VIII 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RACES 
185 
— the more intellectual and moral — must displace the lower 
and more degraded races ; and the power of “ natural selec- 
tion,” still acting on his mental organisation, must ever lead 
to the more perfect adaptation of man’s higher faculties to 
the conditions of surrounding nature, and to the exigencies 
of the social state. While his external form will probably 
ever remain unchanged, except in the development of that 
perfect beauty which results from a healthy and well organised 
body, refined and ennobled by the highest intellectual faculties 
and sympathetic emotions, his mental constitution may con- 
tinue to advance and improve, till the world is again inhabited 
by a single nearly homogeneous race, no individual of which 
will be inferior to the noblest specimens of existing humanity. 
Our progress towards such a result is very slow, but it 
still seems to be a progress. We are just now living at an 
abnormal period of the world’s history, owing to the marvel- 
lous developments and vast practical results of science having 
been given to societies too low morally and intellectually to 
know how to make the best use of them, and to whom they 
have consequently been curses as well as blessings. Among 
civilised nations at the present day it does not seem possible 
for natural selection to act in any way, so as to secure the 
permanent advancement of morality and intelligence ; for it is 
indisputably the mediocre, if not the low, both as regards 
morality and intelligence, who succeed best in life and multiply 
fastest. Yet there is undoubtedly an advance — on the whole 
a steady and a permanent one — both in the influence on public 
opinion of a high morality, and in the general desire for in- 
tellectual elevation ; and as I cannot impute this in any way 
to “survival of the fittest,” I am forced to conclude that it 
is due to the inherent progressive power of those glorious 
qualities which raise us so immeasurably above our fellow 
animals, and at the same time afford us the surest proof that 
there are other and higher existences than ourselves, from 
whom these qualities may have been derived, and towards 
whom we may be ever tending. 
