Survival of the Fittest. 449 
greatest number of offspring, and that the tribes which 
included the largest number of men possessed of such supe- 
rior endowments would increase in number and eventually 
supplant the other tribes. Numbers depend primarily on 
the means of subsistence, and this on the physical nature of 
the country, but in a much higher degree upon the arts 
therein practised. As a tribe increases and is victorious, it 
is often still further increased by the absorption of other 
tribes, and after a time the tribes which are thus absorbed 
into another tribe assume, as has been remarked by Mr. 
Maine in his “ Ancient Law,” that they are the co-descend- 
ants of the same ancestors. Stature and strength in the 
men of a tribe are also of importance in its success, and 
these are dependent in part upon the character and the 
quantity of food that can be obtained. Men of the Bronze 
Period in Europe were supplanted by a larger-handed and 
more powerful race, but their success was probably due ina 
much higher degree to their superiority in the arts. All 
that is known by savages, as inferred from their traditions 
and from old monuments, shows that from the most remote 
times successful tribes have supplanted others. Relics of 
extinct tribes have been found on the wild plains of America 
and on the isolated islands in the Pacific Ocean. Civilized 
nations are everywhere at the present time supplanting bar- 
barous peoples, excepting where climate opposes a fatal 
barrier, and they thus succeed in a great measure, though 
not exclusively, through the arts, which are the products of 
the intellect. With mankind, then, it is highly probable 
that the intellectual faculties have been gradually perfected 
through Natural Selection. Undoubtedly it would have 
been interesting to have traced the development of each 
separate faculty from the state in which it exists in the lower 
animals to that in which it exists in man, but this would 
have been a task of no easy accomplishment. As soon, 
however, as the progenitors of man became social, and this 
probably occurred at a very early period, the advancement of 
