Contributions to the theory of natural selection. A series of essays ... By Alfred Russel Wallace ...

SELECTION ON MAN. 321
mental development had, from some unknown cause,
greatly advanced, and had now reached that condition
in which it began powerfully to influence his whole
existence, and would therefore become subject to the
irresistible action of "; natural selection." This action
would quickly give the ascendency to mind: speech
would probably now be first developed, leading to a
still further advance of the mental faculties; and from
that moment man, as regards the form and structure of
most parts of his body, would remain almost stationary. The art of making weapons, division of labour,
anticipation of the future, restraint of the appetites,
moral, social, and sympathetic feelings, would now
have a preponderating influence on his well being,
and would therefore be that part of his nature on
which " natural selection " would most powerfully act;
and we should thus have explained that wonderful persistence of mere physical characteristics, which is the
stumbling-block of those who advocate the unity of
mankind.
We are now, therefore, enabled to harmonise the
conflicting views of anthropologists on this subject.
Man may have been, indeed I believe must have been,
once a homogeneous race; but it was at a period of
which we have as yet discovered no remains, at a period
so remote in his history, that he had not yet acquired
that wonderfully developed brain, the organ of the
mind, which now, even in his lowest examples, raises
him far above the highest brutes;-at a period when
he had the form but hardly the nature of man, when
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