The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex Volume II Part 12

The truth of the principle, long ago insisted on by Humboldt,[440] that man admires and often tries to exaggerate whatever characters nature may have given him, is shewn in many ways. The practice of beardless races extirpating every trace of a beard, and generally all the hairs on the body, offers one ill.u.s.tration. The skull has been greatly modified during ancient and modern times by many nations; and there can be little doubt that this has been practised, especially in N. and S. America, in order to exaggerate some natural and admired peculiarity. Many American Indians are known to admire a head flattened to such an extreme degree as to appear to us like that of an idiot. The natives on the north-western coast compress the head into a pointed cone; and it is their constant practice to gather the hair into a knot on the top of the head, for the sake, as Dr. Wilson remarks, "of increasing the apparent elevation of the favourite conoid form." The inhabitants of Arakhan "admire a broad, smooth forehead, and in order to produce it, they fasten a plate of lead on the heads of the newborn children." On the other hand, "a broad, well-rounded occiput is considered a great beauty" by the natives of the Fiji islands.[441]

As with the skull, so with the nose; the ancient Huns during the age of Attila were accustomed to flatten the noses of their infants with bandages, "for the sake of exaggerating a natural conformation." With the Tahitians, to be called, _long-nose_ is considered as an insult, and they compress the noses and foreheads of their children for the sake of beauty. So it is with the Malays of Sumatra, the Hottentots, certain Negroes, and the natives of Brazil.[442] The Chinese have by nature unusually small feet;[443] and it is well known that the women of the upper cla.s.ses distort their feet to make them still smaller. Lastly, Humboldt thinks that the American Indians prefer colouring their bodies with red paint in order to exaggerate their natural tint; and until recently European women added to their naturally bright colours by rouge and white cosmetics; but I doubt whether many barbarous nations have had any such intention in painting themselves.

In the fas.h.i.+ons of our own dress we see exactly the same principle and the same desire to carry every point to an extreme; we exhibit, also, the same spirit of emulation. But the fas.h.i.+ons of savages are far more permanent than ours; and whenever their bodies are artificially modified this is necessarily the case. The Arab women of the Upper Nile occupy about three days in dressing their hair; they never imitate other tribes, "but simply vie with each other in the superlativeness of their own style." Dr. Wilson, in speaking of the compressed skulls of various American races, adds, "such usages are among the least eradicable, and long survive the shock of revolutions that change dynasties and efface more important national peculiarities."[444] The same principle comes largely into play in the art of selection; and we can thus understand, as I have elsewhere explained,[445] the wonderful development of all the races of animals and plants which are kept merely for ornament. Fanciers always wish each character to be somewhat increased; they do not admire a medium standard; they certainly do not desire any great and abrupt change in the character of their breeds; they admire solely what they are accustomed to behold, but they ardently desire to see each characteristic feature a little more developed.

No doubt the perceptive powers of man and the lower animals are so const.i.tuted that brilliant colours and certain forms, as well as harmonious and rhythmical sounds, give pleasure and are called beautiful; but why this should be so, we know no more than why certain bodily sensations are agreeable and others disagreeable. It is certainly not true that there is in the mind of man any universal standard of beauty with respect to the human body. It is, however, possible that certain tastes may in the course of time become inherited, though I know of no evidence in favour of this belief; and if so, each race would possess its own innate ideal standard of beauty. It has been argued[446]

that ugliness consists in an approach to the structure of the lower animals, and this no doubt is true with the more civilised nations, in which intellect is highly appreciated; but a nose twice as prominent, or eyes twice as large as usual, would not be an approach in structure to any of the lower animals, and yet would be utterly hideous. The men of each race prefer what they are accustomed to behold; they cannot endure any great change; but they like variety, and admire each characteristic point carried to a moderate extreme.[447] Men accustomed to a nearly oval face, to straight and regular features, and to bright colours, admire, as we Europeans know, these points when strongly developed. On the other hand, men accustomed to a broad face, with high cheek-bones, a depressed nose, and a black skin, admire these points strongly developed. No doubt characters of all kinds may easily be too much developed for beauty. Hence a perfect beauty, which implies many characters modified in a particular manner, will in every race be a prodigy. As the great anatomist b.i.+.c.hat long ago said, if every one were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characters in our women a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.

