CiiAP, XX. MANNER OF ACTION. 3()7 



which would greatly interfere with, or completely stop, 

 the action of sexual selection. On the other hand, the 

 conditioiis 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 sexual 

 selection. Savages are known to suffer severely from 

 recurrent famines ; they do not increase their food by 

 artificial means ; they rarely refrain from marriage,^* 

 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 doubt- 

 fully attained the rank of manhood, they would probably 

 have lived, as already stated, either as polygamists or 

 temporarily as monogamists. Their intercourse, judging 

 from analogy, 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 power- 

 ful 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 j^artially lost one 

 of the strongest of all instincts, common to all the lower 

 animals, namely the love of their young offspring ; and 



'* Burcliel] says (' Travels in S. Africa, vol. ii. 1824, p. 58), that among 

 the wild nations of Southern Africa, neither men nor women ever pass 

 their lives in a state of celibacy. Azara (' Voyages dans I'Amerique 

 Merid.' torn, ii. 1809, p. 21) makes precisely the same remark in regard 

 to the wild Indians of South America. 



