114 ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



the unerected ape. It is of course easy to con- 

 ceive of the advantages of having, say, four free 

 limbs instead of two, or six fingers on each hand 

 instead of five. But it is not possible to conceive 

 how such modifications could be produced by the 

 known factors of organic evolution ; two well- 

 guided limbs would be worth twenty ill-guided. We 

 must therefore rather look to the brain as the seat 

 of further physical changes. But whatever enlarge- 

 ment of the brain, whatever further complications 

 of its convolutions or thickening of its grey matter 

 be conceived, the creature so equipped would still 

 be man ; Uebermensch or " superman " if you please, 

 but still man. The physical characters that differen- 

 tiated his body as a whole from the human body 

 of to-day would be characters not of evolution, but 

 of involution. Psycho-physical evolution may but 

 have left the mark ; but physical evolution has 

 reached its goal. 



CHAPTER XIV 



THE FUTURE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



It is, then, to his mind rather than his body that 

 we must look for the future evolution of man. But 

 mind and body are closely related, and the material 

 cell which reproduces a father's body in his child 

 may also reproduce his mental characters. Indeed, 

 Professor Karl Pearson may be regarded as having 

 proved that there is a very high degree of correla- 

 tion between the inheritance of physical and the 

 inheritance of mental characters. Hence, whilst we 