CHAPTER XX.

SECONDARY s.e.xUAL CHARACTERS OF MAN-_continued_.

On the effects of the continued selection of women according to a different standard of beauty in each race-On the causes which interfere with s.e.xual selection in civilised and savage nations-Conditions favourable to s.e.xual selection during primeval times-On the manner of action of s.e.xual selection with mankind-On the women in savage tribes having some power to choose their husbands-Absence of hair on the body, and development of the beard-Colour of the skin-Summary.

We have seen in the last chapter that with all barbarous races ornaments, dress, and external appearance are highly valued; and that the men judge of the beauty of their women by widely different standards. We must next inquire whether this preference and the consequent selection during many generations of those women, which, appear to the men of each race the most attractive, has altered the character either of the females alone or of both s.e.xes. With mammals the general rule appears to be that characters of all kinds are inherited equally by the males and females; we might therefore expect that with mankind any characters gained through s.e.xual selection by the females would commonly be transferred to the offspring of both s.e.xes. If any change has thus been effected it is almost certain that the different races will have been differently modified, as each has its own standard of beauty.

With mankind, especially with savages, many causes interfere with the action of s.e.xual selection as far as the bodily frame is concerned.

Civilised men are largely attracted by the mental charms of women, by their wealth, and especially by their social position; for men rarely marry into a much lower rank of life. The men who succeed in obtaining the more beautiful women, will not have a better chance of leaving a long line of descendants than other men with plainer wives, with the exception of the few who bequeath their fortunes according to primogeniture. With respect to the opposite form of selection, namely of the more attractive men by the women, although in civilised nations women have free or almost free choice, which is not the case with barbarous races, yet their choice is largely influenced by the social position and wealth of the men; and the success of the latter in life largely depends on their intellectual powers and energy, or on the fruits of these same powers in their forefathers.

There is, however, reason to believe that s.e.xual selection has effected something in certain civilised and semi-civilised nations. Many persons are convinced, as it appears to me with justice, that the members of our aristocracy, including under this term all wealthy families in which primogeniture has long prevailed, from having chosen during many generations from all cla.s.ses the more beautiful women as their wives, have become handsomer, according to the European standard of beauty, than the middle cla.s.ses; yet the middle cla.s.ses are placed under equally favourable conditions of life for the perfect development of the body.

Cook remarks that the superiority in personal appearance "which is observable in the erees or n.o.bles in all the other islands (of the Pacific) is found in the Sandwich islands;" but this may be chiefly due to their better food and manner of life.

The old traveller Chardin, in describing the Persians, says their "blood is now highly refined by frequent intermixtures with the Georgians and Circa.s.sians, two nations which surpa.s.s all the world in personal beauty.

There is hardly a man of rank in Persia who is not born of a Georgian or Circa.s.sian mother." He adds that they inherit their beauty, "not from their ancestors, for without the above mixture, the men of rank in Persia, who are descendants of the Tartars, would be extremely ugly."[448] Here is a more curious case: the priestesses who attended the temple of Venus Erycina at San-Giuliano in Sicily, were selected for their beauty out of the whole of Greece; they were not vestal virgins, and Quatref.a.ges,[449] who makes this statement, says that the women of San-Giuliano are famous at the present day as the most beautiful in the island, and are sought by artists as models. But it is obvious that the evidence in the above cases is doubtful.

The following case, though relating to savages, is well worth giving from its curiosity. Mr. Winwood Reade informs me that the Jollofs, a tribe of negroes on the west coast of Africa, "are remarkable for their uniformly fine appearance." A friend of his asked one of these men, "How is it that every one whom I meet is so fine-looking, not only your men, but your women?" The Jollof answered, "It is very easily explained: it has always been our custom to pick out our worse-looking slaves and to sell them." It need hardly be added that with all savages female slaves serve as concubines. That this negro should have attributed, whether rightly or wrongly, the fine appearance of his tribe, to the long-continued elimination of the ugly women, is not so surprising as it may at first appear; for I have elsewhere shewn[450] that negroes fully appreciate the importance of selection in the breeding of their domestic animals, and I could give from Mr. Reade additional evidence on this head.

