Thought-Culture; or, Practical Mental Training

race, and in many cases have become extinct. The great natural law of the "survival of the fittest" has steadily operated throughout human history original: "the life of the race". The "fittest" were those best adapted to struggle with and overcome the obstacles of their environment, and these obstacles were best overcome by the use of the intellect. Those tribes and those individuals whose intellect was active tended to survive where others perished, and consequently, they were able to pass on original: "transmit" their intellectual quality to their descendants.

Halleck Reuben Post Halleck (1859–1936), an American educator and psychologist known for his works on the evolution of the mind. says: "Nature is constantly using her power to kill off the thoughtless, or to cripple them in life's race. She is determined that only the fittest and the descendants of the fittest shall survive. By the 'fittest' she means those who have thought and whose ancestors have thought and profited by it. Geologists tell us that ages ago there lived in England bears, tigers, elephants, lions, and many other powerful and fierce animals. There was living at the same time original: "contemporaneous" with them a much weaker animal, that had neither the claws, the strength, nor the speed of the tiger. In fact, this human being was al—"