428 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



individuals. Organisation, especially in the form of 

 Intelligence, sets itself rather to maintain the individuals, 

 and in so doing improves the type. The rational organisa- 

 tion of life, from the dawn of parental care upwards, tends 

 to suspend the struggle upon which natural selection rests, 

 and there is here, for the believer in progress through 

 natural selection, an insoluble contradiction. The solution 



prominent facts of biological evolution, from the lowest organisms to man, 

 has been continued, though at a slower rate, within the limits of human 

 evolution. 



An indirect confirmation of this view is the greater variety of civilised 

 as compared with uncivilised man. The many-sidedness of civilisation as 

 compared with barbarism, and of higher civilisation as compared with 

 lower, is one of the central features of historical development. Accord- 

 ing to Professor Karl Pearson, this increased variability extends even to 

 physical structure (Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolu- 

 tion, Proc. Royal Society, Vol. LXI. No. 375), and he rightly points out 

 that this increase of variability implies a diminished pressure on the part 

 of natural selection. But there is a further point to be considered. We 

 are comparing the capacity of different societies to maintain their mem- 

 bers. But the difficulty of so doing increases, within limits and under 

 conditions that need not be specified here, in proportion to the density of 

 population. It is here that we find the greatest differences between 

 civilised and lower races. The greater part of the savage and barbarian 

 world is thinly peopled, and no great aggregations of population are to 

 be found below the level of the great European and Asiatic civilisations. 

 Elsewhere it appears that density of population is confined to small 

 specially favoured areas, such as the Gilbert Islands and certain spots in 

 the Black Belt of Africa. For great masses of population we must go to 

 the civilised lands of China, Japan, India, or Western Europe. In the 

 case of the first three the growth of population is dependent as much on 

 natural advantages as on the social order, though in the third case the 

 maintenance of the Pax Britannica has been responsible for an enormous 

 growth during the past century. There remains the case of Western 

 Europe, which we assume to be the home of the highest civilisation of 

 all. Here the average density is indeed below that of China, but it 

 implies a still higher grade in the mastery of the conditions of life. 

 Density and increase of population become at this stage independent of 

 natural advantages, or more accurately, men adapt to their use and profit 

 conditions which at a lower stage they would find unfavourable or im- 

 possible to cope with. Hence of course the far spreading range of the 

 white man and his dominance in climates not his own. Thus in uncivilised 

 countries population is generally sparse, in civilised countries of the 

 second rank it becomes dense under favourable conditions, while in the 

 higher civilisation it becomes relatively independent of the bounties of 

 nature. There can then be little doubt that the power to maintain the 

 life of its members by which we have measured the " efficiency " of 

 a species increases in a very marked degree as we pass from the lowest 

 to the highest phases of human development. 



I have not thought it necessary to complicate this note by the insertion 

 of more recent figures which would only emphasise the general argument. 

 In England in particular the fall in the infantile death rate in response to 

 deliberate and organised effort has been marked since 1900. 