_On the Causes which prevent or check the Action of s.e.xual Selection with Savages._-The chief causes are, firstly, so-called communal marriages or promiscuous intercourse; secondly, infanticide, especially of female infants; thirdly, early betrothals; and lastly, the low estimation in which women are held, as mere slaves. These four points must be considered in some detail.

It is obvious that as long as the pairing of man, or of any other animal, is left to chance, with no choice exerted by either s.e.x, there can be no s.e.xual selection; and no effect will be produced on the offspring by certain individuals having had an advantage over others in their courts.h.i.+p. Now it is a.s.serted that there exist at the present day tribes which practise what Sir J. Lubbock by courtesy calls communal marriages; that is, all the men and women in the tribe are husbands and wives to each other. The licentiousness of many savages is no doubt astonis.h.i.+ngly great, but it seems to me that more evidence is requisite before we fully admit that their existing intercourse is absolutely promiscuous. Nevertheless all those who have most closely studied the subject,[451] and whose judgment is worth much more than mine, believe that communal marriage was the original and universal form throughout the world, including the intermarriage of brothers and sisters. The indirect evidence in favour of this belief is extremely strong, and rests chiefly on the terms of relations.h.i.+p which are employed between the members of the same tribe, implying a connection with the tribe alone, and not with either parent. But the subject is too large and complex for even an abstract to be here given, and I will confine myself to a few remarks. It is evident in the case of communal marriages, or where the marriage-tie is very loose, that the relations.h.i.+p of the child to its father cannot be known. But it seems almost incredible that the relations.h.i.+p of the child to its mother should ever have been completely ignored, especially as the women in most savage tribes nurse their infants for a long time. Accordingly in many cases the lines of descent are traced through the mother alone, to the exclusion of the father. But in many other cases the terms employed express a connection with the tribe alone, to the exclusion even of the mother. It seems possible that the connection between the related members of the same barbarous tribe, exposed to all sorts of danger, might be so much more important, owing to the need of mutual protection and aid, than that between the mother and her child, as to lead to the sole use of terms expressive of the former relations.h.i.+ps; but Mr. Morgan is convinced that this view of the case is by no means sufficient.

The terms of relations.h.i.+p used in different parts of the world may be divided, according to the author just quoted, into two great cla.s.ses, the cla.s.sificatory and descriptive,-the latter being employed by us. It is the cla.s.sificatory system which so strongly leads to the belief that communal and other extremely loose forms of marriage were originally universal. But as far as I can see, there is no necessity on this ground for believing in absolutely promiscuous intercourse. Men and women, like many of the lower animals, might formerly have entered into strict though temporary unions for each birth, and in this case nearly as much confusion would have arisen in the terms of relations.h.i.+p as in the case of promiscuous intercourse. As far as s.e.xual selection is concerned, all that is required is that choice should be exerted before the parents unite, and it signifies little whether the unions last for life or only for a season.

Besides the evidence derived from the terms of relations.h.i.+p, other lines of reasoning indicate the former wide prevalence of communal marriage.

Sir J. Lubbock ingeniously accounts[452] for the strange and widely-extended habit of exogamy,-that is, the men of one tribe always taking wives from a distinct tribe,-by communism having been the original form of marriage; so that a man never obtained a wife for himself unless he captured her from a neighbouring and hostile tribe, and then she would naturally have become his sole and valuable property.

Thus the practice of capturing wives might have arisen; and from the honour so gained might ultimately have become the universal habit. We can also, according to Sir J. Lubbock,[452] thus understand "the necessity of expiation for marriage as an infringement of tribal rites, since, according to old ideas, a man had no right to appropriate to himself that which belonged to the whole tribe." Sir J. Lubbock further gives a most curious body of facts shewing that in old times high honour was bestowed on women who were utterly licentious; and this, as he explains, is intelligible, if we admit that promiscuous intercourse was the aboriginal and therefore long revered custom of the tribe.[453]

Although the manner of development of the marriage-tie is an obscure subject, as we may infer from the divergent opinions on several points between the three authors who have studied it most closely, namely, Mr.

