PDF - Wallace Online

ix LIMITS OF NATURAL SELECTION IN MAN 193adopted by field mice and beavers, as well as the sleepingplaceof the orang-utan, and the tree-shelter of some of theAfrican anthropoid apes, may well be compared with theamount of care and forethought bestowed by many savagesin similar circumstances. His possession of free and perfecthands, not required for locomotion, enables man to form anduse weapons and implements which are beyond the physicalpowers of brutes but; having done this, he certainly does notexhibit more mind in using them than do many lower animals.What is there in the life of the savage but the satisfying ofthe cravings of appetite in the simplest and easiest way?What thoughts, ideas, or actions are there that raise himmany grades above the elephant or the ape 1 Yet he possesses,as we have seen, a brain vastly superior to theirs insize and complexity ;and this brain gives him, in an undevelopedstate, faculties which he never requires to use. Andif this is true of existing savages, how much more true mustit have been of the men whose sole weapons were rudelychipped flints, and some of whom, we may fairly conclude,were lower than any existing race ;while the only evidenceyet in our possession shows them to have had brains fullyas capacious as those of the average of the lower savageraces.We see, then, that whether we compare the savage withthe higher developments of man, or with the brutes aroundhim, we are alike driven to the conclusion that in his large andwell -developed brain he possesses an organ quite disproportionateto his actual requirements an organ that seems preparedin advance, only to be fully utilised as he progresses incivilisation. A brain one-half larger than that of the gorillawould, according to the evidence before us, fully have sufficedfor the limited mental development of the savage ;and wemust therefore admit that the large brain he actually possessescould never have been solely developed by any of thoselaws of evolution, whose essence that is, they lead to a degreeof organisation exactly proportionate to the wants of eachspecies, never beyond those wants that no preparation canbe made for the future development of the race that onepart of the body can never increase in size or complexity, exceptin strict co-ordination to the pressing wants of the whole.