PDF - Wallace Online

198 NATURAL SELECTION uxhow can we conceive that early man, as an animal, gainedanything by purely erect locomotion? Again, the hand ofman contains latent capacities and powers which are unusedby savages, and must have been even less used by palaeolithicman and his still ruder predecessors. It has all the appearanceof an organ prepared for the use of civilised man, andone which was required to render civilisation possible. Apesmake little use of their separate fingers and opposable thumbs.They grasp objects rudely and clumsily, and look as if a muchless specialised extremity would have served their purpose aswell. I do not lay much stress on this, but, if it be provedthat some intelligent power has guided or determined thedevelopment of man, then we may see indications of thatpower in facts which, by themselves, would not serve toprove its existence.The Voice of Man. The same remark will apply to anotherpeculiarly human character, the wonderful power, range,flexibility, and sweetness of the musical sounds producibleby the human larynx, especially in the female sex. Thehabits of savages give no indication of how this faculty couldhave been developed by natural selection, because it is neverrequired or used by them. The singing of savages is a moreor less monotonous howling, and the females seldom sing atall.Savages certainly never choose their wives for fine voices,-but for rude health, and strength, and physical beauty.Sexual selection could not therefore have developed thiswonderful power, which only comes into play among civilisedpeople. It seems as if the organ had been prepared in anticipationof the future progress of man, since it contains latentcapacities which are useless to him in his earlier condition.The delicate correlations of structure that give it such marvellouspowers could not therefore have been acquired bymeans of natural selection.The Origin of some of Man's Mental Faculties, by the preservationof Useful Variations, not possibleTurning to the mind of man, we meet with many difficultiesin attempting to understand how those mental faculties,which are especially human, could have been acquired by thepreservation of useful variations. At first sight,it would