MENTAL PROGRESS. 



297 



numbered generations practised in multifarious employ- 

 ments, skilled in human intercourse, even if it be one- 

 sided; and if these rare phenomena are thoroughly in- 

 vestigated, they still remain behind the average individ- 

 uals of advanced races. Now it is certain that in each 

 race, each individual passes through grades in the scale 

 of mental development, which, in perfect analogy 

 with the laws of anatomical development, are uni- 

 versally vahd; whereas, as we have seen, the psycho- 

 logical peculiarities of the race become valid. But it 

 is in mankind as in the individual; in the lapse of time, 

 it has acquired those higher powers of mind which we 

 call Reason. 



History shows, and no one denies, a mental advance, 

 but only in nations which have taken part in history, 

 and only so long as this part and the exercise of the 

 mental organs has been continued. But inferior human 

 races exist — we may also call them human species — 

 which are related to the others, as are lower animals to 

 higher. It might even be given as the characteristic of 

 the genus man, that its species occupy such extraor- 

 dinarily different grades of mental condition. We are 

 not misled by the contrary statements of missionaries 

 and other philanthropists; by the talk of human dignity 

 and divine resemblance; nor do we seek for consolation 

 in the development still to be expected in all nations 

 which have hitherto lagged behind. It is indeed self- 

 evident from the theory of descent and selection, that 

 many of the races now standing far behind in a mental 

 point of view will in future have made a great advance. 

 But for others, if we contemplate the ethnology and 

 anthropology of savages, not from the standpoint of 



