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Show 460 DARWINISM CHAP. are absent. I There remains only the great ~uro-Asiatic c.o~tinent . and its enormous plateaux, exten~mg from Pe~sia right ~cross Tibet and Siberia to Manchuria, aff01~d _an aiea, t other of which probably offered sUitable con-dsoitmioen sp, ainr laoter Miocene or early Pli·o cene ti·m es, f 01 · the. d ev elop-ment of ancestral man. . It is in this area that we still find that type of ~ank~ndthe Mon<Yolian-which retains a colour of the skm midway between ~he black or brown-black of the negro, and tb~ rudc~y or olive-white of the Caucasian types, a col~ur whlC~ still prevails over all Northern Asia, over the .Ame.ncan c~ntments, and over much of Polynesia. From . t~ns pnmary tmt aros_e, under the influence of varied conditiOns, and probably _m correlation with constitutional changes adapted to pecuhar climates the varied tints which still exist among mankmd. If the reas~ning by which this conclusion is reached be sound, .ancl all the earlier stao·es of. man's development from an ammal form occurred in the area now indicated, we can better understand how it is that we have as yet met with. no traces of_the missing links, 01· even of man's exist~nce dun_ng late tertiary time. , because no part of the w~rlcl IS so entirel! unexp_lore?by the geologist as this very regwn. Th~ area I~ questwn IS sufficiently extensive and varied to adm1t ~f primeval n~.an having attained to a considerable populatwn, and. havmg developed his full human characteristic_s, both .physiCal and mental before there was any need for him to m~grat~ beyond its lii~its. One of his earlie t important m1gratwns was probably into Africa, where, spreading _wcst':ard, he. bec~mc modified in colour and hair in correlatiOn with physi_ologJCa.l changes adn.pting him to the clim~te of the equaton~l l,owlands. ~ 'preading north-westward mto EuroRe the m01st .mel cool climate led to a modification of an opposite charac~er, m: cl thus may have arisen the three great human types which . t1ll exist. Somewhat later, probably, he sprea~ eastward mto North-West America and soon scattered himself over tl_10 whole continent; and all this may well have occurred m early or middle Pliocene tim~s. .Therea~ter, ~t :ery lo·n·g intervals, successive waves of migratiOn earned h1m mto evc:1y 1 For a full discussiou of this question, see the author's Geographical Dist1·ibution of Am'mals, vol. i. p. 285. XV DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 461 part of the habitable world, and by conquest and intermixture led ultimately to that puzzling gradation of types which the ethnologist in vain seeks to unravel. The Origin of the Moral and Intellectual Nattwe of Man. From the foregoing discussion it will be seen that I fully accept Mr. Darwin's conclusion as to tho essential identity of man's bodily structure with that of the higher mammalia and his descent from some ancestral form common to man' and the anthropoid apes. The evidence of such descent appears to me to be overwhelming and conclusive. Again, as to the cause and method of such descent and modification, we may admit, at all events provisionally, that tho laws of variation and natural selection, acting through the struggle for existence and the continual need of more perfect adaptation to the physical and biological environments, may have brought about, first that perfection of bodily structure in which he is so far above all other animals, and in co-ordination with it the larger and more developed brain, by moans of which he has been able to utilise that structure in the more and more complete subjection of the whole animal and vegetable kin o·- doms to his service. b But this is only the beginning of Mr. Darwin's work, since he goes on to discuss the moral nature and mental faculties of man, and derives those too by gradual modification and development from the lower animals. Although, perhaps, nowhere distinctly formulated, his whole argument tends to the conclusion that man's entire nature and all his faculties, whether moral, intellectual, or spiritual, have been derived from their rudiments in the lower animals, in the same manner and by the action of the same general laws as his physical structure has been derived. As this conclusion appears to me not to be supported by adequate evidence, and to be directly opposed to many well-ascertained facts, I propose to devote a brief space to its discussion. The Argument jTom Continuity. Mr. Darwin's mode of argument consists in showing that the rudiments of most, if not of all, the mental and moral faculties of man can be detected in some animals. The |