The Theory of Sexual Selection. 401 



Concluding Remarks. 



I will now conclude this chapter, and with it the 

 present volume, by offering a few general remarks on 

 what may be termed the philosophical relations of 

 Darwinian doctrine to the facts of adaptation on the 

 one hand, and to those of beauty on the other. Of 

 course we are all aware that before the days of this 

 doctrine the facts of adaptation in organic nature were 

 taken to constitute the clearest possible evidence of 

 special design, on account of the wonderful mechanisms 

 which they everywhere displayed ; while the facts of 

 beauty were taken as constituting no less conclusive 

 evidence of the quality of such special design as 

 beneficent, not to say artistic. But now that the 

 Darwinian doctrine appears to have explained 

 scientifically the former class of facts by its theory of 

 natural selection, and the latter class of facts by its 

 theory of sexual selection, we may fitly conclude this 

 brief exposition of the doctrine as a whole by consi- 

 dering what influence such naturalistic explanations 

 may fairly be taken to exercise upon the older, or 

 super-naturalistic, interpretations. 



To begin with the facts of adaptation, we must 

 first of all observe that the Darwinian doctrine is 

 immediately concerned with these facts only in so far 



Mrs. Peckham's work on Sexual Selection in Spiders, and furnishes 

 appropriate descriptions. Therefore, while retaining the illustrations, 

 I have withdrawn my own descriptions. 



Mr. Poulton has also in his book supplied a resume of the arguments 

 for and against the theory of sexual selection in general. Of course in 

 nearly all respects this conesponds with the resume which is given in 

 the foregoing pages; but I liave left the latter as it was originally 

 written, because all the critical part is reproduced verbatim from a 

 review of Mr. Wallace's Darwinism, of a date still earlier than that of 

 Mr. Poulton's book — viz. Contemporary Review, August, 1889. 



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