PDF - Wallace Online

vin THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RACES 185the more intellectual and moral must displace the lowerand more degraded races ;and the power of " natural selection,"still acting on his mental organisation, must ever leadto the more perfect adaptation of man's higher faculties tothe conditions of surrounding nature, and to the exigenciesof the social state. While his external form will probablyever remain unchanged, except in the development of thatperfect beauty which results from a healthy and well organisedbody, refined and ennobled by the highest intellectual facultiesand sympathetic emotions, his mental constitutionmay continueto advance and improve, till the world is again inhabitedby a single nearly homogeneous race, no individual of whichwill be inferior to the noblest specimens of existing humanity.Our progress towards such a result is very slow, but itstill seems to be a progress. We are just now living at anabnormal period of the world's history, owing to the marvellousdevelopments and vast practical results of science havingbeen given to societies too low morally and intellectually toknow how to make the best use of them, and to whom theyhave consequently been curses as well as blessings. Amongcivilised nations at the present dayit does not seem possiblefor natural selection to act in any way, so as to secure thepermanent advancement of morality and intelligence for it is;indisputably the mediocre, if not the low, both as regardsmorality and intelligence, who succeed best in life and multiplyfastest. Yet there isundoubtedly an advance on the wholea steady and a permanent one both in the influence on publicopinion of a high morality, and in the general desire for intellectualelevation ;and as I cannot impute this in any wayto " survival of the fittest," I am forced to conclude that itis due to the inherent progressive power of those gloriousqualities which raise us so immeasurably above our fellowanimals, and at the same time afford us the surest proof thatthere are other and higher existences than ourselves, fromwhom these qualities may have been derived, and towardswhom we may be ever tending.