Next, with regard to the hand, Mr. Wallace says, that it "contains latent capacities which are unused by savages, and must have been even less used by palaeolithic man and his still ruder predecessors." Thus, "it has all the appearance of an organ prepared for the use of civilized man[16]." Even if this be true, however, it would surely be a dangerous argument to rely upon, seeing that we cannot say of how much importance it may have been for early man--or even apes--to have had their power of manipulation progressively improved. But is the statement true? It appears to me that if Mr. Wallace had endeavoured to imitate the manufactures that were practised by "palaeolithic man," he would have found the very best of reasons for cancelling his statement. For it is an extremely difficult thing to chip a flint into the form of an arrow-head: when made, the suitable attachment of it to a previously prepared arrow is no easy matter: neither a bow nor a bow-string could have been constructed by hands of much less perfection than our own: and the slaying of game with the whole apparatus, when it has been constructed, requires a manual dexterity which we may be perfectly certain that Mr. Wallace--unless he has practised the art from boyhood--does not possess. [16] _loc. cit._ p. 198. So it is with his similar argument that the human voice is more "powerful," more "flexible," and presents a greater "range" and "sweetness" than the needs of savage life can be held to require. The futility of this argument is self-evident as regards "power." And although its weakness is not so obvious with respect to the other three qualities which are named, need we go further than the closely analogous case of certain birds to show the precariousness of arguing from such facts of organic nature to the special operation of "a superior intelligence"? I can hardly suppose that Mr. Wallace will invoke any such agency for the purpose of explaining the "latent capacities" of the voice of a parrot. Yet, in many respects, these are even more wonderful than those of the human voice, albeit in a wild state they are "never required or used[17]." [17] For a discussion of this remarkable case, see _Mental Evolution in Animals_, pp. 222-3. It appears to me that if Mr. Wallace's argument from the "latent capacities of the voice of Man" is good for anything, _a fortiori_ it must be taken to prove that, in the case of the Parrot, "the organ has been prepared in anticipation" of the amusement which the cultivation of its latent capacities arouses in "civilized man." Once more, with regard to the naked skin, it seems sufficient to quote the following passage from the first edition of the _Descent of Man_.