HIS FUNCTIONAL RELATIONS. 91 



became a settler in the Americas, in South Africa, 

 Australia, and New Zealand. 



And just as man, in his progress to civilisation and 

 refinement, interferes with the natural distribution of 

 plant-life and animal life, so in a similar manner he 

 interferes with the distribution of his own race, civil- 

 ising and amialgamating with those who are nearly 

 related, and extirpating those who are widely different 

 and incapable of civilisation. Wherever there is in- 

 capacity for civilisation, irresistible as doom itself the 

 advancing variety will pass over and absorb the 

 stationary ; and the higher the civilisation of the 

 aggressive race the more rapid and thorough the 

 extermination of the inferior and declining. In this 

 way and under the rapid advancement of the white 

 man melt away the Eed Indian from America, the 

 Bushman and Hottentot from South Africa, and the 

 Aborigines from Tasmania and Australia. Such 

 appears to be, and such seems to have ever been, the 

 course and order of nature. The higher and advanc- 

 ing has ever passed over the inferior and stationary ; 

 the older and eifete must ever make way for the 

 recent and vigorous. The whole history of man- 

 kind is but a record of aggression and subjugation, of 

 progress and extinction. Wave after wave has 

 passed over the historic platform of Asia and Europe, 

 the latest ever obliterating that which went before, 



