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ix LIMITS OF NATURAL SELECTION IN MAN 203the female sex, are shown to be beyond the needs ofsavages, and, from their known habits, impossible to havebeen acquired either by sexual selection or by survival ofthe fittest.The mind of man offers arguments in the same direction,hardly less strong than those derived from his bodily structure.A number of his mental faculties have no relation tohis fellow-men, or to his material progress. The power ofconceiving eternity and infinity, and all those purely abstractnotions of form, number, and harmony, which play so largea part in the life of civilised races, are entirely outside ofthe world of thought of the savage, and have no influenceon his individual existence or on that of his tribe.Theycould not, therefore, have been developed by any preservationof useful forms of thought ; yet we find occasionaltraces of them amidst a low civilisation, and at a time whenthey could have had no practical effect on the success of theindividual, the family, or the race and the ; development ofa moral sense or conscience by similar means is equallyinconceivable.But, on the other hand, we find that every one of thesecharacteristics is necessary for the full development of humannature. The rapid progress of civilisation under favourableconditions would not be possible, were not the organ of themind of man prepared in advance, fully developed as regardssize, structure, and proportions, and only needing a fewgenerations of use and habit to co-ordinate its complex functions.The naked and sensitive skin, by necessitating clothingand houses, would lead to the more rapid development ofman's inventive and constructive faculties ; and, by leadingto a more refined feeling of personal modesty, may haveinfluenced, to a considerable extent, his moral nature. Theerect form of man, by freeing the hands from all locomotiveuses, has been necessary for his intellectual advancement ;and the extreme perfectionof his hands has alone renderedpossible that excellence in all the arts of civilisation whichraises him so far above the savage, and is perhaps but theforerunner of a higher intellectual and moral advancement.The perfectionof his vocal organs has first led to the formationof articulate speech, and then to the development of