320 THE ACTION OF NATURAL 
development of man out of some lower type of animal, 
must have occurred before his intellect had raised him 
above the condition of the brutes, at a period when he 
was gregarious, but scarcely social, with a mind per- 
ceptive but not reflective, ere any sense of right or 
feelings of sympathy had been developed in him. He 
would be still subject, like the rest of the organic 
world, to the action of “natural selection,” which 
wonld retain his physical form and constitution in har- 
mony with the surrounding universe. He was pro- 
bably at a very early period a dominant race, spreading 
widely over the warmer regions of the earth as it then 
existed, and in agreement with what we see in the 
case of other dominant species, gradually becoming 
modified in accordance with local conditions. As he 
ranged farther from his original home, and became 
exposed to greater extremes of climate, to greater 
changes of food, and had to contend with new enemies, 
organic and inorganic, slight useful variations ix his 
constitution would be selected and rendered permanent, 
and would, on the principle of ‘ correlation of growth,”’ 
be accompanied by corresponding external physieal 
changes. Thus might have arisen those striking char- 
acteristics and special modifications which still distin- 
guish the chief races of mankind. The red, black, 
yellow, or blushing white skin ; the straight, the curly, 
the woolly hair; the scanty or abundant beard; the 
straight or oblique eyes; the various forms of the 
pelvis, the cranium, and other parts of the skeleton. 
But while these changes had been going on, his 
