148 PHYSICAL BASIS OF CIVILIZATION 



butes, from which the appearance arises, would 

 tend to produce. 



Based on observation of the external physical 

 fitness of creatures, this deductive method for 

 obtaining knowledge of true hereditary race charac- 

 teristics cannot fail to lead to correct conclusions. 

 A chance of error only arises when the crowding of 

 a race causes a false exceptional type of character 

 to be selected in the manner illustrated in the para- 

 graphs on mimicry occurring earlier in this chapter. 



It has been shown in Chapter VIII that such a 

 case occurred in the human race, viz., that the true 

 hereditary human race character during the long 

 era before men had learned to arm themselves 

 artificially, while they were still crowded by their 

 powerful brute enemies, could survive only among 

 the females. During this period natural selection 

 in each generation eliminated those males which 

 were too largely endowed with these beneficent 

 characteristics, and permitted only the fiercely com- 

 bative imbued with destructive egoism to survive. 



But since offspring inherit from both parents, a few 

 male infants continued to be born in all subsequent 

 generations, which combined in their dispositions just 

 enough of the characters of their fierce masculine 

 progenitors to make them formidable, and sufficient of 

 their gentle feminine ancestors to make them sympa- 

 thetic. This was the prehistoric, heroic type of men. ' 



1 It follows from the mathematical rules of probabilities and 

 from the premise above stated, that "offspring inherit from 



