er means can it be
shown, that individual variations can ever become accumulated and
rendered permanent so as to form well-marked races, it follows that the
differences which now separate mankind from other animals, must have
been produced before he became possessed of a human intellect or human
sympathies. This view also renders possible, or even requires, the
existence of man at a comparatively remote geological epoch. For, during
the long periods in which other animals have been undergoing
modification in their whole structure, to such an amount as to
constitute distinct genera and families, man's _body_ will have
remained generically, or even specifically, the same, while his _head_
and _brain_ alone will have undergone modification equal to theirs. We
can thus understand how it is that, judging from the head and brain,
Professor Owen places man in a distinct sub-class of mammalia, while as
regards the bony structure of his body, there is the closest anatomical
resemblance to the anthropoid apes, "every tooth, every bone, strictly
homologous--which makes the determination of the difference between
_Homo_ and _Pithecus_ the anatomist's difficulty." The present theory
fully recognises and accounts for these facts; and we may perhaps claim
as corroborative of its truth, that it neither requires us to depreciate
the intellectual chasm which separates man from the apes, nor refuses
full recognition of the striking resemblances to them, which exist in
other parts of his structure.

_Conclusion._

In concluding this brief sketch of a great subject, I would point out
its bearing upon the future of the human race. If my conclusions are
just, it must inevitably follow that the higher--the more intellectual
and moral--must displace the lower and more degraded races; and the
power of "natural selection," 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 a healthy and well organized body, refined and ennobled by
the highest intellectual faculties and sympathetic emotions, his mental
constitution may continue to advance and improve, till the world is
again inhabited by a single nearly homogeneous race, no individual of
which will be inferior to the nobles