PDF - Wallace Online

viii THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RACES 179arisen those striking characteristics and special modificationswhich still distinguish the chief races of mankind. The red,black, yellow, or blushing white skin ;the straight, the curly,the woolly hair; the scanty or 'abundant beard; the straightor oblique eyes ;the various forms of the pelvis, the cranium,and other parts of the skeleton.But while these changes had been going on, his mentaldevelopment had, from some unknown cause, greatly advanced,and had now reached that condition in which it began powerfullyto influence his whole existence, and would thereforebecome subject to the irresistible action of natural selection.This action would quickly give the ascendency to mind :speech would probably now be first developed, leading to astill further advance of the mental faculties ;and from thatmoment man, as regards the form and structure of most partsof his body, would remain almost stationary. The art ofmaking weapons, division of labour, anticipation of the future,restraint of the appetites, moral, social, and sympathetic feelings,would now have a preponderating influence on his wellbeing,and would therefore be that part of his nature onwhich natural selection would most powerfully act; andwe should thus have explained that wonderful persistence ofmere physical characteristics which is the stumbling-block ofthose who advocate the unity of mankind.We are now, therefore, enabled to harmonise the conflict-Man may haveing views of anthropologists on this subject.been indeed I believe must have been once a homogeneousrace ;but it was at a period of which we have as yet discoveredno remains at a period so remote in his history thathe had not yet acquired that wonderfully developed brain,the organ of the mind, which now, even in his lowest examples,raises him far above the highest brutes at a period whenhe had the form but hardly the nature of man, when heneither possessed human speech, nor those sympathetic andmoral feelings which in a greater or less degree everywherenow distinguish the race. Just in proportion as these trulyhuman faculties became developed in him would his physicalfeatures become fixed and permanent, because the latter wouldbe of less importance to his well-being he would bo; kept inharmony with the slowly changing universe around him, by