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The position here taken, that the human brain has not kept pace with the development of society, and has acted as a deterrent rather than an assistant to our growth, may be questioned from the point of view of the evolutionist. Natural selection, he will assert, develops in each animal a brain capacity suited to his needs, and speedily removes him from the field of contest if he does not manifest it; man in the struggle for existence must similarly develop the kind and amount of brain that is necessary to him, and if he does not he will perish. Therefore the human brain to-day is all that can be expected, and it is useless to talk of any wholesale and sudden improvement in social conditions from that source.
This would be true if man were a creature whose existence was conditioned upon his own individual activities. While the human animal remained at that stage of development where he was directly reached by the consequences of his own personal conduct, his brain power was cultivated in this simple way; if he was not smart enough to live, he died, and was well out of the procession.