Morgan, Mr. M'Lennan, and Sir J. Lubbock, yet from the foregoing and several other lines of evidence it seems certain that the habit of marriage has been gradually developed, and that almost promiscuous intercourse was once extremely common throughout the world. Nevertheless from the a.n.a.logy of the lower animals, more particularly of those which come nearest to man in the series, I cannot believe that this habit prevailed at an extremely remote period, when man had hardly attained to his present rank in the zoological scale. Man, as I have attempted to shew, is certainly descended from some ape-like creature. With the existing Quadrumana, as far as their habits are known, the males of some species are monogamous, but live during only a part of the year with the females, as seems to be the case with the Orang. Several kinds, as some of the Indian and American monkeys, are strictly monogamous, and a.s.sociate all the year round with their wives. Others are polygamous, as the Gorilla and several American species, and each family lives separate. Even when this occurs, the families inhabiting the same district are probably to a certain extent social: the Chimpanzee, for instance, is occasionally met with in large bands. Again, other species are polygamous, but several males, each with their own females, live a.s.sociated in a body, as with several species of Baboons.[454] We may indeed conclude from what we know of the jealousy of all male quadrupeds, armed, as many of them are, with special weapons for battling with their rivals, that promiscuous intercourse in a state of nature is extremely improbable. The pairing may not last for life, but only for each birth; yet if the males which are the strongest and best able to defend or otherwise a.s.sist their females and young offspring, were to select the more attractive females, this would suffice for the work of s.e.xual selection.

Therefore, if we look far enough back in the stream of time, it is extremely improbable that primeval men and women lived promiscuously together. Judging from the social habits of man as he now exists, and from most savages being polygamists, the most probable view is that primeval man aboriginally lived in small communities, each with as many wives as he could support and obtain, whom he would have jealously guarded against all other men. Or he may have lived with several wives by himself, like the Gorilla; for all the natives "agree that but one adult male is seen in a band; when the young male grows up, a contest takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as the head of the community."[455] The younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding within the limits of the same family.

Although savages are now extremely licentious, and although communal marriages may formerly have largely prevailed, yet many tribes practise some form of marriage, but of a far more lax nature than with civilised nations. Polygamy, as just stated, is almost universally followed by the leading men in every tribe. Nevertheless there are tribes, standing almost at the bottom of the scale, which are strictly monogamous. This is the case with the Veddahs of Ceylon: they have a saying, according to Sir J. Lubbock,[456] "that death alone can separate husband and wife."

An intelligent Kandyan chief, of course a polygamist, "was perfectly scandalized at the utter barbarism of living with only one wife, and never parting until separated by death." It was, he said, "just like the Wanderoo monkeys." Whether savages who now enter into some form of marriage, either polygamous or monogamous, have retained this habit from primeval times, or whether they have returned to some form of marriage, after pa.s.sing through a stage of promiscuous intercourse, I will not pretend to conjecture.

_Infanticide._-This practice is now very common throughout the world, and there is reason to believe that it prevailed much more extensively during former times.[457] Barbarians find it difficult to support themselves and their children, and it is a simple plan to kill their infants. In South America some tribes, as Azara states, formerly destroyed so many infants of both s.e.xes, that they were on the point of extinction. In the Polynesian Islands women have been known to kill from four or five to even ten of their children; and Ellis could not find a single woman who had not killed at least one. Wherever infanticide prevails the struggle for existence will be in so far less severe, and all the members of the tribe will have an almost equally good chance of rearing their few surviving children. In most cases a larger number of female than of male infants are destroyed, for it is obvious that the latter are of most value to the tribe, as they will when grown up aid in defending it, and can support themselves. But the trouble experienced by the women in rearing children, their consequent loss of beauty, the higher estimation set on them and their happier fate, when few in number, are a.s.signed by the women themselves, and by various observers, as additional motives for infanticide. In Australia, where female infanticide is still common, Sir G. Grey estimated the proportion of native women to men as one to three; but others say as two to three. In a village on the eastern frontier of India, Colonel Macculloch found not a single female child.[458]

