i895. SEXUAL SELECTION. 331 



plumes, etc. — if not more. It is not merely an exemplification of a law 

 of development that the fair sex should hesitate to abandon a pre- 

 historic caprice of this description which civilised men of the present 

 day have discarded, for this fact also throws a light upon the question 

 of female preferences in past ages. Let us suppose, for a moment, 

 contrary to the Darwinian hypothesis, that the diversified attractions 

 of savage men are not the result of a long-continued process of sexual 

 selection in earlier times. If so, how does it stand with the well- 

 trimmed tufts of hair and the decorative ridges in the face of some of 

 the quadrumana, whose similarity to human modes of embellishment 

 is not fanciful, but real, and expressly insisted on by Darwin (pp. 541 

 and 549 seg.)? If preferential mating has not produced the ornaments 

 of monkeys, birds and other animals will be able to dispense with it 

 still more easily. Granted, on the other hand, that the ornaments of 

 man have been sexually selected like those of all "higher animals," it 

 follows that the women of those early days were able to exercise a 

 free choice, notwithstanding the servile condition in which they are 

 frequently presumed to have existed. Passing over this difficulty, 

 however, it is surprising to find it implicitly and explicitly stated 

 throughout these chapters that the order of selection in the case of 

 man is generally reversed, the males choosing the females. 



Now, what does this entail ? Nothing less than that the fair sex 

 of our species stands acquitted of any initiative in the appreciation of 

 useless male embellishments. This may be gratifying to the majority 

 of mankind, but the defender of sexual selection is landed in a greater 

 dilemma than ever, for its agency is rendered incompetent, on the 

 expressed opinion of its author, to account for male ornamentation in 

 a species where one might reasonably presuppose the highest develop- 

 ment of aesthetic taste on the part of the female sex. By raising a 

 strong presumption against the efficacy of preferential mating in less 

 highly organised groups, this constitutes one of the gravest defects of 

 the theory. 



Another difficulty. If promiscuous intercourse and the low 

 estimation in which women are held form two of the four chief causes 

 that prevent or check the action of sexual selection with savages 

 (p. 587), they cannot fail to interfere with its influence in the case of 

 all " higher animals." 



Again, respecting the absence of hair on the body of man, Darwin 

 states that " we may reasonably suspect this character to have been 

 gained through sexual selection " (p. 600). Still, if our female semi- 

 human ancestors were the first to acquire it (pp. 57 and 601), and 

 afterwards " transmitted it almost equally to their offspring of both 

 sexes while young," there is surely no necessity to invoke sexual 

 selection in order to explain its subsequent appearance with the males. 

 And if the peculiarity be due to the action of male preferences of one 

 sort or another, we must extend this explanation to certain of the 

 anthropoid apes, the females of which are also somewhat less hairy 



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