358 SEXUAL SELECTION: MAN. [Part II. 



capable of falling in love, and of forming tender, passion- 

 ate, 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 dis- 

 like, either before or after marriage. Preference on the 

 part of the women, steadily acting in any one direc- 

 tion, 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 en- 

 dowed. 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 simulta- 

 neously, with mankind, especially during the earlier pe- 

 riods of our long history. 



We will now consider in a little more detail, relatively 

 to sexual selection, some of the characters which distin- 

 guish the several races of man from each other and from 

 the lower animals, namely, the more or less complete ab- 

 sence of hair from the body and the color of the skin. 

 We need say nothing about the great diversity in the 

 shape of the features and of the skull between the differ- 

 ent races, as we have seen in the last chapter how differ- 

 ent is the standard of beauty in these respects. These 

 characters will therefore probably have been acted on 

 through sexual 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. 



