=The denudation of man.=--As contrasted with the whole mass of his predecessors, man comes into the world denuded of defensive armour, destitute of offensive weapons, possessed alone of the potentialities of the psychical. So far as defence is concerned, he has neither fur nor feathers nor scales, but is the most naked and thinnest skinned of animals. In his _Autobiography_, Spencer tells us how he and Huxley, sitting on the cliff at St. Andrews and watching some boys bathing, “marvelled over the fact, seeming especially strange when they are no longer disguised by clothes, that human beings should dominate over all other creatures and play the wonderful part they do on the earth.”[14] But man is not only without armour against either living enemies or cold; he is also without weapons of attack. His teeth are practically worthless in this respect, not only on account of their small size but also because his chin, a unique possession, and the shape of his jaws, make them singularly unfit for catching or grasping. For claws he has merely nails, capable only of the feeblest scratching; he can discharge no poisons from his mouth; he cannot envelop himself in darkness in order to hide himself; his speediest and most enduring runner is a breathless laggard. And, lastly, he is at first almost bereft of instinct, has to be burnt in order to dread the fire, and cannot find his own way to the breast. His sole instrument of dominance is his mind in all its attributes. On the grounds thus indicated, we must be wholly opposed to all proposals for race education and race-culture, and to all social practices, which assume more or less consciously that, for all his boasting, man is after all only an animal: whilst we must applaud the selection and culture of the physical exactly in so far as, but no further than, it makes for health and strength of the psychical--or, if the reader dislikes these expressions, the health and strength of that particular part of the physical which we call the nervous system.