328 THE ACTION OF NATURAL 
by cultivating the soil to obtain a constant supply of 
congenial food. This renders it unnecessary for his 
body, like those of the lower animals, to be modified 
in accordance with changing conditions—to gain a 
warmer natural covering, to acquire more powerful 
teeth or claws, or to become adapted to obtain and 
digest new kinds of food, as circumstances may re- 
quire. 2. By his superior sympathetic and moral 
feelings, he becomes fitted for the social state; he 
ceases to plunder the weak and helpless of his tribe ; 
he shares the game which he has caught with less 
active or less fortunate hunters, or exchanges it for 
weapons which even the weak or the deformed can 
fashion ; he saves the sick and wounded from death ; 
and thus the power which leads to the rigid destruc- 
tion of all animals who cannot in every respect help 
themselves, is prevented from acting on him, 
This power is “natural selection;” and, as by no 
other means can it be shown, that individual varia- 
tions can ever become accumulated and rendered per- 
manent so as to form well-marked races, it follows 
that the differences which now separate mankind from 
other animals, must have been produced before he be- 
came possessed of a human intellect or human sympa- 
thies. This view also renders possible, or even requires, 
the existence of man at a comparatively remote geo- 
logical epoch. For, during the long periods in which 
other animals have been undergoing modification in 
their whole structure, to such an amount as to con- 
stitute distinct genera and families, man’s body will 
