IX 
LIMITS OF NATURAL SELECTION IN MAN 
191 
Range of Intellectual Power in Man. — First, let us consider 
what this wonderful instrument, the brain, is capable of in 
its higher developments. In Mr. Galton’s interesting work 
on Hereditary Genius , he remarks on the enormous differ- 
ence between the intellectual power and grasp of the well- 
trained mathematician or man of science, and the average 
Englishman. The number of marks obtained by high 
wranglers is often more than thirty times as great as that 
of the men at the bottom of the honour list, who are still 
of fair mathematical ability ; and it is the opinion of skilled 
examiners that even this does not represent the full difference 
of intellectual power. If, now, we descend to those savage 
tribes who only count to three or five, and who find it im- 
possible to comprehend the addition of two and three without 
having the objects actually before them, we feel that the 
chasm between them and the good mathematician is so vast 
that a thousand to one will probably not fully express it. 
Yet we know that the mass of brain might be nearly the 
same in both, or might not differ in a greater proportion than 
as 5 to 6 ; whence we may fairly infer that the savage pos- 
sesses a brain capable, if cultivated and developed, of per- 
forming work of a land and degree far beyond what he ever 
requires it to do. 
Again, let us consider the power of the higher or even the 
average civilised man, of forming abstract ideas, and carrying 
on more or less complex trains of reasoning. Our languages 
are full of terms to express abstract conceptions. Our busi- 
ness and our pleasures involve the continual foresight of many 
contingencies. Our law, our government, and our science 
continually require us to reason through a variety of compli- 
cated phenomena to the expected result. Even our games, 
such as chess, compel us to exercise all these faculties in a 
remarkable degree. Compare this with the savage languages, 
which contain no words for abstract conceptions ; the utter 
want of foresight of the savage man beyond his simplest 
necessities ; his inability to combine, or to compare, or to 
reason on any general subject that does not immediately 
appeal to his senses. So, in his moral and aesthetic faculties, 
the savage has none of those wide sympathies with all nature, 
those conceptions of the infinite, of the good, of the sublime 
