186 



HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



[chap. 



Vii;tory in 

 liiitnan 

 CO iflicts 

 lU^pends 

 on moml 

 causes. 



but by that which is peculiar to himself. The reason of 

 this is, that the mental nature, which distinguishes man 

 from the lower animals, is also that in which consists the 

 superiority of one man, and of one race of men, to another. 

 This is a case of the law which I have mentioned in several 

 places, that mental characters are more variable than 

 bodily ones. But though it is a case of a biological law, it 

 is none the less the ground of the truth that history is 

 almost entirely not a physical but a mental process — or, as 

 we say in more famUiar language, that history is associated 

 not with the physical but with the moral sciences. It is 

 true that such physical causes as those which belong to 

 geography and climate have had a most powerful intiueuce 

 on the course of history ; but this does not make history a 

 physical science : just as the facts of organic life cannot be 

 understood without reference to the external conditions of 

 life in the earth, the waters, and the air, and yet the laws 

 of life are distinct from those of matter. 



The law of natural selection implies that the life of 

 every species is an incessant struggle for existence ; and 

 what causes advance in organization is, that victory in the 

 struggle falls, on the whole, to the superior races. This is 

 as true of man as of any other species ; the whole history 

 of man is a tale of struggle and conflict ; ^ but what con- 

 stitutes the peculiarity of human history is this, that 

 among the lower races the conditions of success are almost 

 exclusively pliysical, while with man they are almost ex- 

 clusively moral. Among animals, victory, the preservation 

 of life, and the chance of leaving offspring, depend on such 

 qualities as fleetness, strength, keenness of sight or of scent, 

 or, at the highest, on sagacity and cunning. The same 

 may have been true of man in his earliest prehistoric con- 

 dition, when as yet he was but little removed above the 

 higher animals. But in any state of man which history 

 records, and doubtless for long ages before the dawn of 

 history, victory has been determined, on the whole, by 



1 What follows has been in a gieat rlfgi-ee suj,'ge»teil by a most able 

 article, entitled "The Natural History of Morals," in the Xoiih British 

 Rccicir of December 1867. 



