THE SEXES, AND CRITICISM OF SEXUAL SELECTION. 23 



primary and secondary sexual characters express the fundamental 

 physiological bias characteristic of either sex. Sexual selection 

 resembles artificial selection, but the female takes the place of the 

 human breeder; it resembles natural selection, but the selective females 

 and the combative males represent a role filled in the larger case by 

 the fostering or eliminating action of the environment. As a special 

 case of natural selection, Darwin's minor theory is open to the objec- 

 tion of being teleological, that is, of accounting for structures in terms 

 of a final advantage. It is quite open to the logical critic to urge, as a 

 few have done, that the structures to be explained have to be accounted 

 for before, as well as after, the stage when they were developed enough 

 to be useful. The origin — or, in other words, the fundamental 

 physiological import — of the structures, must be explained before we 

 have a complete or adequate theory of organic evolution. 



Apart from this logical insufficiency, the theory of sexual selection 

 is open to many minor objections, with some of which Darwin himself 

 dealt, as is mentioned in the preceding historical chapter. One 

 detailed objection which seems serious may also be urged. The 

 evolution of colored markings by selective preference carries with it the 

 postulate of a certain level of aesthetic taste and critical power in the 

 female, and this not only very high and very scrupulous as to details, 

 but remaining permanent as a standard of fashion from generation to 

 generation, — large assumptions all, and scarcely verifiable in human 

 experience. Yet we can not suppose that Mr. Darwin considered the 

 human female as peculiarly undeveloped. It is true, doubtless, that 

 both insects and birds have so far and increasingly become educated in 

 such sensitiveness; but when we consider the complexity of the mark- 

 ings of the male bird or insect, and the slow gradations from one stage 

 of perfection to another, it seems difficult to credit birds or butterflies 

 with a' degree of aesthetic development exhibited by no human being 

 without both special aesthetic acuteness and special training. More- 

 over, the butterfly, which is supposed to possess this extraordinary 

 development of psychological subtlety, will fly naively to a piece of 

 white paper on the ground, and is attracted by the primary aesthetic 

 stimulus of an old-fashioned wall-paper, not to speak of the gaudy and 

 monotonous brightness of some of our garden flowers. Thus we have 

 the further difficulty, that we must suppose the female butterfly to 

 have a double standard of taste, one for the flowers which she and her 

 mate both visit, the other for the far more complex coloring and mark- 

 ings of the males. And even among birds, if we take those 

 unmistakable hints of real awakening of the aesthetic sense which are 

 exhibited by the Australian bowerbird or by the common jackdaw in 

 its fondness for bright objects, how very rude is this taste compared 



