164 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART HI 



proved rational methods. In particular he supple- 

 ments his body by the use of tools. But if man adds 

 new resources to the resources of his body, he also 

 counteracts many of its defects, e.g. he counteracts 

 defective eyesight by the use of spectacles. There is 

 a danger here ; for it is implied that natural selection 

 does not kill off defective human types as it kills off 

 defective animal types. We shall even be told by 

 Weismann that, natural selection ceasing to operate, 

 we ought to postulate not merely the arrest of the body, 

 but its retrogression. Man might not retrograde as a 

 whole; body plus reason he might become a more 

 effective creature in civilised times than he was in 

 savage or barbarous ages ; but "what of his body ? 

 Confessedly, its advance has been arrested. Is it not 

 inevitable that it should have receded, as civilisation 

 has been developed by reason ? If we tried to verify 

 this suggestion by a reference to facts, we should prob- 

 ably meet with a good deal of evidence on both sides. 

 Except the few professional athletes, civilised men are 

 poor creatures physically in comparison with the higher 

 savages. Whole faculties have gone amissing, and 

 others have left the merest aborted remnants. Yet 

 the civilised man displays much physical toughness in 

 the ordeal of disease, while the " noble savage " 

 breaks down. 



Before leaving this point for the present, we ought 

 to refer to its bearing on the question of man's place 

 in nature. Is man the highest possible product of 

 terrestrial evolution ? That is plainly affirmed by Mr. 

 Fiske ; and the same view is supported by Professor 

 Cleland of Glasgow, 1 on more specially anatomical 



1 As cited by Drummond, Ascent of Man, p. 144. 



