888 SEXUAL SELECTION : MAX. Part IT. 



consequently tliey would not have practised infanticide. 

 There would have been no artificial scarcity of women, 

 and polyandry w^ould not have been followed ; there 

 would have been no earlv betrothals : women would 

 not have been valued as mere slaves ; both sexes, 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 pri- 

 mordial times all the conditions for sexual 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 sexual 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 tlie present day. 



On the Manner of Action of Sexual Selection luith 

 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), sexual selection will probably have 

 acted in the following manner. The strongest and most 

 vi2:orous men, — those who could best defend and hunt 

 for their families, and during later times the chiefs or 

 head-men, — those wdio were provided with the best 

 weapons and who possessed the most property, such as 



