SECONDARY SEXUAL CHARACTERS. 691 



strength, courage, pugnacity, and energy of man, in com- 

 parison with women, were acquired during primeval times, 

 and have subsequently been augmented, chiefly through 

 the contests of rival males for the possession of the females. 

 The greater intellectual vigor and power of invention in 

 man is probably due to natural selection, combined with 

 the inherited effects of habit, for the most able men will 

 have succeeded best in defending and providing for them- 

 selves and for their wives and offspring. As far as the ex- 

 treme intricacy of the subject permits us to judge, it 

 appears that our male ape-like progenitors acquired their 

 beards as an ornament to charm or excite the opposite sex, 

 and transmitted them only to their male offspring. The 

 females apparently first had their bodies denuded of hair, 

 also as a sexual ornament; but they transmitted this char- 

 acter almost equally to both sexes. It is not improbable 

 that the females were modified in other respects for the 

 same purpose and by the same means; so that women have 

 acquired sweeter voices and become more beautiful than 

 men. 



It deserves attention that with mankind the conditions 

 were in many respects much more favorable for sexual 

 selection, during a very early period, when man had only 

 just attained to the rank of manhood, than during later 

 times. For he would then, as we may safely conclude, 

 have been guided more by his instinctive passions, and 

 less by foresight or reason. He would have jealousy 

 guarded his wife or wives. He would have practiced 

 infanticide; nor valued his wives merely as useful slaves; 

 nor have been betrothed to them during infancy. Hence 

 we may infer that the races of men were differentiated, as 

 far as sexual selection is concerned, in chief part at a very 

 remote epoch ; and this conclusion throws light on the 

 remarkable fact that at the most ancient period, of which 

 we have as yet any record, the races of man had already 

 come to differ nearly or quite as much as they do at the 

 present day. 



The views here advanced, on the part which sexual selec- 

 tion has played in the history of man, want scientific pre- 

 cision. He who does not admit this agency in the case of 

 the lower animals, will disregard all that I have written in 

 the later chapters on man. We cannot positively say that 

 this character, but not that, has been thus modified; it hae. 



