DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 65 



argument that, when many other conditions of 

 success than fighting power become necessary, 

 the process of natural selection will continue to 

 act in the same way. A people, all whose 

 members become superior in mental qualities, 

 will have the advantage over those peoples in 

 which the development is partial and onesided ; 

 for, certainly, it could not be argued that the 

 (alleged) relatively greater inferiority of the 

 civilised female brain had rane alon^ - with 

 an increased capacity for the purely physical 

 functions of maternity, as compared with what 

 is found among savage races. (/3) If, on the 

 other hand, the alleged difference is due to 

 sexual selection, this must mean, not merely 

 that men as a rule have preferred women with 

 inferior brain power to their own (which is 

 likely enough), but women whose female chil- 

 dren were also on the average inferior in this 

 respect to their male children. Supposing such 

 a kind of selection to be possible (one can only 

 admit it for the sake of argument), then, if 

 men's ideas about women come to be altered, 

 sexual selection will work in an opposite 

 manner. With a new ideal of woman, the 

 clever would be preferred to the stupid, and the 

 D. p. F 



