CHAP, vii EVOLUTION IN DARWIN 67 



that the females are conscious of a preference for the 

 best male specimens qua best, or are urged by an 

 enthusiasm for the ideal ! We only affirm that, in 

 virtue of their animal minds, they yield themselves 

 to the stronger or to the fairer. Yet again a question 

 may be raised, whether the evolution of beauty, sup- 

 posed to enter into the second form of sexual selec- 

 tion, is necessarily the same thing as an evolution in 

 strength and efficiency. It may well be so. Beauty 

 may well be correlated to those qualities of health 

 and vigour which make a type intrinsically fitted 

 to survive. As Mr. Grant Allen once remarked in 

 a rare moment of inspiration or common sense, the 

 saying that beauty is only skin-deep is itself but a 

 piece of skin-deep and superficial wisdom. Yet, even 

 if beauty does not imply superior health and vigour, 

 so long as beauty is not developed at the sacrifice 

 of useful qualities, sexual selection will hasten the 

 evolutionary process along lines on which it has already 

 begun to move along the line of beauty, if not 

 incontestably along the line of strength or aggregate 

 fitness. 



Another supplement to Darwin's central doctrine is 

 what may conveniently be termed use-inheritance. This 

 played a great part in the evolutionary theories of 

 Lamarck, along with a still more questionable doctrine, 

 that of direct adjustment of the organism to its environ- 

 ment. As the comic song puts it, the giraffe got a long 

 neck by stretching to reach the upper branches. That 

 is scarcely Darwinism ; it is much nearer Lamarckism. 

 The Darwinian giraffe happened to be born with a longer 

 neck than the remainder of his family, and consequently 

 outlived them all in a time of scarcity, and was the 

 only giraffe who transmitted his qualities to offspring. 



