The view above expounded of the transference of the action of natural selection from the bodily structure to the mind of early man was my first original modification of that theory, having been communicated to the _Anthropological Review_ in 1864. It received the approval both of Darwin himself and of Herbert Spencer, and I am not aware that anyone has shown any flaw in the reasoning by which it is established. It is certainly of high importance, since if true it renders impossible any important change in the external form of mankind, while it serves as an explanation of the complete identity of specific type of the three great races of man—the Caucasian or white, the Mongolian or yellow, and the Negroid or black—in every essential of human form and structure, while in their best examples they approach very nearly to the same ideal of symmetry and of beauty. Yet so little attention has been given to this view that most popular and even some scientific writers take it for granted that no such difference exists between man and the lower animals. They assume that we are destined to have our bodies modified in the remote future in some unknown way, and that the idea that there is anything approaching final perfection in the human form is a mere figment of the imagination.
Others are so imbued with the universality of natural selection as a beneficial law of Nature that they object to our interfering with its action in, as they urge, the elimination of the unfit by disease and death, even when such diseases are caused by the insanitary conditions of our modern cities or the misery and destitution due to our irrational and immoral social system. Such writers entirely ignore the undoubted fact that affection, sympathy, compassion form as essential a part of human nature as do the higher intellectual and moral faculties; that in the very earliest periods of history and among the very lowest of existing savages they are fully manifested, not merely between the members of the same family, but throughout the whole tribe, and also in most cases to every stranger who is not a known or imagined enemy. The earliest book of travels I remember hearing read by my father was that of Mungo Park, one of the first explorers of the Niger. He was once alone and sick there, and some negro women nursed him, fed him, and saved his life; and while lying in their hut he heard them singing about him as the poor white man, of whom they said:—