When, owing to female infanticide, the women of a tribe are few in number, the habit of capturing wives from neighbouring tribes would naturally arise. Sir J. Lubbock, however, as we have seen, attributes the practice in chief part, to the former existence of communal marriage, and to the men having consequently captured women from other tribes to hold as their sole property. Additional causes might be a.s.signed, such as the communities being very small, in which case, marriageable women would often be deficient. That the habit of capture was most extensively practised during former times, even by the ancestors of civilised nations, is clearly shewn by the preservation of many curious customs and ceremonies, of which Mr. M'Lennan has given a most interesting account. In our own marriages the "best man" seems originally to have been the chief abettor of the bridegroom in the act of capture. Now as long as men habitually procured their wives through violence and craft, it is not probable that they would have selected the more attractive women; they would have been too glad to have seized on any woman. But as soon as the practice of procuring wives from a distinct tribe was effected through barter, as now occurs in many places, the more attractive women would generally have been purchased.

The incessant crossing, however, between tribe and tribe, which necessarily follows from any form of this habit would have tended to keep all the people inhabiting the same country nearly uniform in character; and this would have greatly interfered with the power of s.e.xual selection in differentiating the tribes.

The scarcity of women, consequent on female infanticide, leads, also, to another practice, namely polyandry, which is still common in several parts of the world, and which formerly, as Mr. M'Lennan believes, prevailed almost universally; but this latter conclusion is doubted by Mr. Morgan and Sir J. Lubbock.[459] Whenever two or more men are compelled to marry one woman, it is certain that all the women of the tribe will get married, and there will be no selection by the men of the more attractive women. But under these circ.u.mstances the women no doubt will have the power of choice, and will prefer the more attractive men.

Azara, for instance, describes how carefully a Guana woman bargains for all sorts of privileges, before accepting some one or more husbands; and the men in consequence take unusual care of their personal appearance.[460] The very ugly men would perhaps altogether fail in getting a wife, or get one later in life, but the handsomer men, although the most successful in obtaining wives, would not, as far as we can see, leave more offspring to inherit their beauty than the less handsome husbands of the same women.

_Early Betrothals and Slavery of Women._-With many savages it is the custom to betroth the females whilst mere infants; and this would effectually prevent preference being exerted on either side according to personal appearance. But it would not prevent the more attractive women from being afterwards stolen or taken by force from their husbands by the more powerful men; and this often happens in Australia, America, and other parts of the world. The same consequences with reference to s.e.xual selection would to a certain extent follow when women are valued almost exclusively as slaves or beasts of burden, as is the case with most savages. The men, however, at all times would prefer the handsomest slaves according to their standard of beauty.

We thus see that several customs prevail with savages which would greatly interfere with, or completely stop, the action of s.e.xual selection. On the other hand, the conditions of life to which savages are exposed, and some of their habits, are favourable to natural selection; and this always comes into play together with s.e.xual selection. Savages are known to suffer severely from recurrent famines; they do not increase their food by artificial means; they rarely refrain from marriage,[461] and generally marry young. Consequently they must be subjected to occasional hard struggles for existence, and the favoured individuals will alone survive.

