168 PHYSICAL BASIS OF CIVILIZATION 



physically well adjusted to their natural environ- 

 ment. They have never had the constant incentive 

 for using their intelligence, nor the three causes 

 which forced its growth in the case of man (Chapter 

 III). Their intelligence since life began, when it 

 has progressed at all, has done this at so exceedingly 

 slow a snail's pace that species and even genera have 

 slowly evolved, nourished, and disappeared, being 

 displaced by some fitter type, without there being 

 any perceptible increase in intellectual power, so 

 that evidence of improvement in this can only be ob- 

 tained by a perspective glance across several geologic 

 ages. 



Therefore can the existence of these exceptional 

 co-operative instincts and habits not militate in the 

 least against the rule stated in the sixth paragraph 

 above: that the higher brutes below man depend 

 for the preservation of life and satisfaction of desire, 

 therefore for individual and type survival, on their 

 natural adaptations to the inanimate environment 

 and to the struggle with living antagonists. 



And the same applies to persons of the false race 

 characteristics, so long as their higher intelligence 

 fails to overrule their low, brutal promptings. To 

 them, therefore, the phrases " struggle for existence,'* 

 "natural selection," "the survival of the fittest," ap- 

 ply in the sense heretofore used in scientific literature ; 

 but except in so far as the pernicious predominance 

 of the false type forces it temporarily upon the race, 

 not to man! 



