SELECTION ON MAN. 321 
mental development ‘had, from some nnknown cause, 
greatly advanced, and had now reached that condition 
in which it began powerfully to influence his whole 
existence, and would therefore become subject to the 
irresistible action of ‘natural selection.” This action 
would quickly give the ascendency to mind: speech 
would probably now be first developed, leading to a” 
still further advance of the mental faculties ; and from 
that moment man, as regards the form and structure of 
most parts of his body, would remain almost station- 
ary. The art of making weapons, division of labour, 
anticipation of the future, restraint of the appetites, 
. moral, social, and sympathetic feelings, would now 
have a preponderating influence on his well being, 
and would therefore be that part of his nature on 
which “ natural selection” would most powerfully act ; 
and we should thus have explained that wonderful per- 
sistence of mere physical characteristics, which is the 
stumbling-block of those who advocate the unity of 
mankind. 
We are now, therefore, enabled to harmonise the 
conflicting views of anthropologists on this subject. 
Man may have been, indeed I believe must have been, 
once a homogeneous race; but it was at a period of 
which we have as yet discovered no remains, at a period 
so remote in his history, that he had not yet acquired 
that wonderfully developed brain, the organ of the 
mind, which now, even in his lowest examples, raises 
him far above the highest brutes ;—at a period when 
he had the form but hardly the nature of man, when 
Y 