Turning to primeval times when men had only doubtfully attained the rank of manhood, they would probably have lived, as already stated, either as polygamists or temporarily as monogamists. Their intercourse, judging from a.n.a.logy, would not then have been promiscuous. They would, no doubt, have defended their females to the best of their power from enemies of all kinds, and would probably have hunted for their subsistence, as well as for that of their offspring. The most powerful and able males would have succeeded best in the struggle for life and in obtaining attractive females. At this early period the progenitors of man, from having only feeble powers of reason, would not have looked forward to distant contingencies. They would have been governed more by their instincts and even less by their reason than are savages at the present day. They would not at that period have partially lost one of the strongest of all instincts, common to all the lower animals, namely the love of their young offspring; and consequently they would not have practised infanticide. There would have been no artificial scarcity of women, and polyandry would not have been followed; there would have been no early betrothals; women would not have been valued as mere slaves; both s.e.xes, if the females as well as the males were permitted to exert any choice, would have chosen their partners, not for mental charms, or property, or social position, but almost solely from external appearance. All the adults would have married or paired, and all the offspring, as far as that was possible, would have been reared; so that the struggle for existence would have been periodically severe to an extreme degree. Thus during these primordial times all the conditions for s.e.xual selection would have been much more favourable than at a later period, when man had advanced in his intellectual powers, but had retrograded in his instincts. Therefore, whatever influence s.e.xual selection may have had in producing the differences between the races of man, and between man and the higher Quadrumana, this influence would have been much more powerful at a very remote period than at the present day.

_On the Manner of Action of s.e.xual Selection with mankind._-With primeval men under the favourable conditions just stated, and with those savages who at the present time enter into any marriage tie (but subject to greater or less interference according as the habits of female infanticide, early betrothals, &c., are more or less practised), s.e.xual selection will probably have acted in the following manner. The strongest and most vigorous men,-those who could best defend and hunt for their families, and during later times the chiefs or head-men,-those who were provided with the best weapons and who possessed the most property, such as a larger number of dogs or other animals, would have succeeded in rearing a greater average number of offspring, than would the weaker, poorer and lower members of the same tribes. There can, also, be no doubt that such men would generally have been able to select the more attractive women. At present the chiefs of nearly every tribe throughout the world succeed in obtaining more than one wife. Until recently, as I hear from Mr. Mantell, almost every girl in New Zealand, who was pretty, or promised to be pretty, was _tapu_ to some chief. With the Kafirs, as Mr. C. Hamilton states,[462] "the chiefs generally have the pick of the women for many miles round, and are most persevering in establis.h.i.+ng or confirming their privilege." We have seen that each race has its own style of beauty, and we know that it is natural to man to admire each characteristic point in his domestic animals, dress, ornaments, and personal appearance, when carried a little beyond the common standard. If then the several foregoing propositions be admitted, and I cannot see that they are doubtful, it would be an inexplicable circ.u.mstance, if the selection of the more attractive women by the more powerful men of each tribe, who would rear on an average a greater number of children, did not after the lapse of many generations modify to a certain extent the character of the tribe.

With our domestic animals, when a foreign breed is introduced into a new country, or when a native breed is long and carefully attended to, either for use or ornament, it is found after several generations to have undergone, whenever the means of comparison exist, a greater or less amount of change. This follows from unconscious selection during a long series of generations-that is, the preservation of the most approved individuals-without any wish or expectation of such a result on the part of the breeder. So again, if two careful breeders rear during many years animals of the same family, and do not compare them together or with a common standard, the animals are found after a time to have become to the surprise of their owners slightly different.[463]

Each breeder has impressed, as Von Nathusius well expresses it, the character of his own mind-his own taste and judgment-on his animals.

What reason, then, can be a.s.signed why similar results should not follow from the long-continued selection of the most admired women by those men of each tribe, who were able to rear to maturity the greater number of children? This would be unconscious selection, for an effect would be produced, independently of any wish or expectation on the part of the men who preferred certain women to others.

Let us suppose the members of a tribe, in which some form of marriage was practised, to spread over an unoccupied continent; they would soon split up into distinct hordes, which would be separated from each other by various barriers, and still more effectually by the incessant wars between all barbarous nations. The hordes would thus be exposed to slightly different conditions and habits of life, and would sooner or later come to differ in some small degree. As soon as this occurred, each isolated tribe would form for itself a slightly different standard of beauty;[464] and then unconscious selection would come into action through the more powerful and leading savages preferring certain women to others. Thus the differences between the tribes, at first very slight, would gradually and inevitably be increased to a greater and greater degree.

