VIII 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RACES 
177 
almost immutable, a new series of causes would come into 
action and take part in his mental growth. The diverse aspects 
of nature would now make themselves felt, and profoundly 
influence the character of the primitive man. 
When the power that had hitherto modified the body had 
its action transferred to the mind, then races would advance 
and become improved, merely by the harsh discipline of a 
sterile soil and inclement seasons. Under their influence a 
hardier, a more provident, and a more social race would be 
developed than in those regions where the earth produces a 
perennial supply of vegetable food, and where neither fore- 
sight nor ingenuity are required to prepare for the rigours of 
winter. And is it not the fact that in all ages, and in every 
quarter of the globe, the inhabitants of temperate have been 
superior to those of hotter countries ? All the great invasions 
and displacements of races have been from North to South, 
rather than the reverse ; and we have no record of there ever 
having existed, any more than there exists to-day, a solitary 
instance of an indigenous inter-tropical civilisation. The 
Mexican civilisation and government came from the North, 
and, as well as the Peruvian, was established, not in the rich 
tropical plains, but on the lofty and sterile plateaux of the 
Andes. The religion and civilisation of Ceylon were intro- 
duced from North India ; the successive conquerors of the 
Indian peninsula came from the North-west; the northern 
Mongols conquered the more Southern Chinese ; and it was 
the bold and adventurous tribes of the North that overran 
and infused new life into Southern Europe. 
Extinction of Lower Races 
It is the same great law of “ the preservation of favoured 
races in the struggle for life,” which leads to the inevitable 
extinction of all those low and mentally undeveloped popula- 
tions with which Europeans come in contact. The red Indian 
in North America and in Brazil ; the Tasmanian, Australian, 
and New Zealander in the southern hemisphere, die out, not 
from any one special cause, but from the inevitable effects 
of an unequal mental and physical struggle. The intellectual 
and moral, as well as the physical, qualities of the European 
are superior; the same powers and capacities which have 
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