with the facts of structure and
development and fossil history, nor is there any other explanation more
reasonable than evolution for these facts. If now we should inquire into
the causes of this process, we would find again that the present study of
man and men reveals their subjection to the laws of nature which
accomplish evolution elsewhere in the organic world.

The fact of human variation requires no elucidation; it is as real for men
as for insects and trees. Indeed, some of the most significant facts of
variation have been first made out in the case of the human species. The
struggle for existence can be seen in everyday life. We cannot doubt its
reality when scores perish annually because of their failure to withstand
the extreme degrees of temperature during midwinter and midsummer; when
starvation causes so many deaths, and when the incessant combat with
bacterial enemies alone brings the list of casualties on the human side in
our own country to more than two hundred and fifty thousand a year. As in
nature at large, the more unfit are eliminated as a result of this
struggle, while the more adapted succeed. In the long run, that particular
applicant for a clerkship or any other work who may be the more fitted is
the one who gets it. While the severity of competition may be somewhat
mitigated as the result of social organization, and while our altruistic
charitable institutions enable many to prolong a more or less efficient
existence, the struggle for existence cannot be entirely done away with.
Heredity also is a real human process, and it follows the same course as
in animals at large; as in the case of variation, some of the fundamental
laws of its operation have been first worked out in the case of human
phenomena, and have been found subsequently to be of general application.

Reverting to the specific question as to the earliest divergence of man
from the apes, we can readily see how the superior development of the
ape-man's brain gave him a great advantage over his nearest competitors,
and how truly human ingenuity enabled the earliest men to employ weapons
and crude instruments instead of brute force. Thus the gap between men and
apes widened more and more, as reasoning power increased through
successive generations. This is another aspect of the statement that the
supreme position of man has been gained, not by superior organization in
physical respects outside of the nervous system, but by the superi