With animals in a state of nature, many characters proper to the males, such as size, strength, special weapons, courage and pugnacity, have been acquired through the law of battle. The semi-human progenitors of man, like their allies the Quadrumana, will almost certainly have been thus modified; and, as savages still fight for the possession of their women, a similar process of selection has probably gone on in a greater or less degree to the present day. Other characters proper to the males of the lower animals, such as bright colours and various ornaments, have been acquired by the more attractive males having been preferred by the females. There are, however, exceptional cases in which the males, instead of having been the selected, have been the selectors. We recognise such cases by the females having been rendered more highly ornamented than the males,-their ornamental characters having been transmitted exclusively or chiefly to their female offspring. One such case has been described in the order to which man belongs, namely, with the Rhesus monkey.

Man is more powerful in body and mind than woman, and in the savage state he keeps her in a far more abject state of bondage than does the male of any other animal; therefore it is not surprising that he should have gained the power of selection. Women are everywhere conscious of the value of their beauty; and when they have the means, they take more delight in decorating themselves with all sorts of ornaments than do men. They borrow the plumes of male birds, with which nature decked this s.e.x in order to charm the females. As women have long been selected for beauty, it is not surprising that some of the successive variations should have been transmitted in a limited manner; and consequently that women should have transmitted their beauty in a somewhat higher degree to their female than to their male offspring. Hence women have become more beautiful, as most persons will admit, than men. Women, however, certainly transmit most of their characters, including beauty, to their offspring of both s.e.xes; so that the continued preference by the men of each race of the more attractive women, according to their standard of taste, would tend to modify in the same manner all the individuals of both s.e.xes belonging to the race.

With respect to the other form of s.e.xual selection (which with the lower animals is much the most common), namely, when the females are the selectors, and accept only those males which excite or charm them most, we have reason to believe that it formerly acted on the progenitors of man. Man in all probability owes his beard, and perhaps some other characters, to inheritance from an ancient progenitor who gained in this manner his ornaments. But this form of selection may have occasionally acted during later times; for in utterly barbarous tribes the women have more power in choosing, rejecting, and tempting their lovers, or of afterwards changing their husbands, than might have been expected. As this is a point of some importance, I will give in detail such evidence as I have been able to collect.

Hearne describes how a woman in one of the tribes of Arctic America repeatedly ran away from her husband and joined a beloved man; and with the Charruas of S. America, as Azara states, the power of divorce is perfectly free. With the Abipones, when a man chooses a wife he bargains with the parents about the price. But "it frequently happens that the girl rescinds what has been agreed upon between the parents and the bridegroom, obstinately rejecting the very mention of marriage." She often runs away, hides herself, and thus eludes the bridegroom. In the Fiji Islands the man seizes on the woman whom he wishes for his wife by actual or pretended force; but "on reaching the home of her abductor, should she not approve of the match, she runs to some one who can protect her; if, however, she is satisfied, the matter is settled forthwith." In Tierra del Fuego a young man first obtains the consent of the parents by doing them some service, and then he attempts to carry off the girl; "but if she is unwilling, she hides herself in the woods until her admirer is heartily tired of looking for her, and gives up the pursuit; but this seldom happens." With the Kalmucks there is a regular race between the bride and bridegroom, the former having a fair start; and Clarke "was a.s.sured that no instance occurs of a girl being caught, unless she has a partiality to the pursuer." So with the wild tribes of the Malay archipelago there is a similar racing match; and it appears from M. Bourien's account, as Sir J. Lubbock remarks, that "the race 'is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' but to the young man who has the good fortune to please his intended bride."

Turning to Africa: the Kafirs buy their wives, and girls are severely beaten by their fathers if they will not accept a chosen husband; yet it is manifest from many facts given by the Rev. Mr. Shooter, that they have considerable power of choice. Thus very ugly, though rich men, have been known to fail in getting wives. The girls, before consenting to be betrothed, compel the men to shew themselves off, first in front and then behind, and "exhibit their paces." They have been known to propose to a man, and they not rarely run away with a favoured lover. With the degraded bushwomen of S. Africa, "when a girl has grown up to womanhood without having been betrothed, which, however, does not often happen, her lover must gain her approbation, as well as that of the parents."[465] Mr. Winwood Reade made inquiries for me with respect to the negroes of Western Africa, and he informs me that "the women, at least among the more intelligent Pagan tribes, have no difficulty in getting the husbands whom they may desire, although it is considered unwomanly to ask a man to marry them. They are quite capable of falling in love, and of forming tender, pa.s.sionate, and faithful attachments."

