184 
NATURAL SELECTION 
VIII 
By his superior sympathetic and moral feelings he becomes 
fitted for the social state ; he ceases to plunder the weak and 
helpless of his tribe ; he shares the game which he has caught 
with less active or less fortunate hunters, or exchanges it for 
weapons which even the weak or the deformed can fashion ; 
he saves the sick and wounded from death; and thus the 
power which leads to the rigid destruction of all animals who 
cannot in every respect help themselves, is prevented from 
acting on him. 
This power is natural selection ; and, as by no other 
means can it be shown that individual variations can ever 
become accumulated and rendered permanent, so as to form 
well-marked races, it follows that the differences which now 
separate mankind from other animals must have been pro- 
duced before he became possessed of a human intellect or 
human sympathies. This view also renders possible, or even 
requires, the existence of man at a comparatively remote 
geological epoch. For, during the long periods in which other 
animals have been undergoing modification in their whole 
structure, to such an amount as to constitute distinct genera 
and families, man’s body will have remained generically, or even 
specifically, the same, while his head and brain alone will have 
undergone modification equal to theirs. We can thus under- 
stand how it is that, judging from the head and brain, Pro- 
fessor Owen places man in a distinct sub-class of mammalia, 
while as regards the bony structure of his body, there is the 
closest anatomical resemblance to the anthropoid apes, “ every 
tooth, every bone, strictly homologous — which makes the 
determination of the difference between Homo and Pithecus 
the anatomist’s difficulty.” The present theory fully recog- 
nises and accounts for these facts ; and we may perhaps 
claim as corroborative of its truth that it neither requires us 
to depreciate the intellectual chasm which separates man from 
the apes, nor refuses full recognition of the striking resem- 
blances to them, which exist in other parts of his structure. 
Conclusion 
In concluding this brief sketch of a great subject, I would 
point out its bearing upon the future of the human race. If my 
conclusions are just, it must inevitably follow that the higher 
