Habit and Instinct. 



Emigration may perhaps be adduced as affording 

 evidence of the operation of natural selection among man- 

 kind. But though it must, beyond question, affect the dis- 

 tribution of human individuals, it is not clear in what 

 manner it gives opportunity for that elimination which is 

 essential to natural selection. The effects of emigration 

 are indeed worthy of a fuller and more careful dis- 

 cussion than they have yet received. From the older 

 centres of European civilization, there has proceeded for 

 some centuries a stream of emigrants to distant countries. 

 What have been the effects on the old centres and on the 

 new ? They have no doubt varied as the facilities of tran- 

 sport increased. There have proceeded to the new centres 

 a few of our best and some of our worst. In earlier times 

 the more adventurous and energetic left our shores ; now 

 perhaps there is a preponderance of our failures, or more 

 accurately, of those who do not find suitable opportunities 

 in our social system. Since the rate of propagation, in 

 at any rate some of the new centres, has been more 

 rapid than that in the old centres, the mean level in all 

 the centres, taken collectively, has been proportionally 

 altered. The subject is too large a one to be discussed 

 incidentally. But it would seem that the alteration is due 

 rather to changes of distribution than to natural selection 

 properly so called. 



Does sexual selection, by preferential mating, have a 

 far-reaching influence ? There can be no doubt that, what- 

 ever be the case among animals, there is preferential 

 mating among mankind. In marriage, at its best and 

 highest, the man selects his ideal woman, her in whom 

 beauty and grace, physical, moral, and intellectual, are 

 embodied ; and the woman selects her ideal man, con- 

 spicuous among all others for strength in mind and body, 

 character and conduct. Herein lies the value, from the 



