BIOLOGY IN OUR: ARTS CURRICULUM. IO! 
sometimes mental characteristics, may have the greater import- 
ance. Sometimes the cunning of the fox, sometimes the speed 
of the antelope may be more advantageous. Among animals 
physical structure is usually of more importance than superior 
mental powers, but in human societies mental capacity gets more 
and more powerful as civilisation advances ; and we must there- 
fore be prepared, when passing from the lower animals to man, 
to find the principle of selection considerably modified. The 
principle remains the same, and its action remains the same, but 
with man it acts chiefly in another sphere—the sphere of mind. 
An additional complication also arises. Among the lower ani- 
mals selection only acts through utility, that is through those 
conditions which tend to the physical well-being of the individual. 
But man is essentially gregarious, held together by the bond of 
sympathy ; sympathy is as necessary to him as utility, and con- 
sequently selection will act as powerfully through the one agent 
as through the other. By the action of selection through utility 
intelligence has been raised into intellect ; by the action of selec- 
tion through sympathy with our tellowmen, the moral sense 
has been developed, and ethical systems formed ; through our 
sympathy with nature imagination has given birth to art ; and 
our zesthetic faculties have been evolved by selection through the 
necessity for amusement, caused by the restless activity of the 
brain. Let me explain very briefly how the more important of 
these things have come about. 
Either from transmission, or from early association, every 
man has a number of opinions common to the nation and to the 
class in life to which he belongs, which he may call his inherited 
opinions; but as his reasoning powers develop, these opinions 
are subject to variation. The variations may be owing to origi- 
nal ideas arising in his mind we know not how, like the varia- 
tions of structure in animals ;* or they may be due to education, 
that is, to coming into contact with other minds, either person- 
ally or through books; and it must be noticed that, unlike struc- 
tural variations, these mental variations may be produced at any 
time in a man’s life, and may or may not remain constant. 
Physical transmission is not necessary ; mental transmission 
from mind to mind diffuses a variation rapidly through all the © 
individuals, and consequently it is not necessary for the action 
of selection that the originator of an improved mental variation 
should have any bodily offspring. 
When mental variations compete with one another selection 
constantly acts on them through the agency either of utility or 
of sympathy. When some member of a tribe, who was more in- 
genious than the rest, invented or improved a weapon or a snare, 
he would be imitated by the whole tribe. The tribe that con- 
tained the most ingenious men would have. better means of 
obtaining food, and of defending itself; it would therefore in- 
* The analogy between the origin of ideas and the origin of variations in struc- 
ture is remarkable, aud well worth investigating. 
