238 



PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



other parts of the organic world. But, from the 

 moment that the form of his body became stationary, 

 his mind would become subject to those very influ- 

 ences from which his body had escaped ; every slight 

 variation in his mental and moral nature which 

 should enable him better to guard against adverse 

 circumstances and combine for mutual comfort and 

 protection would be preserved and accumulated; the 

 better and higher specimens of our race would there- 

 fore increase and spread, the lower and more brutal 

 would give way and successively die out, and that 

 rapid advancement of mental organisation would 

 occur which has raised the very lowest races of man 

 so far above the brutes (although differing so little 

 from some of them in physical structure), and, in con- 

 junction with scarcely perceptible modifications of 

 form, has developed the wonderful intellect of the 

 European races" (pp. 316, 317, Second Edition, 

 1871). 



This argument has suggestive illustration in the 

 fifth chapter of the Origin of Species. Mr. Darwin 

 there refers to a remark to the following effect made 

 by Mr. Waterhouse: " A part developed in any species 

 in an extraordinary degree or manner in comparison 

 with the same part in allied species tends to he highly 

 variable." This applies only where there is unusual 

 development. " Thus, the wing of a bat is a most 

 abnormal structure in the class of mammals; but 

 the rule would not apply here, because the whole 

 group of bats possesses wings; it would apply only 



