of relations, more or 

 less fugitive, between groups of men and women. The 

 details, however, do not affect the general fact of social 

 intercourse, in which community of interest was the binding 



* " Descent of Man," p. 109. 



