The Action of Natural Selection on Man

Front Cover
C.C. Chatfield & Company, 1871 - 54 pages

From inside the book

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 25 - ... still acting on his mental organization, must ever lead to the more perfect adaptation of man's higher faculties to the conditions of surrounding nature, and to the exigencies of the social state. While his external form will probably ever remain unchanged, except in the development of that perfect beauty which results from...
Page 21 - Though less capable than most other animals of living on the herbs and the fruits that unaided nature supplies, this wonderful faculty taught him to govern and direct nature to his own benefit, and make her produce food for him, when and where he pleased. From the moment when the first skin was used as a covering, when the first rude spear was formed to assist in the...
Page 31 - And assuredly, there is no mark of degradation about any part of its structure. It is, in fact, a fair average human skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage.
Page 21 - natural selection ' himself, but he is actually able to take away some of that power from Nature which, before his appearance, she universally exercised. "We can anticipate the time when the earth will produce only cultivated plants and domestic animals; when man's selection shall have supplanted
Page 11 - ... while the form and structure of his body will remain unchanged. So when a glacial epoch comes on, some animals must acquire warmer fur, or a covering of fat, or else die of cold. Those best clothed by nature are, therefore, preserved by natural selection. Man, under the same circumstances, will make himself warmer clothing, and build better houses; and the necessity of doing this will react upon his mental organisation and social condition - will advance them while his natural body remains naked...
Page 51 - 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...
Page 10 - ... self-restraint in present appetites ; and that intelligent foresight which prepares for the future, are all qualities that from their earliest appearance must have been for the benefit of each community, and would therefore have become the subjects of natural selection.
Page 19 - ... less universal than at present. Besides, Europe was in a great measure submerged during the tertiary epoch ; and though its scattered islands may have been uninhabited by man, it by no means follows that he did not at the same time exist in warm or tropical continents. If geologists can point out to us the most extensive land in the warmer regions of the earth, which has not been submerged since Eocene or Miocene times, it is there that we may expect to find some traces of the very early progenitors...
Page 11 - Natural selection' will now act upon the stomach and intestines, and all their individual variations will be taken advantage of to modify the race into harmony with its new food. In many cases, however, it is probable that this cannot be done. The internal organs may not vary quick enough, and then the animal will decrease- in numbers and finally become extinct. But man guards himself from such accidents by superintending and guiding the operations of nature. He plants the seed of his most agreeable...
Page 22 - natural selection " himself, but he is actually able to take away some of that power from nature which before his appearance she universally exercised. We can anticipate the time when the earth will produce only cultivated plants and domestic animals ; when man's selection shall have supplanted

Bibliographic information