the ideas laid down in these essays. Only a very brief outline must
suffice to convey some of the most important points.

In the childhood of the human race, he believed, Natural Selection would
operate mainly on man's body, but in later periods upon the mind. Hence
it would happen that the physical forms of the different races were
early fixed in a permanent manner. Sharper claws, stronger muscles,
swifter feet and tougher hides determine the survival value of lower
animals. With man, however, the finer intellect, the readier
adaptability to environment, the greater susceptibility to improvement,
and the elastic capacity for co-ordination, were the qualities which
determined his career. Tribes which are weak in these qualities give way
and perish before tribes which are strong in them, whatever advantages
the former may possess in physical structure. The finest savage has
always succumbed before the advance of civilisation. "The Red Indian
goes down before the white man, and the New Zealander vanishes in
presence of the English settler." Nature, careless in this stage of
evolution about the body, selects for survival those varieties of
mankind which excel in mental qualities. Hence it has happened that the
physical characteristics of the different races, once fixed in very
early prehistoric times, have never greatly varied. They have passed out
of the range of Natural Selection because they have become comparatively
unimportant in the struggle for existence.

After going into considerable detail of organic and physical
development, he says: "The inference I would draw from this class of
phenomena is, that a superior intelligence has guided the development of
man in a definite direction, and for a special purpose, just as man
guides the development of many animal and vegetable forms." Thus he
foreshadows the conclusion, to be more fully developed in "The World of