PDF - Wallace Online

202 NATURAL SELECTIONSummary of the Argument as to the Insufficiency of NaturalSelection to account for the Development of ManBriefly to resume my argument I have shown that thebrain of the lowest savages, and, as far as we yet know, ofthe prehistoric races, is little inferior in size to that of thehighest types of man, and immensely superior to that of thehigher animals while it is ;universally admitted that quantityof brain is one of the most important, and probably the mostessential, of the elements which determine mental power.Yet the mental requirements of savages, and the facultiesactually exercised by them, are very little above those ofanimals. The higher feelings of pure morality and refinedemotion, and the power of abstract reasoning and ideal conception,are useless to them, are rarely if ever manifested, andhave no important relations to their habits, wants, desires,or well-being. They possess a mental organ beyond theirneeds. Natural selection could only have endowed savageman with a brain a few degrees superior to that of an ape,whereas he actually possesses one very little inferior to thatof a philosopher.The soft, naked, sensitive skin of man, entirely free fromthat hairy covering which is so universal among other mammalia,cannot be explained on the theory of natural selection.The habits of savages show that they feel the want of thiscovering, which is most completely absent in man exactlywhere it is thickest in other animals. We have no reasonwhatever to believe that it could have been hurtful or evenuseless to primitive man ; and, under these circumstances, itscomplete abolition, shown byits never reverting in mixedbreeds, is a demonstration of the agency of some other powerthan the law of the survival of the fittest, in the developmentof man from the lower animals.Other characters show difficulties of a similar kind, thoughnot perhaps in an equal degree. The structure of the humanfoot and hand seem unnecessarily perfect for the needs ofsavage man, in whom they are as completely and as humanlydeveloped as in the highest races. The structure of thehuman larynx, giving the power of speech and of producingmusical sounds, and especially its extreme development in