No. 4.] NICHOLSON — SEXUAL SELECTION IN MAN. 459 



sical degeneracy predispose to rapid multiplication ; but the 

 same classes of society in which the best examples of this may be 

 found are just those in which early marriage is the rule, instead 

 of the exception. The strongest classes of the community, 

 therefore, certainly have no assured advantage over the weaker 

 and poorer classes, as regards the number of descendants likely 

 to be left by each. In the third place, Mr. Darwin believes that 

 the characters of male animals have in the main been acquired 

 by "the law of battle,'' in consequence of their having been 

 compelled to fight for their wives. If such had been the case 

 with man, however, the characters gained in this way must have 

 been chiefly, if not exclusively, mental. For, we have already 

 seen that the struggle between man and man, even in the savage 

 state, turns upon skill, ingenuity, cunning, and patience, far more 

 than upon mere brute strength; whilst man, alone of all the 

 higher animals, has been endowed by nature with no special 

 weapons either of oifence or defence. In fact, on Mr. Darwin's 

 hypothesis, he is supposed to have early lost the few natural 

 weapons with which he commenced the battle of life ; a supposi- 

 tion very inconsistent with the theory of sexual selection. 



Finally, it only remains to add that the chief character of the 

 human race which Mr. Darwin proposes to account for by the 

 action of sexual selection, is the general hairlessness of his body. 

 It is admitted that natural selection, formerly so confidently 

 appealed to, cannot have metamorphosed man from a hairy into 

 a hairless animal ; but it is now supposed that this change may 

 have been brought about by the constant selection by the males 

 of a hairy race of men of females in whom the hairy covering- 

 became " small by degrees and beautifully less." Mr. Darwin 

 thinks that there is "nothing surprismg in a partial loss of hair 

 having been esteemed as ornamental by the apelike progenitors 

 of man." We can only say that we cannot agree with him in 

 feeling no surprise on this head ; whilst we do not think that 

 the general evidence bears out his views as to the origin of man's 

 hairless skin. 



