Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/97

Rh the favoured individuals to exterminate, in the struggle for existence, all competitors in a single generation, especially since abnormalities, because they imply a wide departure from the specific type, are almost always examples of retrogression, not of evolution, and therefore a cause of elimination, not of survival. If we think of any species of wild animal, it is difficult to believe that any of its traits had their starting-points in abnormalities which were afterwards accentuated, but easy to believe that they had, practically speaking, no startingpoints, but were all within the potentialities of earliest life when it differentiated from the non-living, and that they arose through the gradual accumulation of normal—that is, small—variations. How, for instance, did the various modifications of epidermal tissue—scales, hair, feathers, horns, nails, teeth, tushes, callosities—arise? Had they their origin in extraordinary abnormalities, whereby an individual or a pair of individuals suddenly developed scales, hair, feathers, &c., which gave them such a great advantage in the struggle for existence that they exterminated all competitors? or did they arise through a gradual process of evolution, during which individuals, who on the whole varied favourably, survived and left offspring, whereas individuals who on the whole varied unfavourably, were eliminated and left no offspring, and as a result scales, hair, feathers, &c. were all evolved from the primitive epidermis, and differences in degree became differences in kind?

Lord Salisbury cannot doubt, and I suppose no one who has the knowledge of a school-boy doubts, that great evolution has occurred in that species of animal with which he is principally familiar—Man—and that without the intervention of the breeder. Among the races of men there are all sorts of differences: there are white and black, copper-coloured and yellow, big and small, bearded and beardless races, and so forth. Does he