The Wallace-Darwin Correspondence 



mental health and vigour. So with selection of variations 

 adapted to special habits of life, a« fishing, paddling, 

 riding, climbing, etc. etc., in different races : no doubt it 

 must act to some extent, but will it be ever so rigid as to 

 induce a definite physical modification, and can we imagine 

 it to have had any part in producing the distinct races that 

 now exist ? 



The sexual selection you allude to will also, I think, have 

 been equally uncertain in its results. In the very lowest 

 tribes there is rarely much polygamy, and women are more 

 or less a matter of purchase. There is also little difference 

 of social condition, and I think it rarely happens that any 

 health}^ and undeformed man remains without w^ife and 

 children. I very much doubt the often-repeated assertion 

 that our aristocracy are more beautiful than the middle 

 classes. I allow that they present specimens of the highest 

 kind of beauty, but I doubt the average. I have noticed in 

 country places a greater average amount of good looks among 

 the middle classes, and besides, we unavoidably combine in 

 our idea of beauty, intellectual expression and refinement 

 of manner, which often make the less appear the more 

 beautiful. Mere physical beauty — that is, a healthy and 

 regular development of the body and features approaching 

 to the mean or type of European man — I believe is quite as 

 frequent in one class of society as the other, and much more 

 frequent in rural districts than in cities. 



With regard to the rank of man in zoological classifica- 

 tion, I fear I have not made myself intelligible. I never 

 meant to adopt Owen's or any other such views, but only 

 to point out that from one point of view he was right. I 

 hold that a distinct family for man, as Huxley allows, is 

 all that can possibly be given him zoologically. But at 

 the same time, if my theory is true — that while the animals 

 which surrounded him have been undergoing modification 



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