298 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 
naturalists, destruction in the struggle for existence as 
a consequence of their retardation (itself regulated by 
the universal conditions of development), is the natural 
course of things. 
If we examine the mental condition of mankind, and 
compare it with the psychical capacities of animals, we 
must not take the average Indian or European as our 
standard, but the Australian and Papuan races, which 
in body also have remained at a grade which the other 
more favoured races outgrew in pre-historic times long 
past. Many, it is true, overcome all difficulties, inas- 
much as, assured of an equalizing human dignity as of 
a dogma needing no further foundation, they are ready 
with the assertion that it is impossible to doubt that 
they have retrograded from a higher mental develop- 
ment and sunk into barbarism. But if this possibility 
might be admitted as regards some few races, such as 
the Fuegians; in others, in the Australians for instance, 
any real evidence of this previous more elevated condi- 
tion is wanting. 2 
The superior mental prerogatives which are supposed 
to separate man from the animal, hinge more or less on 
the following points. 
Man alone, it is said, is capable of development or 
progress. Specifically, human is all progress regulated 
and effected by human speech, for many animals like- 
wise possess the gift of communication. But if we are 
not to imagine man as having advanced from all eternity, 
the question is, how was this advance initiated, and the 
whole concern is fundamentally reduced to the problem 
of the origin of language. We will return to this subject. 
Progress in general is not however to be denied to the 
