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

322 THE ACIIO1V OF NAI URAL
he neither possessed human speech, nor those sympathetic and moral feelings which in a greater or less
degree everywhere now distinguish the race. Just in
proportion as these truly human faculties became developed in him, would his physical features become fixed
and permanent, because the latter would be of less importance to his well being; he would be kept in harmony with the slowly changing universe around him,
by an advance in mind, rather than by a change in
body. If, therefore, we are of opinion that he was not
reallyman till these higher faculties were fully developed, we may fairly assert that there were many originally distinct races of men; while, if we think that
a being closely resembling us in form and structure,
but with mental faculties scarcely raised above the
brute, must still be considered to have been human,
we are fully entitled to maintain the common origin of
all mankind.
Tle Bearing of these Views on the Antiquity of
These considerations, it will be seen, enable us to
place the origin of man at a much more remote geological epoch than has yet been thought possible. He
may even have lived in the Miocene or Eocene period,
when not a single mammal was identical in form with
any existing species. For, in the long series of ages
during which these primeval animals were being slowly
changed into the species which now inhabit the earth,
the power which acted to modify them would only