456 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. vi. 



of domesticated animals. We cannot, therefore, doubt but that 

 the tendency of each man to choose a good-looking wife, accord- 

 ing to his standard of beauty, must in successive generations 

 have had the effect of improving the personal appearance of the 

 women, and, through them, of the race in general. This admis- 

 sion, however, in no way carries with it the acceptance of any 

 belief that the fundamental characters which distinguish the 

 sexes, or which separate man from the monkeys, have been pro- 

 duced by any conceivable action of "sexual selection" of this 

 kind, acting through any conceivable period. 



Mr. Darwin next passes on to notice the causes which he con- 

 ceives to have interfered with or prevented the action of sexual 

 selection amongst savages. The only cause adduced by him 

 which demands our consideration, is what Sir John Lubbock has 

 politely termed "communal marriages," i. e. the state of things 

 in some savage tribes in which "all the men and women in the 

 tribe are husbands and wives to each other." This state of 

 things is, of course, a complete bar to the existence of " sexual 

 selection," and we may at once dismiss it, so far as this aspect of 

 the question is concerned. There is, however, another aspect of 

 this subject upon which it may be well to make a few remarks. 

 Upon strict Darwinian principles such a habit as that of "com- 

 munal marriage " could never have been " the original and uni- 

 versal form throughout the world," unless it had been derived 

 by modification from habits and feelings existing in some pre- 

 human type of animal. But this is one of the numerous points 

 in which — paradoxical as it may seem — man really proves his 

 superiority over the brutes, by being worse than any beast. The 

 disciples of Mr. Darwin's school do not recognize that man's sins 

 and vices, indeed his very capacity for doing wrong, raise him 

 immeasurably above the brutes that perish. They can do no 

 wrong, for they cannot transgress the laws of their nature ; but 

 man can act in opposition to the dictates of his higher nature, 

 when he becomes, not worse than himself merely, but worse than 

 any animal. The capacity to fall, however, is truly but a 

 measure of the capacity to rise ; and man's evils distinguish him 

 n the lower animals as much as his virtues. From this point 

 V, it is not difficult to shew that "communal marriage " is 

 y human institution, that it can never have existed 

 the quadrupeds, and that it cannot, therefore, have been 

 . amongst the early races of mankind by a modification 



