Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/178

166 For instance, there are present in adult man many highly-developed faculties, which cannot possibly have contributed in an appreciable degree to survival, and therefore cannot have been evolved through the action of Natural Selection, more especially as these faculties vary in their development immensely in different races of mankind. Such are the musical, the mathematical, the artistic, the devotional, and many other faculties, none of which can greatly, if at all, have affected the survival rate. The existence of these faculties has supplied many thinkers with arguments against the doctrine that the organic world has arisen solely by the accumulation of inborn variations. It is maintained by some that they have resulted, and can only have resulted, from the accumulation of acquired variations, from the accumulation during generations of the effects of use. Mr. Wallace, who rejects this latter theory, maintains that they supply proofs of spiritual interference. But it appears to me that there has been no evolution of these faculties at all, but only an evolution of the power to vary mentally in response to stimulation, by virtue of which man is enabled individually to acquire a thousand traits, these among others, and so to adapt himself to an environment which has become immensely complex and heterogeneous. For example, the musical and mathematical faculties have been apparently growing for many centuries, and recently, as we know, at a very accelerated rate. Are we to suppose that they have increased pari passu with the advance in musical and mathematical knowledge, and therefore that the modern school-boy, whose knowledge of music and mathematics surpasses that of ancient masters, possesses greater faculties? Assuredly not. It would be as reasonable to attribute the growth of our knowledge