30 THE COURTSHIP OF ANIMALS 



The greater physical strength of the male and his higher 

 brain capacity are probably the result of Natural, rather 

 than of Sexual Selection. The former would weed out 

 all the weakly and dull-witted in the ordinary course of 

 the struggle for existence, the latter, during the early days 

 of man's development, would award the prizes of life to 

 the most amorous and cunning, and to the most ambi- 

 tious of the competitors. 



The secondary sexual characters of the female are 

 chiefly negative characters, the absence of those which 

 are conspicuous in the male. She retains more of the 

 primitive characters of the race. This is the rule in 

 regard to the animal kingdom. Wherever we desire 

 to find the onward tendency of evolution, the latest 

 developments of the race, we turn to the male ; when we 

 desire to learn something of the past history of the species 

 we turn to the female and young. This standard, of course, 

 yields by no means uniform results, for we find every 

 gradation of progress on the part of the latter, till male 

 and female and young are externally indistinguishable. 

 But the order is almost invariably the same — first the 

 male, then the female, then the young. Thus progress is 

 more or less automatic or "Orthogenic," as the scientific 

 text books have it, new characters, as they appear, tending 

 to go on increasing in amplitude till checked ^by Natural 

 selection. It is to be noted, however, that this trans- 

 ference is limited, for the female never inherits characters 

 which are concerned with aggressiveness to the same 

 degree as in the males, as witness, for example, the brow- 

 ridges and huge canines in the case of the gorilla. 



Darwin believed that the beards of men have developed 

 by the selective choice of the women who preferred 

 bearded men, while the secondary sexual characters of 