We thus see that with savages the women are not in quite so abject a state in relation to marriage as has often been supposed. They can tempt the men whom they prefer, and can sometimes reject those whom they dislike, either before or after marriage. Preference on the part of the women, steadily acting in any one direction, would ultimately affect the character of the tribe; for the women would generally choose not merely the handsomer men, according to their standard of taste, but those who were at the same time best able to defend and support them. Such well-endowed pairs would commonly rear a larger number of offspring than the less well endowed. The same result would obviously follow in a still more marked manner if there was selection on both sides; that is if the more attractive, and at the same time more powerful men were to prefer, and were preferred by, the more attractive women. And these two forms of selection seem actually to have occurred, whether or not simultaneously, with mankind, especially during the earlier periods of our long history.

We will now consider in a little more detail, relatively to s.e.xual selection, some of the characters which distinguish the several races of man from each other and from the lower animals, namely, the more or less complete absence of hair from the body and the colour of the skin. We need say nothing about the great diversity in the shape of the features and of the skull between the different races, as we have seen in the last chapter how different is the standard of beauty in these respects.

These characters will therefore probably have been acted on through s.e.xual selection; but we have no means of judging, as far as I can see, whether they have been acted on chiefly through the male or female side.

The musical faculties of man have likewise been already discussed.

_Absence of Hair on the Body, and its Development on the Face and Head._-From the presence of the woolly hair or lanugo on the human ftus, and of rudimentary hairs scattered over the body during maturity, we may infer that man is descended from some animal which was born hairy and remained so during life. The loss of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to man even under a hot climate, for he is thus exposed to sudden chills, especially during wet weather.

As Mr. Wallace remarks, the natives in all countries are glad to protect their naked backs and shoulders with some slight covering. No one supposes that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man, so that his body cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection.[466] Nor have we any grounds for believing, as shewn in a former chapter, that this can be due to the direct action of the conditions to which man has long been exposed, or that it is the result of correlated development.

The absence of hair on the body is to a certain extent a secondary s.e.xual character; for in all parts of the world women are less hairy than men. Therefore we may reasonably suspect that this is a character which has been gained through s.e.xual selection. We know that the faces of several species of monkeys, and large surfaces at the posterior end of the body in other species, have been denuded of hair; and this we may safely attribute to s.e.xual selection, for these surfaces are not only vividly coloured, but sometimes, as with the male mandrill and female rhesus, much more vividly in the one s.e.x than in the other. As these animals gradually reach maturity the naked surfaces, as I am informed by Mr. Bartlett, grow larger, relatively to the size of their bodies. The hair, however, appears to have been removed in these cases, not for the sake of nudity, but that the colour of the skin should be more fully displayed. So again with many birds the head and neck have been divested of feathers through s.e.xual selection, for the sake of exhibiting the brightly-coloured skin.

As woman has a less hairy body than man, and as this character is common to all races, we may conclude that our female semi-human progenitors were probably first partially divested of hair; and that this occurred at an extremely remote period before the several races had diverged from a common stock. As our female progenitors gradually acquired this new character of nudity, they must have transmitted it in an almost equal degree to their young offspring of both s.e.xes; so that its transmission, as in the case of many ornaments with mammals and birds, has not been limited either by age or s.e.x. There is nothing surprising in a partial loss of hair having been esteemed as ornamental by the ape-like progenitors of man, for we have seen that with animals of all kinds innumerable strange characters have been thus esteemed, and have consequently been modified through s.e.xual selection. Nor is it surprising that a character in a slight degree injurious should have been thus acquired; for we know that this is the case with the plumes of some birds, and with the horns of some stags.