322 LESSONS FKOM NATURE. [CHAP. X. 



over a pretty girl, like birds at one of their places of assemblage, he 

 would be able to infer that she had the power of choice only by 

 observing the eagerness of the wooers to please her, and to display 

 their finery.&quot; vol. ii. p. 122. 



Now here it must be observed that, as is often the case, 

 Mr. Darwin assumes the very point in dispute, unless he 

 means by &quot;power of choice&quot; mere freedom of physical 

 power. If he means an internal, mental faculty of choice, 

 then the observer could attribute such power to the girl only 

 if he had reason to attribute to the rustics an intellectual 

 and moral nature similar in kind to that which he possessed 

 himself. Such a similarity of nature Mr. Darwin, of course, 

 does attribute to rational beings and to brutes; but those 

 who do not agree with him in this would require other tests 

 than the presence of ornaments, and the performance of 

 antics and gestures unaccompanied by any evidence of the 

 faculty of articulate speech. 



Such, then, is the nature of the evidence on which sexual 

 selection is supposed to rest. To me, the action of sexual 

 selection scarcely seems more than a possibility, the evidence 

 rarely raising it to probability. It cannot be a &quot; sufficient 

 cause &quot; for the phenomena which it is intended to explain, 

 nor can it even claim to be taken as a vera causa at all. 

 Yet Mr. Darwin again and again speaks as if its reality and 

 cogency were indisputable. 



The uncertainty of the alleged facts asserted in its favour 

 uncertain- is glaring. Thus Mr. Darwin makes much of the 

 hypothesis, greater number of male Lepidoptera, and yet admits 

 that 



&quot;Mr. Stainton, who has paid such close attention during many 

 years to the smaller moths, informs me that when he collected them 

 in the imago state, he thought that the males were ten times as 

 numerous as the females, but that since he has reared them on a large 

 scale from the caterpillar state, he is convinced that the females are the 

 most numerous. vol. i. p. 310. 



Another passage which illustrates the great uncertainly 

 regarding the complex facts considered, is one relating to 



