CHAPTER XXIV 

 THE KINGDOM OF MAN 



THE greatest zoologist of his time, Sir E. Ray 

 Lankester, has said that man has differed from 

 all other inhabitants of the 'animal kingdom in 

 being able to resist the pressure of circumstances which 

 have altered and destroyed them. In all the cases of 

 the animals which we have been considering, these crea- 

 tures have been limited by the conditions of geography ; 

 they have been killed by extremes of heat and cold; 

 they have been subject to starvation if one kind of diet 

 were unobtainable; and they have constantly altered in 

 shape, structure, and appearance, according to the re- 

 quirements of the new conditions in which they found 

 themselves. But man^s mind and will have enabled him 

 to cross rivers and oceans by rafts and boats, to clothe 

 himself against cold, to shelter himself from heat and 

 rain, to prepare an endless variety of food by fire, and to 

 increase and multiply as no other animal without change of 

 form, and without submitting to the terrible axe of selec- 

 tion wielded by ruthless circumstance over all other living 

 things on this globe. "And as he has more and more 

 obtained this control over his surroundings, he has 

 expanded that unconscious protective attitude towards 



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