170 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
theory, or is not sufficiently acquainted with the biological 
facts—has not the requisite amount of experimental know- 
ledge in Anthropology, Zoology, and Botany. 
If, as we maintain, natural selection is the great active 
cause which has produced the whole wonderful variety of 
organic life on the earth, all the interesting phenomena of 
human life must also be explicable from the same cause. 
For man is after all only a most highly-developed vertebrate 
animal, and all aspects of human life have their parallels, or, 
more correctly, their lower stages of development in the 
animal kingdom. The whole history of nations, or what is 
called “ Universal History,” must therefore be explicable by 
means of “natural selection,’-—must be a physico-chemical 
process, depending upon the interaction of Adaptation and 
Inheritance in the struggle for life. And this is actually 
the case. We shall give further proofs of this later on. 
It appears of interest here to remark that not only 
natural selection, but also artificial selection exercises its 
influence in many ways in universal history. A remark- 
able instance of artificial selection in man, on a great 
scale, is furnished by the ancient Spartans, among whom, 
in obedience to a special law, all newly-born children 
were subject to a careful examination and selection. All 
those that were weak, sickly, or affected with any bodily 
infirmity, were killed. Only the perfectly healthy and strong 
children were allowed to live, and they alone afterwards pro- 
pagated the race. By this means, the Spartan race was not 
only continually preserved in excellent strength and vigour, 
but the perfection of their bodies increased with every 
generation. No doubt the Spartans owed their rare degree 
' of masculine strength and rough heroic valour (for which 
