Were this only a fable instead of an actual incident, there is nothing in it revolting to our sense of probability, because we are perfectly aware that the lower animals constantly give indications of what in ourselves we call the moral feelings. We continually see them behaving as we ourselves behave when we submit to self-sacrifice for the sake of those we love. We see many animals in possession of laws and constitutions answering to our own in all but one particular, namely, that theirs appear to be fixed while ours are continually changing. But most likely we overrate both the fixed character of theirs, and the instability of our own. Changes in the politics of an oyster may easily escape the notice of a man in the midst of some vast revolution (as he thinks it) of human affairs, some vast revolution which proves in the end to be nothing more than a change of names. For mankind the acquisition of language has indefinitely quickened the movement of ideas, but where language is without the aids of writing and printing, as among savage tribes, and where the language itself is an imperfect instrument of thought, the same routine seems to prevail from generation to generation. Fashion in dress changes but slowly when the dress itself is nothing but a girdle; and the fashions of the mind change with as little facility when ideas and wants, and the means of expressing the one and gratifying the other, are all alike few and extremely simple. So simple are the wants and ideas of the savage, so little above those of the elephant and the ape, that Mr. Wallace finds himself driven to the conclusion that the savage ‘in his large and well-developed brain possesses an organ quite disproportionate to his actual requirements--an organ that seems prepared in advance, only to be fully utilized as he progresses in civilization.’ But anything _quite disproportionate_ to its actual place in nature cannot have been produced according to the theory of development. This theory therefore Mr. Wallace deems and declares inapplicable to the brain and mind of man. In support of his view he adduces several circumstances both of man’s bodily and mental constitution, which he considers this theory incapable of explaining. He maintains that natural selection will not account for those rudiments of logical, moral, and æsthetic faculties which are to be found in uncivilized man; for the nakedness of the human skin, though hair upon the back would be of essential service to the unclad savage; for the absence of prehensile power from the human foot, a power which he thinks would be useful, or for those perfections of hand and voice which he thinks would be useless, to uncultivated human beings. The inference he draws ‘from this class of phenomena is, that a superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a definite direction and for a special purpose, just as man guides the development of many animal and vegetable forms.’