166 ORGANIC EVOLUTION — MENTAL 



For instance, there are present in adult man many 

 highly-developed faculties, which cannot possibly have 

 contributed in an appreciable degree to survival, and 

 therefore cannot have been evolved through the action 

 of Natural Selection, more especially as these faculties 

 vai-y in their development immensely in difierent races 

 of mankind. Such are the musical, the mathematical, 

 the artistic, the devotional, and many other faculties, 

 none of which can greatly, if at all, have affected the 

 survival rate. The existence of these faculties has sup- 

 plied many thinkers with arguments against the doctrine 

 that the organic world has arisen solely by the accumu- 

 lation of inborn variations. It is maintained by some 

 that they have resulted, and can only have resulted, 

 from the accumulation of acquired variations, from the 

 accumulation during generations of the effects of use. 

 Mr. Wallace, who rejects this latter theory, maintains 

 that they supply proofs of spiritual interference.^ But 

 it appears to me that there has been no evolution of 

 these faculties at all, but only an evolution of the 

 power to vary mentally in response to stimulation, by 

 virtue of which man is enabled individually to acquire 

 a thousand traits, these among others, and so to adapt 

 himself to an environment which has become immensely 

 complex and heterogeneous. For example, the musical 

 and mathematical faculties have been apparently grow- 

 ing for many centuries, and recently, as we know, at a 

 very accelerated rate. Are we to suppose that they 

 have increased pari passu, with the advance in musical 

 and mathematical knowledge, and therefore that the 

 modern school-boy, whose knowledge of music and 

 mathematics surpasses that of ancient masters, pos- 

 sesses greater faculties ? Assuredly not. It would be 

 as reasonable to attribute the growth of our knowledge 



' Danvinism, by Alfred Russel Wallace, p. 474. 



