THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 95 
several thousand years, in which are depicted the Ethiopian, Caucasian, 
and the like, which are in some instances striking likenesses of the 
present-day Egyptians. 
Universal distribution is, in animals, another mark of antiquity: 
in man, it is probably less so because of his greater intelligence. 
And yet before transportation had become a science man’s spread 
over land and sea was extremely slow. 
High intelligence as compared with that of the anthropoids is,also 
a mark of antiquity, for the brain, especially the type of brain found 
in the higher human races, must have been very slow of development. 
Our study of fossil man shows this. 
Communal life, division of labor and all of the complicated 
interactions which it brings about, and the development of law and 
religions all have taken time. When we realize that Babylonian texts, 
twice as remote as the patriarch Abraham, give evidence of highly 
perfect laws and of a civilization which must have antedated their 
production by centuries, we gain another yet more emphatic im- 
pression of human antiquity. Add to all this the palaeontological 
evidence of man’s association with various genera and numerous 
successive species of prehistoric animals of which he alone survives, 
and the evidence is complete. 
FUTURE OF HUMANITY 
Because of his intelligence and communal co-operation man is no 
longer subject to the laws which govern the adaptation of animals 
to their environment. Osborn’s law of adaptive radiation, which, as 
we have seen, applies equally well to the insects, reptiles, and mam- 
mals, fails in its application to mankind; and yet man has become as 
thoroughly adapted to speed, flight, to the fossorial and aquatic as 
they; but his adaptation is artificial and to a very small extent only 
affects his physical frame, while theirs is natural and the stamp of 
environment is deeply impressed upon the organism. 
Man’s physical evolution has virtually ceased, but in so far as any 
change is being effected, it is largely retrogressive. Such changes are: 
Reduction of hair and teeth, and of hand skill; and dulling of the 
senses of sight, smell, and hearing upon which active creatures depend 
so largely for safety. That sort of charity which fosters the physi- 
cally, mentally, and morally feeble, and is thus contrary to the law of 
natural selection, must also in the long run have an adverse effect upon 
the race. 
