52 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



growing esthetic sentiment, the expression of a developing 

 taste, which is so nearly identical with the most highly devel- 

 oped tastes of mankind that there are no higher objects of 

 human admiration than the gorgeous plumage of birds or the 

 graceful forms of animals — than, for example, the feathers of 

 the ostrich or the antlers of the stag. 



Male Selection. — The reign of female selection has been a 

 long one, and throughout the two classes of animals in which 

 it is chiefly displayed it still prevails in full force. It is proba- 

 bly still the dominant influence in the human race, even among 

 its highest types, though here resulting more in mental than 

 in physical superiority in men. 



But there are signs that this may not always remain so. I 

 long ago pointed out * that among the higher races of men a 

 form of male selection has already begun to exert a strong- 

 influence. In civilized life the choosing is not left wholly to 

 women, and with the progress of culture and refinement this 

 mutuality of selection grows more and more marked. That 

 male selection will prove equally effective with female selection 

 is already proved by the ever increasing beauty of women 

 under its influence ; and those who think men perverse because 

 they prefer beauty to all other qualities, or women trivial 

 because they make their personal appearance a leading aim of 

 life, have never learned the great law of nature which over- 

 rules all the trite maxims of the purists, that beauty means 

 worth — perfection — and that beautiful companions insure per- 

 fect offspring, an improved posterity, and a better and nobler 

 race, of men as well as women. And this is why the love of 

 and preference for the beautiful has a higher and a deeper 

 sanction in the everlasting order of things than can be given 

 by any church, any court of law, or any code of morals. 



* Dynamic Sociology, 1883, Vol. I, p. 613. 



