42 PHYSICAL BASIS OF CIVILIZATION 



on by the infirmities and defects of the physical 

 structures from which our earliest upright brute 

 ancestors suffered. 



The detailed statements contained in Chapter I, 

 of a few of the more important disabilities, perils, 

 and infirmities attaching to brute men, must now 

 be recalled. On account of the severity of the 

 struggle for existence, with living contestants in that 

 early period, proof of which will be found in the 

 fourth chapter, any one of these disadvantages would 

 seem sufficient to doom our race or any other type 

 of life to rapid extermination. When two or more 

 affect the same variety, speedy extinction seems 

 unavoidable, unless the effect is balanced by a rapid 

 and copious rate of multiplication. 



The "genus homo," however, was afflicted with 

 all the vicissitudes enumerated in the last chapter, 

 while the rate of multiplication in our race is 

 the slowest known and the farthest removed from 

 copiousness, excepting only the elephant, eagle, and 

 a few other types ; and with reference to these it is 

 noteworthy that although they are supplied with 

 natural means of offense, defense, protection, and 

 escape, and man is not, they yet exist in scanty 

 numbers only, not very far removed from extinc- 

 tion. 



Humanity's survival, therefore, falls little short of 

 seeming; miraculous. For the most painstaking 

 survey of our physical organism reveals absolutely 

 nothing that could possibly account for the preser- 



