d
for those abstract notions of form and number which render geometry
and arithmetic possible." "How," he asks, "were all or any of these
faculties first developed, when they could have been of no possible
use to man in his early stages of barbarism?"

Surely the answer is not far to seek. The lowest savages are as
devoid of any such conceptions as the brutes themselves. What sort of
conceptions of space and time, of form and number, can be possessed by
a savage who has not got so far as to be able to count beyond five or
six, who does not know how to draw a triangle or a circle, and has not
the remotest notion of separating the particular quality we call
form, from the other qualities of bodies? None of these capacities
are exhibited by men, unless they form part of a tolerably advanced
society. And, in such a society, there are abundant conditions by
which a selective influence is exerted in favour of those persons who
exhibit an approximation towards the possession of these capacities.

The savage who can amuse his fellows by telling a good story over the
nightly fire, is held by them in esteem and rewarded, in one way or
another, for so doing in other words, it is an advantage to him to
possess this power. He who can carve a paddle, or the figure-head of
a canoe better, similarly profits beyond his duller neighbour. He
who counts a little better than others, gets most yams when barter
is going on, and forms the shrewdest estimate of the numbers of an
opposing tribe. The experience of daily life shows that the conditions
of our present social existence exercise the most extraordinarily
powerful selective influence in favour of novelists, artists, and
strong intellects of all kinds; and it seems unquestionable that
all forms of social existence must have had the same tendency, if we
consider the indisputable facts that even animals possess the power of
distinguishing form and number, and that they are capable of deriving
pleasure from particular forms and sounds. If we admit, as Mr. Wallace
does, that the lowest savages are not raised "many grades above the
elephant and the ape;" and if we further admit, as I contend must be
admitted, that the conditions of social life tend, powerfully, to
give an advantage to those individuals who vary in the direction of
intellectual or aesthetic excellence, what is there to interfere
with the belief that these higher faculties, like the rest, owe their
development to natural sele