SEXUAL SELECTION, ASSORTATIVE MATING, ETC. 235 



But whatever may be its present shortcomings sexual selection 

 is an evolutionary factor of magnificent possibilities. It affords 

 perhaps the readiest method for a group to realize its eugenic 

 ideals. Alfred Russell Wallace believes that when economic 

 reforms do away with the present temptation for women to marry 

 in order to secure subsistence and a home the standard of mar- 

 riage selection will be greatly raised. "The idle or the utterly 

 selfish would be almost universally rejected; the chronically 

 diseased or the weak in intellect would also usually remain 

 unmarried, at least till an advanced period of life, while those who 

 showed any tendency to insanity or exhibited any congenital 

 deformity would also be rejected by the younger women, because 

 it would be considered an offense against society to be the means 

 of perpetuating any such diseases or imperfections." Women, 

 Wallace contends, are now driven to marry "men who are pal- 

 pably unjust, stupid or weak," and that "it may be taken as 

 certain, therefore, than when women are economically and so- 

 cially free to choose, numbers of the worst men among all classes 

 who now readily obtain wives will be almost certainly rejected" 



One would like to be able to share Wallace's sanguine hopes 

 of the eugenic potency of economic reform. Perhaps his chival- 

 rous championship of oppressed woman has prevented him from 

 giving due weight to the existence of the idle, worthless and selfish 

 members of the weaker sex who, in an improved economic regime, 

 would probably find no greater difficulty than they do at present 

 in attaching themselves to some unfortunate male. Both the 

 worthless and the worthy tend to mate with their own kind, and 

 they would doubtless continue to do so under any economic sys- 

 tem that could be devised. It is not so much economic reform 

 per se that would improve marriage selection, as the greater 

 diffusion of education, and the elevation of the ethical standards 

 of the mass of the people. The amelioration of economic abuses 



ifications for parentage. The better-paid, well-nourished, provident artizans are 

 marrying later in life, and producing fewer offspring than the slum natives. Profes- 

 sional men, doctors, solicitors, clergymen, authors, artists, teachers and brain- 

 workers are forced in large numbers to defer wedlock till middle age, or even later." 

 Gallichan, The Great Unmarried, p. 41. 



