318 THE ACTION OF NATURAL 
their influence, a hardier, a more provident, and a 
more social race would be developed, than in those 
regions where the earth produces a perennial supply 
of vegetable food, and where neither foresight nor 
ingenuity are required to prepare for the rigours of 
winter. And is it not the fact that in all ages, and 
in every quarter of the globe, the inhabitants of tem- 
perate have been superior to those of hotter countries? 
All the great invasions and displacements of races have 
been from North to South, rather than the reverse ; 
and we have no record of there ever having existed, 
any more than there exists to-day, a solitary instance 
of an indigenous inter-tropical civilization. The 
Mexican civilization and government came from the 
North, and, as well as the Peruvian, was established, 
not in the rich tropical plains, but on the lofty and 
sterile plateaux of the Andes. The religion and civi- 
lization of Ceylon were introduced from North India ; 
the successive conquerors of the Indian peninsula came 
from the North-west; the northern Mongols conquered 
the more Southern Chinese; and it was the bold and 
adventurous tribes of the North that overran and in- 
fused new life into Southern Europe. 
Extinction of Lower Races. 
It is the same great law of “the preservation of 
favoured races in the struggle for life,” which leads 
to the inevitable extinction of all those low and 
mentally undeveloped populations with which Euro- 
peans come in contact. The red Indian in North 
